Birmingham Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Birmingham, AL Websites

We view web maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your Birmingham business with the appropriate web developer resources to solve nearly any website problem. There are many examples of website issues that might require service from Birmingham web maintenance companies, including:

• Upgrading your website platform to the latest version.
• Updating apps and plugins to make them safer and more functional.
• Adding new web pages as you release new products or services.
• Freshen up your blog with new content.
• Rearranging your Birmingham website's navigation menu.
• Making your page faster to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Backing up your website's files and databases.
• Making your website look and feel better.
• Troubleshooting Google Search Console coverage issues.
• Enhancing technical SEO with structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing solutions to other website problems.

These are just a few of the Birmingham web support services we offer. In fact, Birmingham website support is really anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website to change it in some manner.

Reactive Birmingham Website Support

The reason we consider web maintenance to be a reactive service is that most Birmingham website owners wouldn't want a web developer going into their website and changing things around without their knowledge. Our firm will be your web support team on standby for any questions you have. There are some web support services we can provide your Birmingham website in a proactive manner though.

View Birmingham Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Birmingham Website Support

Interested in a proactive website management service for some of your website upkeep? We're happy to help! We can take care of platform upgrades, app/extension updates, website backups, performance monitoring, and broken link monitoring as part of our proactive website management service.

View Birmingham Website Management Pricing

In addition to supporting Birmingham-area websites, our website support firm also offers Auburn, Decatur, Dothan, Florence, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, and Tuscaloosa small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Web Maintenance in Birmingham, AL

At some point in time, every Birmingham website will require some form of website maintenance. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing. Not to worry though, our Birmingham web support cost isn't expensive so it should be affordable for you to maintain your website! Website maintenance in Birmingham might be needed for these reasons:

• When a hosting company upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Birmingham website was originally developed to support. That means you'll have to refactor your app or upgrade to a newer framework that supports the latest PHP release. You can't expect custom web functionality from the past to work forever.
• Content management systems or ecommerce platforms eventually deprecate old versions so their teams can focus on the new ones. Magento 1.x store owners recently had to migrate to Magento 2.x or an alternative ecommerce platform because Magento 1.x had reached "End of Life" status and wouldn't be maintained or updated. Because of that, Magento 1.x ecommerce businesses in Birmingham were suddenly looking for an ecommerce developer to help migrate their website to a supported platform.
• Whenever a website owner falls victim to malware or some other form of malicious activity, the website needs to be cleaned of malware and reviewed for security exploits. This is time-consuming, and often happens when the website owner isn't paying attention to the first two website support examples.
• You need to refresh your Birmingham website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. Maintaining your Birmingham website is key to making sure it's working for you.

As you can see, there are many reasons a website may require maintenance above and beyond the obvious reasons of just wanting to update something on the website. It is important to understand the future needs of your Birmingham business when planning budgets and schedules for website maintenance and support.

How We Perform Birmingham, AL Web Maintenance

We have an experienced website maintenance team who puts forth great effort to understand your maintenance needs, schedule your work in a timely fashion, and follow up with your Birmingham business after the tasks have been completed.

Most web support services start with an email from you, the owner of the Birmingham website. That email is routed into our ticket system and automatically assigned to the project manager on your account. Anyone on our team can work on the ticket without delay, resulting in faster turnaround time.

For requests that originate from phone or live chat, a similar process to handling your Birmingham website support services unfolds. A support request is entered into our ticket system by the person in the conversation with you, so the work order can be routed to the right web developer.

Example Web Maintenance Service List for Birmingham, AL Businesses

We are often asked for detailed examples of Birmingham web maintenance requests that might come up after the launch of a website. Here are several examples of Birmingham website maintenance services we've been asked to perform in the past and would be more than happy to provide to you!

Simple Birmingham Website Changes

Your Birmingham website might need a paragraph updated, an image changed, or a new page added. These are just normal, routine web support tasks to keep content fresh for both search engines and visitors.

Birmingham Website Speed Improvements

We can analyze your Birmingham website for hosting issues, caching issues, unoptimized images, console errors, broken links, poor queries, and more if it's slow. User experience and SEO will both benefit from better page load times.

Platform Updates / Security Fixes

Keeping your Birmingham website's content management system updated is important if it's running on WordPress. Updates help improve security and functionality - and they're usually quick, so it might be a simple task.

Extension / Plugin Updates

It's important to update your Birmingham website's plugins and extensions to reflect the latest changes by the developers. It's similar to updating the CMS platform since it helps patch security and functionality issues.

