Tuscaloosa Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Tuscaloosa, AL Websites

We view web maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your Tuscaloosa 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 Tuscaloosa web maintenance companies, including:

• Making sure your website's platform is up to date.
• Installing app or plugin updates to improve security and functionality.
• Adding new pages whenever you release something new.
• Writing new blog content to help you stay fresh.
• Rearranging the navigation menu of your Tuscaloosa website.
• Improving page speed to help you 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 Tuscaloosa web support services we offer. In fact, Tuscaloosa website support is really anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website to change it in some manner.

Reactive Tuscaloosa Website Support

We consider web maintenance a reactive service because most Tuscaloosa website owners don't want a developer messing with their website without their permission. When you choose to have our firm maintain your Tuscaloosa website, we'll be your web support team on standby for any request. However, we can provide some proactive web support services for your Tuscaloosa website.

View Tuscaloosa Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Tuscaloosa Website Support

For website owners in Tuscaloosa interested in a proactive management service for some of their website upkeep requirements, we are happy to accommodate! 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 Tuscaloosa Website Management Pricing

If you live in Tuscaloosa, you probably love the Alabama Crimson Tide basketball team. Go Alabama Crimson Tide! In addition to supporting Tuscaloosa-area websites, our web maintenance agency also offers Auburn, Birmingham, Decatur, Dothan, Florence, Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Website Maintenance in Tuscaloosa, AL

At some point in time, every Tuscaloosa website will require some form of web support. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing. But don't worry, our Tuscaloosa website support costs aren't too high, so you can afford it! Here are some common reasons why a website in Tuscaloosa might require web maintenance services:

• Hosting companies sometimes upgrade their servers, removing PHP versions that were used by your Tuscaloosa website. 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.
• When an ecommerce platform or a content management system releases new versions, they eventually must deprecate the old versions so their teams can focus on maintaining the newer technologies. 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 Tuscaloosa 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 maintenance examples.
• You need to refresh your Tuscaloosa website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. Maintaining your Tuscaloosa 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 Tuscaloosa business when planning budgets and schedules for website maintenance and support.

How We Perform Tuscaloosa, AL Web Support

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

Most web maintenance services start with an email from you, the owner of the Tuscaloosa website. Your email gets routed into our ticket system and automatically assigned to your project manager. From there, anyone on our team can work on the ticket without delay, leading to faster turnaround time and simplified internal communication.

Phone or live chat requests follow a similar process to Tuscaloosa web maintenance. 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 Website Maintenance Service List for Tuscaloosa, AL Businesses

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

Simple Tuscaloosa Website Tweaks

A simple change to your Tuscaloosa website might include updating a paragraph on a page, swapping out an image, or adding a new page. Keeping content fresh for search engines and visitors is just normal, routine web maintenance.

Tuscaloosa Page Speed Improvements

If your Tuscaloosa 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. This will help improve page load times, which are beneficial to user experience and search engine optimization.

Platform Updates / Security Fixes

Keeping your Tuscaloosa 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 Tuscaloosa 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 fix the coverage issues, and let you know how it went. This will help your search engine rankings, throughout Tuscaloosa and beyond, by making Google happy!

Add Structured Data

Have you ever noticed information like reviews or product prices in the listing of a Google organic search result? This is brought to you by structured data, which is a standardized way of describing the content on the web page, whether it be of a local business in Tuscaloosa, and ecommerce product or some other common data type.

Add Open Graph Tags on Your Website

When people share links of your Tuscaloosa 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 Tuscaloosa 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 Tuscaloosa 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.

Image Optimization

Are large images slowing down your Tuscaloosa website? Not a problem! We can run all your images through our image compression tools and even setup recurring image compression for newly added images in the future!

Setup 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 Tuscaloosa 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 Tuscaloosa website.

Setup a Caching Plugin

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

Setup SMTP Email

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

Restrict IP Addresses

Is your Tuscaloosa website being bombarded with fake orders, contact submissions or live chats from a specific network? We can help setup IP restrictions to prevent malicious traffic from interacting with your website.

Backup Your Website Files

Is it time to make a backup of your Tuscaloosa 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 Tuscaloosa web page? A/B testing can help you decide between two or more design layouts based on the data collected.

Create 301 Redirects

Do you have a new website or are you removing pages? You should create 301 redirects for your Tuscaloosa website. We've seen businesses in and around Tuscaloosa 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.

Train You on Your Website

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

The Platforms We Maintain for Tuscaloosa, AL Websites

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for Tuscaloosa 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. Therefore, we tend to only maintain Tuscaloosa websites on these platforms:

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

We've managed Joomla and Magento platforms for Tuscaloosa 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 Tuscaloosa, AL Web Maintenance Companies

Before signing up for any Tuscaloosa web support package, it is important to ask the Tuscaloosa 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. Here are some simple questions to ask:

• How do you handle website security? Do you run security scans of customer websites?
• What's the turnaround time for Tuscaloosa web support?
• Do you outsource your Tuscaloosa website support services?
• What are your Tuscaloosa web maintenance costs?
• Do you have minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Tuscaloosa 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 Tuscaloosa 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.

Tuscaloosa, AL Website Maintenance Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a web support plan by larger companies in and around Tuscaloosa looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. We are happy to help your Tuscaloosa 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.

Check out this list of annual Tuscaloosa web maintenance tasks to review:

• Ask your web hosting company if they have newer servers you can migrate to.
• Ask your web developer if your website has a major platform release coming up that will require a lot of work to install.
• 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 Tuscaloosa.
• Look at competitor websites (even those outside of Tuscaloosa) to see if you are missing out on new functionality for your own customers.
• Perform a full security review of your website to ensure nothing has been compromised or left vulnerable.
• 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 Tuscaloosa 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.
• Make sure your website backup schedule is working and you have remote backups.
• Check if you have an automated image optimization service running.
• See if there are any console errors on the website.

Here are a list of monthly Tuscaloosa web support tasks to review:

• Check for broken links on your website, which negatively impact user experience and SEO.
• Check for website performance issues from recent updates or changes on the website.
• 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 Tuscaloosa, AL

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