Athens-Clarke County Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Athens, GA Websites

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

• Updating your website platform.
• Keeping apps and plugins updated for better security and functionality.
• Adding new web pages as you release new information.
• Staying fresh with new blog content.
• Rearranging your Athens site's navigation menu.
• 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.
• Troubleshooting Google Search Console coverage issues.
• Enhancing technical SEO with structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing solutions to other website problems.

Those services are just a taste of what Athens web support might look like. In fact, Athens website support is basically anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website.

Reactive Athens Website Support

Most Athens 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 agency to keep your Athens website running smoothly. However, we can offer some proactive Athens website maintenance services.

View Athens Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Athens Website Support

We're happy to help website owners in Athens 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 Athens Website Management Pricing

If you live in Athens, you probably love the Georgia Bulldogs football team. Go Georgia Bulldogs! In addition to supporting Athens-area websites, our web support agency also offers Albany, Alpharetta, Atlanta, Augusta, Brookhaven, Columbus, Macon, Marietta, Roswell, Savannah, and Valdosta small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Web Maintenance in Athens, GA

There will come a time when every Athens website needs some sort of maintenance. It's just that the internet changes all the time. However, we don't charge a lot for Athens website maintenance, so you'll be able to afford it! There are a few reasons why a website in Athens might need maintenance:

• When a hosting provider upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Athens website was originally developed to support. This means you have to refactor your app or upgrade to a newer framework that supports the new PHP version. 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". As a result, Magento 1.x ecommerce businesses in Athens were looking for ecommerce developers to help migrate their websites.
• 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 web support examples.
• You need to refresh your Athens website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. Keeping your Athens website up to date is key to its success.

Above and beyond just updating something, there are plenty of reasons why a website might need maintenance. When planning budgets and schedules for website support and support, consider your Athens business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Athens, GA Web Maintenance

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

Most Athens website maintenance services start with an email from the website owner. 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.

The process for Athens web support services that come from phone or chat is similar. We route the support request to the most appropriate web developer on our team based on the nature of the work needed on your website.

Example Website Support Service List for Athens, GA Businesses

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

Simple Athens Website Updates

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

Athens Site Performance Improvements

Let us check your Athens 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

It's important to keep your Athens website updated if it runs on a CMS like 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 Athens 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.

Fixing Search Console Issues

Has Google Search Console told you there's 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 Athens and beyond!

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 Athens business, or an ecommerce product.

Add Open Graph to 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

Interested in using Google Tag Manager for managing custom scripts? That won't be a problem! We'll happily install Google Tag Manager on your Athens 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 Athens website. 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 Athens 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!

Integrate a Live Chat

Would you like to try live chat? If you'd like us to recommend the best live chat system for your Athens 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? To stop recurring error messages, we can diagnose the problem and update programming code.

Reduce Spam with reCaptcha

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

Install a Caching Plugin

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

Implement SMTP Email

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? 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 Athens 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 Athens 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 Athens website. We've seen businesses in and around Athens 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 Athens website? If your Athens 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 Athens, GA Websites

With years of experience developing websites for Athens 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. Because of that, we tend to service only these platforms for Athens websites:

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

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

Questions to Ask Athens, GA Web Maintenance Firms

Ask the Athens web support 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 Georgia web maintenance services before you submit payment or 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?
• When can I expect an average Athens web maintenance request to be completed?
• Is your Athens website maintenance outsourced?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Athens website?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Athens 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 these questions to a Athens website services firm, you'll gain a better understanding of the future relationship, the security of your website, and the turnaround time for important maintenance requests.

Athens, GA Website Support Plans and Tips

Companies in and around Athens 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 Athens business has a website maintenance plan to ensure optimum performance.

Read through this list of annual Athens web 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.
• Check if your website platform is releasing a major upgrade in the near future which will require a major overhaul of your website.
• Try restoring a website backup to make sure the data is good enough for a full recovery. Also, make sure your backups are stored somewhere else besides Athens.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Athens) 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.
• Remove any unnecessary 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts that may have been installed in the past.
• Take down any unnecessary development or staging sites.

Read through this list of semi-annual Athens 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.
• Check your hosting account credentials and make sure it's not about to expire.
• Make sure you have access to your DNS.
• Make sure your SSL certificate isn't expiring soon.
• Make sure you have remote backups outside Athens 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.

Read through this list of monthly Athens web maintenance 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's anything wrong being reported within Google Search Console.
• Update some of your service pages or blog articles to keep your website fresh.
• Take a look at your website platform and extensions for any available updates.

The Cost of Web Maintenance Service in Athens, GA

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