Decatur Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Decatur, AL Websites

We see web maintenance as a reactive support service where we provide your Decatur business with the right web developer resources to fix just about any problem. These are some examples of website issues that Decatur website maintenance agencies might fix:

• 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 information.
• Writing new blog content to help you stay fresh.
• Rearranging the navigation menu of your Decatur website.
• Making your page faster to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Take backups of your website's files and databases.
• Changing the look and feel of your website.
• Fixing Google Search Console coverage issues.
• Enhancing technical SEO with structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing solutions to other website problems.

The previously mentioned services are just a glimpse of what we view as possible Decatur website support services. Basically, Decatur web maintenance is anything a web developer or internet marketer does to change your website.

Reactive Decatur Website Support

The reason we consider web maintenance to be a reactive service is that most Decatur website owners wouldn't want a web developer going into their website and changing things around without their knowledge. When you choose to have our company maintain your Decatur website, we'll be your web support team on standby for any request. However, we can offer some proactive Decatur web support services.

View Decatur Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Decatur Website Support

We're happy to help website owners in Decatur who need proactive website upkeep! As part of our proactive website management service, our team can take care of platform upgrades, app / extension updates, website backups, performance monitoring, and broken link monitoring.

View Decatur Website Management Pricing

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

Who Needs Website Maintenance in Decatur, AL

There will come a time when every Decatur website needs some sort of maintenance. It's just that the internet changes all the time. Not to worry though, our Decatur web support cost isn't expensive so it should be affordable for you to maintain your website! Website maintenance in Decatur might be needed for these reasons:

• When a hosting provider upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Decatur website was originally developed to support. When this happens, you need to refactor your application or upgrade to a newer framework that supports the newer PHP version. You can't expect custom web functionality programmed in the past to work forever without any improvements.
• 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 was no longer maintained by Magento after it reached "End of Life". As a result, Magento 1.x ecommerce businesses in Decatur were looking for ecommerce developers to help migrate their websites.
• An owner of a Decatur website who has been infected by malware or some other kind of malicious activity needs to check the site for exploits and clean it up. 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 Decatur website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. This type of web maintenance is critical to ensuring your Decatur website is benefiting you.

There are many reasons why a website might need maintenance, other than just to update something. Plan your budget and schedules for website support and maintenance based on your Decatur business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Decatur, AL Web Maintenance

It's our job to understand your website maintenance needs, schedule your work in a timely fashion, and follow up with your Decatur business after the work is done.

Most Decatur web support services start with an email from the website owner. 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.

The process for Decatur website support services that come from phone or chat is similar. The support request is entered into our ticket system by the person in the conversation with you, which allows the work order to be routed to the most appropriate web developer on our team.

Example Web Maintenance Service List for Decatur, AL Businesses

After the launch of a website, we're often asked for detailed examples of Decatur website maintenance requests. We've performed these Decatur web support services in the past, and would be happy to do it for you too!

Simple Decatur Website Changes

Your Decatur website might need a paragraph updated, an image changed, or a new page added. This is just normal, routine website support to keep content fresh for both search engines and visitors.

Decatur Page Speed Improvements

If your Decatur website isn't running as fast as it once was, we can review your website for hosting issues, caching issues, unoptimized images, console errors, broken links, poor queries, and much more. User experience and SEO will both benefit from better page load times.

Platform Upgrades / Security Updates

It's important to keep your Decatur website updated if it runs on a CMS like WordPress. The updates improve security and functionality - sometimes they're quick, so it's an easy win!

Extension / Plugin Updates

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

Google Search Console Issues

Did Google Search Console tell you about a coverage problem? If so, we can review the coverage issues, fix the problems, and update you on the results. This will help your search engine rankings, throughout Decatur and beyond, by making Google happy!

Implement 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 to describe the content on a webpage, whether it's a local Decatur business, or an ecommerce product.

Implement Open Graph on Your Website

By adding Open Graph Tags to your website, digital platforms can better understand the content of your page, which improves its appearance on social media.

Add Google Tag Manager

Are you interested in adding Google Tag Manager to your website to help you manage custom scripts more easily? That won't be a problem! We'll happily install Google Tag Manager on your Decatur website and teach you how to use it.

Implement Conversion Tracking

If you are interested in understanding the benefit of an online advertising campaign for your Decatur website, it is important to setup conversion tracking. It'll help you understand where your conversions come from, like direct traffic, referral links, organic search, or paid ads.

Image Compression (Optimization)

Is your Decatur website slow because of large images? Not a problem! All your images can be compressed by our tools, and we can even setup recurring compression for newly added images!

Integrate a Live Chat

Do you want to try live chat on your website? Our experts can help you pick the right live chat system, install the tracking code, and customize the design to match your Decatur business branding!

