Thornton Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Thornton, CO Websites

We view website maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your Thornton business with the appropriate web developer resources to solve nearly any website problem. These are some examples of website issues that Thornton web support companies might fix:

• Upgrading your website platform to the latest version.
• Installing app or plugin updates to improve security and functionality.
• Adding new web pages as you release new information.
• Freshen up your blog with new content.
• Rearranging the navigation menu of your Thornton 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.
• Adding structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Investigating the cause and providing a solution to any other website issue.

Those services are just a taste of what Thornton web maintenance might look like. In fact, Thornton web maintenance is really anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website to change it in some manner.

Reactive Thornton Website Support

Most Thornton website owners wouldn't want a web developer messing around with their site without their permission. That's why we consider website maintenance a reactive service. You can count on our firm to keep your Thornton website running smoothly. There are some website support services we can provide your Thornton website in a proactive manner though.

View Thornton Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Thornton Website Support

We're happy to help website owners in Thornton who need proactive website upkeep! 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 Thornton Website Management Pricing

In addition to supporting Thornton-area websites, our web maintenance firm also offers Arvada, Aurora, Boulder, Castle Rock, Centennial, Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Greeley, Highlands Ranch, Lakewood, Longmont, Loveland, Montrose, Pueblo, and Westminster small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Web Support in Thornton, CO

At some point in time, every Thornton website will require some form of website support. It's just that the internet changes all the time. Not to worry though, our Thornton web maintenance cost isn't expensive so it should be affordable for you to maintain your website! Here are some common reasons why a website in Thornton might require web maintenance services:

• When a hosting provider upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Thornton 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 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 Thornton were looking for ecommerce developers to help migrate their websites.
• An owner of a Thornton 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. In most cases, this happens because the website owner didn't pay attention to the first two website maintenance examples.
• When the content on your Thornton website, which explains your organization, products, or services becomes outdated and needs to be refreshed to help ensure future visitors receive accurate information about your operation. Keeping your Thornton website up to date is key to its success.

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 Thornton business when planning budgets and schedules for website maintenance and support.

How We Perform Thornton, CO 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 Thornton business after the tasks have been completed.

Most Thornton web maintenance 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. From there, anyone on our team can work on the ticket without delay, leading to faster turnaround time and simplified internal communication.

The process for Thornton website maintenance services that come from phone or chat is similar. 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 Support Service List for Thornton, CO Businesses

We are often asked for detailed examples of Thornton website support requests that might come up after the launch of a website. We've performed these Thornton web maintenance services in the past, and would be happy to do it for you too!

Simple Thornton Website Changes

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

Thornton Website Speed Improvements

If your Thornton 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 Thornton 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!

Plugin / Extension Upgrades

If your Thornton website has functionality developed and maintained by a third-party, it is important to update those plugins and extensions to include 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 Fixes

Did you get a report from Google Search Console telling you about a coverage issue? 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 Thornton 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 to describe the content on a webpage, whether it's a local Thornton business, or an ecommerce product.

Add Open Graph to Your Website

When people share links of your Thornton 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

Are you interested in adding Google Tag Manager to your website to help you manage custom scripts more easily? No problem at all! We can add Google Tag Manager to your Thornton website and even give you a crash course in using Google Tag Manager.

Implement Conversion Tracking

Tracking conversions is important if you want to understand the benefits of online advertising for your Thornton website. It'll help you understand where your conversions come from, like direct traffic, referral links, organic search, or paid ads.

Optimize Images

Is your Thornton website slow because of large images? 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

Would you like to try live chat? We can make recommendations on the best live chat systems for your business requirements, install the tracking code, and configure the design to match the branding of your Thornton business!

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 Thornton website, we can setup an invisible or checkbox reCaptcha.

Setup a Caching Plugin

Looking to install a caching plugin on your Thornton website, but not sure how to configure it? We can help you figure out which caching plugins to install and configure on your website!

Send Website Emails Over SMTP

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

IP Address Restrictions

Is your Thornton website being bombarded with fake orders, contact submissions or live chats from a specific network? Our team can help set up IP restrictions so your website doesn't get hit with as much malicious traffic.

Create Website Backups

Do you want to create a backup of your Thornton website? Let us help you create one-time or scheduled backups that you can store locally or offsite.

Create a Testing Website

It is often recommended that you setup a development or staging website before proceeding with a major upgrade or extension installation. Whenever you need help with creating and managing your development site, just let us know!

Create A/B Testing Rules

Are you a fan of making Thornton web design changes based on statistical data? A/B testing can help you decide between two or more design layouts based on the data collected.

Setup 301 Redirects

Are you launching a new website or removing pages from your website? You should create 301 redirects for your Thornton website. We've seen businesses in and around Thornton 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 Thornton website? If your Thornton 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 Thornton, CO Websites

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for Thornton businesses, who have been immersed in multiple website platforms over the years. Nevertheless, mastering a handful of platforms is better than trying to be an expert on everything. For that reason, our website maintenance firm for Thornton websites tends to service only the following platforms:

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

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

Questions to Ask Thornton, CO Web Maintenance Companies

Before signing up for any Thornton web support package, it is important to ask the Thornton website support company some questions about how their services work. By doing this, you'll be able to better understand your future experience with their professional Colorado website maintenance services before you submit payment or provide website access. Let's go over some simple questions to ask:

• How do you handle website security? Do you run security scans of customer websites?
• When can I expect an average Thornton web support request to be completed?
• Are you outsourcing your Thornton website support services?
• What are your Thornton web maintenance costs?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Thornton 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 Thornton website services agency these questions before subscribing to their website maintenance 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.

Thornton, CO Web Support Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a website support plan by larger companies in and around Thornton looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. Whether it's your website, hosting, or domain name, we'll make sure your Thornton business has a web maintenance plan to ensure optimum performance.

Here is a list of annual Thornton website maintenance tasks to review:

• Ask your web hosting company if they have newer servers you can migrate to.
• Check if your website platform is releasing a major upgrade in the near future which will require a major overhaul of your website.
• Restore a website backup to make sure the data is enough for full recovery. Also, make sure your backups are stored remotely.
• Look at competitor websites (even those outside of Thornton) 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.

Check out this list of semi-annual Thornton web support tasks to review:

• Ensure you have access to your domain name and that it isn't expiring soon. This will be helpful when you have to process a domain name renewal.
• Check your hosting account credentials and make sure it's not about to expire.
• 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 you have remote backups outside Thornton and that your website backup schedule is working.
• If you have an automated image optimization service, verify it is working properly.
• Check if the website is throwing any console errors.

Read through this list of monthly Thornton website support tasks to review:

• Look for broken links on your website, which hurts SEO and user experience.
• 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.
• Check if there are available platform or extension updates.

The Cost of Web Maintenance Service in Thornton, CO

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