Dothan Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Dothan, AL Websites

We see web maintenance as a reactive support service where we provide your Dothan business with the right web developer resources to fix just about any problem. There are many examples of website issues that might require service from Dothan website maintenance agencies, including:

• Updating your website platform.
• Keeping apps and plugins updated for better security and functionality.
• Adding new pages whenever you release something new.
• Freshen up your blog with new content.
• Rearranging your Dothan site's navigation menu.
• Making your page faster to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Take backups of your website's files and databases.
• Making your website look and feel better.
• Troubleshooting Google Search Console coverage issues.
• Improving technical SEO by adding structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing solutions to other website problems.

Those services are just a taste of what Dothan website support might look like. Basically, Dothan web maintenance is anything a web developer or internet marketer does to change your website.

Reactive Dothan Website Support

Most Dothan website owners wouldn't want a web developer messing around with their site without their permission. That's why we consider web maintenance a reactive service. You can count on our company to keep your Dothan website running smoothly. However, we can offer some proactive Dothan web support services.

View Dothan Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Dothan Website Support

We're happy to help website owners in Dothan who need proactive website upkeep! There are several website support services, including platform upgrades, app / extension updates, website backups, performance monitoring, and broken link monitoring, that our website maintainers can handle in a proactive manner.

View Dothan Website Management Pricing

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

Who Needs Web Support in Dothan, AL

There will come a time when every Dothan website needs some sort of maintenance. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing. However, we don't charge a lot for Dothan website support, so you'll be able to afford it! There are a few reasons why a website in Dothan might need maintenance:

• Hosting companies sometimes upgrade their servers, removing PHP versions that were used by your Dothan website. That means you'll have to refactor your app or upgrade to a newer framework that supports the latest PHP release. There's no way you can expect custom web functionality 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 was no longer maintained by Magento after it reached "End of Life". Because of that, Magento 1.x ecommerce businesses in Dothan 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 can be a time-consuming activity, and often happens because the website owner wasn't being mindful of the first two web maintenance examples, listed above.
• You need to refresh your Dothan website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. Keeping your Dothan website up to date is key to its success.

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 Dothan business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Dothan, 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 Dothan business after the work is done.

Most web support services start with an email from you, the owner of the Dothan website. Your email gets routed to our ticket system and automatically gets assigned to your project manager. We can then work on the ticket without delay, which leads to faster turnaround and easier internal communication.

Phone or live chat requests follow a similar process to Dothan website support. 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 Dothan, AL Businesses

After the launch of a website, we're often asked for detailed examples of Dothan website maintenance requests. Here are several examples of Dothan web support services we've been asked to perform in the past and would be more than happy to provide to you!

Simple Dothan Website Updates

Changes to your Dothan website could be as simple as updating a paragraph, swapping images, or adding a new page. Keeping content fresh for search engines and visitors is just normal, routine website support.

Dothan Website Speed Improvements

Let us check your Dothan website for hosting, caching, image optimization, console errors, broken links, poor database queries, and other potential problems that might be impacting your page speed. User experience and SEO will both benefit from better page load times.

Platform Upgrades / Security Updates

Keeping your Dothan 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.

Plugin / Extension Updates

It's important to update your Dothan website's plugins and extensions to reflect the latest changes by the developers. The idea is similar to updating the CMS platform since it fixes security and functionality problems.

Google Search Console Issues

Did Google Search Console tell you about a coverage problem? If so, we'll look at the coverage issues, fix them, and update you on the status. Make Google happy, and you'll rank higher throughout Dothan and beyond!

Implement Structured Data

Do you ever see product prices or reviews in Google organic search results? This is structured data, which is a standardized way to describe the content on a webpage, whether it's a local Dothan business, or an ecommerce product.

Add Open Graph Tags 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

Would you like to manage custom scripts more easily with Google Tag Manager? No problem at all! We'll happily install Google Tag Manager on your Dothan website and teach you how to use it.

Setup Conversion Tracking

Tracking conversions is important if you want to understand the benefits of online advertising for your Dothan website. Then you'll know where your conversions come from, whether it be direct traffic, organic search, or paid ads.