Google Search Console Fixes

Did you get a report from Google Search Console telling you about a coverage issue? If so, we can review the coverage issues, fix the problems, and update you on the results. By making Google happy, you'll boost your search engine rankings throughout Birmingham and beyond!

Setup Structured Data

When you search Google organically, have you noticed reviews or prices in the search results? This is structured data, which is a standardized way of describing content on the web, whether it's a local business in Birmingham or an ecommerce product.

Add Open Graph to Your Website

When people share links of your Birmingham business on social media, your website will look better if you add Open Graph Tags. These tags help define an image, title, and description for your each page on your website.

Implement Google Tag Manager

Interested in using Google Tag Manager for managing custom scripts? No problem at all! We'll happily install Google Tag Manager on your Birmingham website and teach you how to use it.

Add Conversion Tracking

If you are interested in understanding the benefit of an online advertising campaign for your Birmingham website, it is important to setup conversion tracking. This will help you understand where your conversions are coming from, such as a Google search or a Bing Ads campaign.

Optimize Images

Do you have a Birmingham website that's slow because of large images? No problem at all! All your images can be compressed by our tools, and we can even setup recurring compression for newly added images!

Add Live Chat

Is your website ready for live chat? Our experts can help you pick the right live chat system, install the tracking code, and customize the design to match your Birmingham business branding!

Resolve Errors in Log Files

Are your error_log files big? To stop recurring error messages, we can diagnose the problem and update programming code.

Reduce Spam with reCaptcha

We can set up a checkbox or invisible reCaptcha to help minimize unwanted submissions on your Birmingham website.

Setup a Caching Plugin

Are you interested in installing a caching plugin in your Birmingham website, but not sure how to properly configure the settings for best website performance? We can help recommend caching plugins, or just install and configure them for you!

Implement SMTP Email

To help improve email deliverability, we can configure your contact form and website platform to send emails through an SMTP account instead of PHP mail.

Restrict Malicious IP Addresses

Is your Birmingham website getting fake orders, contact submissions, or live chats? Our team can help set up IP restrictions so your website doesn't get hit with as much malicious traffic.

Backup Your Website Files

Is it time to make a backup of your Birmingham website? Let us help you create one-time or scheduled backups that you can store locally or offsite.

Create a Testing Website

When you're doing a major upgrade or extension installation, you should set up a development or staging site first. Just let us know if you need help creating and managing that development / staging site!

Implement A/B Testing

Do you prefer to make design changes based on statistical data regarding how users interact with your Birmingham web page? If so, we can help you implement A/B testing to gather data to help inform you of the best choice between two or more design layouts.

Setup 301 Redirects

Are you launching a new website or removing pages from your website? You will want to create 301 redirects for your Birmingham website to prevent broken pages from hurting your SEO. Businesses in and around Birmingham have lost a lot of organic traffic because of broken pages. It is a very common mistake when launching new websites, removing content pages, or disabling product pages. We are happy to help you resolve broken pages through the creation of 301 redirects within .htaccess files, nginx templates, and CMS plugins.

Train You on Your Website

Need help learning how to make simple changes to your Birmingham website? We'll be happy to help if your Birmingham site was built on a platform we work with, such as WordPress or Shopify.

The Platforms We Maintain for Birmingham, AL Websites

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for Birmingham businesses, who have been immersed in multiple website platforms over the years. That said, it is better to become a master of a handful of platforms rather than try to specialize in them all. For that reason, our website support company for Birmingham websites tends to service only the following platforms:

• Birmingham WordPress Website Maintenance
• Birmingham WooCommerce Web Support
• Birmingham Shopify Website Support

We've managed Joomla and Magento platforms for Birmingham businesses in the past. The reason we moved away from those platforms was to let our web maintenance experts focus more on training and support.

Questions to Ask Birmingham, AL Web Maintenance Companies

Before signing up for any Birmingham web support package, it is important to ask the Birmingham website support company some questions about how their services work. This will help you get a better idea of the experience you will have with their professional Alabama website maintenance services before you submit payment and provide website access. Let's go over some simple questions to ask:

• What kind of security do you have on your site? Do you scan client websites for security?
• What is the turnaround time for Birmingham web support requests?
• Are you outsourcing your Birmingham website support services?
• How much does Birmingham web maintenance cost?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Birmingham website updates?
• Can you tell me what your normal business hours are?
• How will I know about new updates to my platform?