Review Error Logs for Issues

Have you noticed large error_log files on your hosting account? We can help diagnose the issue and update programming code or repair platform issues to prevent recurring error messages.

Reduce Spam with reCaptcha

To reduce unwanted submissions on your Decatur website, we can setup an invisible or checkbox reCaptcha.

Install a Caching Plugin

Interested in installing a caching plugin for your Decatur website, but don't know how to set it up? We can help you figure out which caching plugins to install and configure on your website!

Send Website Emails Over SMTP

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.

IP Address Restrictions

Have you been getting fake orders, contact submissions, or live chats from a particular network? We can help setup IP restrictions to prevent malicious traffic from interacting with your website.

Create Website Backups

Would you like a backup of your Decatur website? Let us help you create one-time or scheduled backups that you can store locally or offsite.

Create a Testing Website

Before you do a major update or extension installation, it's a good idea to setup a development or staging site. If you'd like help creating and managing that development / staging site, just let us know!

Implement A/B Testing

Do you prefer to make design changes based on statistical data regarding how users interact with your Decatur 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.

Create 301 Redirects

Are you launching a new website or removing pages from your website? You should create 301 redirects for your Decatur website. We've seen businesses in and around Decatur lose huge amounts of organic traffic due to widespread broken pages. We can help you create 301 redirects within .htaccess files, nginx templates, and CMS platforms.

Provide Website Training

Do you need help learning how to make changes to your Decatur website? If your Decatur site was developed in a platform we work within, such as WordPress or Shopify, we'll be happy to help!

The Platforms We Maintain for Decatur, AL Websites

With years of experience developing websites for Decatur businesses (and those in other areas of the country), our web designers and web developers have been immersed in multiple platforms. Nevertheless, mastering a handful of platforms is better than trying to be an expert on everything. For that reason, our web maintenance agency for Decatur websites tends to service only the following platforms:

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

As a web maintenance firm, we used to maintain and support Joomla and Magento websites for Decatur-area businesses. However, we chose not to use those platforms so our web support experts could focus on training and support within the more popular platforms.

Questions to Ask Decatur, AL Website Support Firms

Ask the Decatur web maintenance company some questions about their services before you sign up for a package. By doing this, you'll be able to better understand your future experience with their professional Alabama web support services before you submit payment or 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?
• When can I expect an average Decatur website support request to be completed?
• Do you outsource your Decatur web maintenance services?
• What are your Decatur website maintenance costs?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Decatur website updates?
• At what times of the day are you working and able to take our maintenance requests?
• When there are new updates on my platform, will you let me know?

If you ask any Decatur website services agency these questions before subscribing to their website support packages, you'll have a much better idea of the future relationship, the security of your website, and the expected turnaround time for important requests.

Decatur, AL Web Maintenance Plans and Tips

Companies in and around Decatur often ask us for a web maintenance plan to establish routines and procedures. Whether it's your website, hosting, or domain name, we'll make sure your Decatur business has a website maintenance plan to ensure optimum performance.

Here is a list of annual Decatur web support tasks to review:

• Check if your web hosting provider has newer servers that your account can be migrated to.
• Check if your website platform is releasing a major upgrade in the near future which will require a major overhaul of your website.
• Attempt to restore a website backup to ensure the data being stored is sufficient for full recovery. Also make sure you are storing backups in a remote location away from Decatur.
• Look at competitor websites (even those outside of Decatur) to see if you are missing out on new functionality for your own customers.
• Ensure your website is secure by performing a full security review.
• Ensure that structured data, open graph, and social links are all working.
• Remove any unnecessary 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts that may have been installed in the past.
• Delete any development or staging websites you don't need.

Read through this list of semi-annual Decatur website support 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.
• Ensure you have access to your hosting account and that it isn't expiring soon.
• Make sure you can access your DNS in case anything needs to be changed.
• Find out if your SSL certificate will expire soon.
• Verify your website backup schedule is working properly, and you have remote backups outside of Decatur.
• Check if you have an automated image optimization service running.
• Make sure the website doesn't throw any console errors.

Read through this list of monthly Decatur web maintenance tasks to review:

• Look for broken links on your website, which hurts SEO and user experience.
• Check your website for performance issues after recent updates or changes.
• See if there's anything wrong being reported within Google Search Console.
• Update some of your service pages or blog articles to keep your website fresh.
• Check if there are available platform or extension updates.

The Cost of Website Maintenance Service in Decatur, AL

The starting price for our Decatur 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 Decatur 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 Decatur, 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 Decatur 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 Decatur 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 Decatur to charge a much higher hourly rate, but not bill out for communication and organization. Likewise, there are website support companies in Decatur 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 Decatur 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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