Image Compression (Optimization)

Are large images slowing down your Dothan website? That won't be a problem! 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? If you'd like us to recommend the best live chat system for your Dothan business, install the tracking code, and customize the design for your branding, we can do it!

Review Error Logs for Issues

Are your error_log files big? If you're getting recurring error messages, we can update programming code or fix platform issues.

Reduce Spam with reCaptcha

If spambots are attacking your Dothan website, we can setup a checkbox or invisible reCaptcha to help minimize unwanted submissions on your forms.

Install a Caching Plugin

Looking to install a caching plugin on your Dothan website, but not sure how to configure it? We can recommend caching plugins, or we can install and configure them for you!

Send Website Emails Over SMTP

If you want to improve email deliverability, we can set up your contact form and website platform to send emails via SMTP instead of PHP mail.

Restrict Malicious IP Addresses

Have you been getting fake orders, contact submissions, or live chats from a particular network? If you want to protect your website from malicious traffic, we can help by implementing IP restrictions.

Create Website Backups

Do you want to create a backup of your Dothan website? We can help you create one-time or scheduled backups that store locally or at an offsite location.

Create a Development Website

It is often recommended that you setup a development or staging website before proceeding with a major upgrade or extension installation. 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 Dothan 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 Dothan website. We've seen businesses in and around Dothan 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 Dothan website? If your Dothan 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 Dothan, AL Websites

With years of experience developing websites for Dothan businesses (and those in other areas of the country), our web designers and web developers have been immersed in multiple platforms. That said, it is better to become a master of a handful of platforms rather than try to specialize in them all. Because of that, we tend to service only these platforms for Dothan websites:

• Dothan WordPress Web Maintenance
• Dothan WooCommerce Web Maintenance
• Dothan Shopify Website Maintenance

As a web support agency, we used to maintain and support Joomla and Magento websites for Dothan-area businesses. The reason we moved away from those platforms was to let our web maintenance experts focus more on training and support.

Questions to Ask Dothan, AL Website Maintenance Agencies

Ask the Dothan website support company some questions about their services before you sign up for a package. This will help you get a better idea of the experience you will have with their premium Alabama web maintenance services before you submit payment and provide website access. You can ask these simple questions:

• Can you tell me how you handle website security? Do you run website security scans for clients?
• What's the turnaround time for Dothan website maintenance?
• Are you outsourcing your Dothan web support services?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Dothan website?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Dothan website updates?
• At what times of the day are you working and able to take our maintenance requests?
• How will I know about new updates to my platform?

If you ask these questions to a Dothan 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.

Dothan, AL Web Maintenance Plans and Tips

Companies in and around Dothan often ask us for a website maintenance plan to establish routines and procedures. We are happy to help your Dothan business develop a web support plan to ensure all aspects of your website, hosting, and domain name are routinely checked to ensure optimum performance and uptime.

Read through this list of annual Dothan website support tasks to consider:

• Message your web hosting firm to see if they have upgraded servers you can switch your website to for faster page speeds.
• Ask your web developer if your website has a major platform release coming up that will require a lot of work to install.
• Restore a website backup to make sure the data is enough for full recovery. Also, make sure your backups are stored remotely.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Dothan) to see if you're missing out on anything.
• Ensure your website is secure by performing a full security review.
• Ensure that structured data, open graph, and social links are all 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.

Here is a list of semi-annual Dothan web maintenance tasks to consider:

• 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 your hosting account credentials and make sure it's not about to expire.
• Make sure you can access your DNS in case anything needs to be changed.
• Find out if your SSL certificate will expire soon.
• Make sure you have remote backups outside Dothan and that your website backup schedule is working.
• If you have an automated image optimization service, verify it is working properly.
• Make sure the website doesn't throw any console errors.

Check out this list of monthly Dothan web maintenance tasks to consider:

• Look for broken links on your website, which hurts SEO and user experience.
• Check for website performance issues from recent updates or changes on the website.
• 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.
• See if there are any updates for your website platform or extensions.

The Cost of Website Maintenance Service in Dothan, AL

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

800-796-8263 Email Us