If you ask these questions to a Birmingham website services agency, you'll gain a better understanding of the future relationship, the security of your website, and the turnaround time for important maintenance requests.

Birmingham, AL Website Maintenance Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a web support plan by larger companies in and around Birmingham looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. We are happy to help your Birmingham business develop a website support plan to ensure all aspects of your website, hosting, and domain name are routinely checked to ensure optimum performance and uptime.

Here is a list of annual Birmingham web maintenance tasks to review:

• Check if your web hosting provider has newer servers that your account can be migrated to.
• Check if your website platform has a new major release that will require an extensive website migration.
• Restore a website backup to make sure the data is enough for full recovery. Also, make sure your backups are stored remotely.
• Check out competitor sites (even those outside of Birmingham) to see if you're missing out on any competitive advantages they have over you.
• Ensure your website is secure by performing a full security review.
• Make sure structured data, open graph, and social links are working.
• Check if any 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts are installed but no longer necessary.
• Take down any unnecessary development or staging sites.

Read through this list of semi-annual Birmingham website maintenance tasks to review:

• Check that your domain name doesn't expire soon and that you have access to it. You'll appreciate this when it's time to renew your domain.
• Check that your hosting account isn't about to expire and you can access it.
• Ensure you have access to your DNS in case you need to change anything.
• Check if your SSL certificate will be expiring in the near future.
• Verify your website backup schedule is working properly, and you have remote backups outside of Birmingham.
• Make sure you're running an image optimization service.
• Check if the website is throwing any console errors.

Read through this list of monthly Birmingham web support tasks to review:

• Ensure your website doesn't have any broken links, which affect user experience and SEO.
• Make sure your website isn't having performance issues after recent updates.
• See if there are any coverage issues in Google Search Console.
• Keep your website fresh by updating your content within one of your service pages or blog articles.
• Take a look at your website platform and extensions for any available updates.

The Cost of Website Support Service in Birmingham, AL

The starting price for our Birmingham website maintenance services is $119.50/hour, but we offer discounts for pre-purchased blocks of time that bring the rate as low as $99.95/hour. We also offer website management for Birmingham websites, starting at $50/month, if you'd like the peace of mind knowing a company is proactively upgrading your site.

To get started, if you are new to our web maintenance company, we'll need you to pre-purchase a block of time which includes a discount on our hourly rate. If you are an existing client in Birmingham, you are welcome to choose monthly billing at our higher hourly rate or continue to pre-purchase time and receive discounted hourly rates for your website updates.

If you pre-purchase a block of time for your Birmingham web maintenance services, you will be happy to know there are no contracts, there are no hidden fees, the time never expires, and there are no minimum deductions for small website update requests. Please keep in mind we rarely see tasks take less than 10 minutes, since the process of reviewing an email or taking a phone call, checking on whatever was asked, providing some form of feedback, and then logging the task usually takes at least 10 minutes of time. To keep you informed of the time usage on your pre-purchased block of web maintenance time, you will receive a monthly email update letting you know how much time remains on your account.

What is Considered Billable Time?

When talking with prospective Birmingham website maintenance clients, we are often asked what is considered billable time. You will find the answers to vary greatly within the website support industry. In some situations, you may find a website maintenance company in Birmingham to charge a much higher hourly rate, but not bill out for communication and organization. Likewise, there are website support companies in Birmingham who charge a more affordable hourly rate, but also bill out for most communication and organization. This is the approach we take. To help provide clarification, let's go over some examples of what we consider billable time when it comes to maintaining and supporting your Birmingham website.

Here are examples of what is considered billable time:

• Reading through lengthy emails to understand what is being requested.
• Preparing responses to lengthy or complex email messages.
• Helping you figure out your domain name or web hosting provider.
• Scheduling your website maintenance to be completed by the best team member.
• Talking with you on the phone about ideas or tasks you want to discuss.
• Reviewing completed work for quality control purposes.
• Providing you training on how to handle administrative tasks.
• Researching unique solutions to difficult questions you present our team.
• Providing more detailed time usage reports, beyond the automated monthly update email.
• Helping you figure out email client issues within Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.
• Almost any other task not specifically mentioned in the list below.

Here are examples of what is not considered billable time:

• Talking with you about personal matters, such as the weather, a recent vacation, or a sporting event.
• Responding to simple email messages that don't require research or lengthy feedback.
• Handling accounting-related tasks, such as invoice generation, payment confirmations, etc.

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