Iowa Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Iowa Websites

Web maintenance is a reactive support service that connects you with the right web developer to fix nearly any website issue. There are many examples of website issues that might require service from Iowa web support agencies, including:

• Updating your website platform.
• Updating apps and plugins to make them safer and more functional.
• Adding new pages whenever you release something new.
• Writing new blog content to help you stay fresh.
• Rearranging your Iowa site's navigation menu.
• Improve your page speed to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Backing up your website's files and databases.
• Modifying the look and feel of your website's design.
• Troubleshooting Google Search Console coverage issues.
• Adding structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing a solution to any other website problem.

The previously mentioned services are just a glimpse of what we view as possible Iowa web maintenance services. In fact, Iowa website maintenance is basically anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website.

Reactive Iowa Website Support

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

View Iowa Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Iowa Website Support

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

Emergency Iowa Website Support

For enterprise-level clients requiring off-hours support, including holidays and weekends, please consider our Iowa web support service level agreements. Please understand this service must be in place prior to having a website emergency that requires Iowa website maintenance services and support at night, on a weekend, or during a holiday break.

View Emergency Iowa Website Support Pricing

Our website maintenance and support company is happy to provide Burlington, Ceder Rapids, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, Iowa City, and Waterloo with fast website support services.

Who Needs Web Support in Iowa

Every Iowa website will need some website support at some point. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing. However, we don't charge a lot for Iowa web maintenance, so you'll be able to afford it! Website maintenance in Iowa might be needed for these reasons:

• Hosting companies sometimes upgrade their servers, removing PHP versions that were used by your Iowa website. When this happens, you need to refactor your application or upgrade to a newer framework that supports the newer PHP version. There's no way you can expect custom web functionality to work forever.
• In order to focus on maintaining the newer version of an ecommerce platform or content management system, they eventually have to deprecate the previous releases. 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. Iowa-area ecommerce businesses running Magento 1.x found themselves looking for an ecommerce developer to help migrate their store.
• 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. In most cases, this happens because the website owner didn't pay attention to the first two website maintenance examples.
• To ensure future visitors to your Iowa website receive accurate information about your organization, products, or services, your Iowa website content needs to be refreshed. This type of web support is critical to ensuring your Iowa website is benefiting you.

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 Iowa business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Iowa Web Maintenance

Our professional web maintenance team puts in a lot of effort to understand your needs, schedule your work on time, and follow up with your Iowa business after the work is done.

Most website maintenance services start with an email from you, the owner of the Iowa website. Your email gets routed to our ticket system and automatically gets assigned to your project manager. Anyone on our team can work on the ticket without delay, resulting in faster turnaround time.

Phone or live chat requests follow a similar process to Iowa web support. 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 Support Service List for Iowa Businesses

We're often asked for examples of Iowa web maintenance requests after a website launches. Here are several examples of Iowa website maintenance services we've been asked to perform in the past and would be more than happy to provide to you!

Simple Iowa Website Updates

Your Iowa website might need a paragraph updated, an image changed, or a new page added. Keeping content fresh for search engines and visitors is just normal, routine web support.

Iowa Page Speed Improvements

Let us check your Iowa website for hosting, caching, image optimization, console errors, broken links, poor database queries, and other potential problems that might be impacting your page speed. It'll help improve page load times, which will make users and search engines happy.

Platform Updates / Security Fixes

If your Iowa website is running on a content management system, like WordPress, it is important to keep the platform updated. Updates help improve security and functionality - and they're usually quick, so it might be a simple task.

Plugin / Extension Upgrades

It's important to update plugins and extensions on your Iowa website if they were developed and maintained by a third-party. This is similar to the idea of updating the CMS platform since it helps patch security and functionality issues.

Fixing Search Console Issues

Has Google Search Console told you there's a coverage problem? If so, we can fix the coverage issues, and let you know how it went. This will help your search engine rankings, throughout Iowa and beyond, by making Google happy!

Implement Structured Data

Do you ever see product prices or reviews in Google organic search results? 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 Iowa, and ecommerce product or some other common data type.

Add Open Graph Tags on Your Website

Adding Open Graph Tags to your website will help search engines better understand your page content and improve the appearance of your website in social media platforms when people share links of your Iowa business.

Setup Google Tag Manager

Are you interested in adding Google Tag Manager to your website to help you manage custom scripts more easily? Not a problem! We can add Google Tag Manager to your Iowa website and even give you a crash course in using Google Tag Manager.

Implement Conversion Tracking

If you are interested in understanding the benefit of an online advertising campaign for your Iowa 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.

Optimize Images

Are large images slowing down your Iowa website? No problem at all! 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? 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 Iowa business!

Review Error Log Files

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.

Integrate reCaptcha on Contact Forms

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

Setup a Caching Plugin

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

Setup SMTP Email

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.

Restrict IP Addresses

Is your Iowa 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.

Create Website Backups

Do you want to create a backup of your Iowa 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 Iowa 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 Iowa website. We've seen businesses in and around Iowa 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 Iowa website? If your Iowa site was developed in a platform we work within, such as WordPress, Shopify or BigCommerce, we'll be happy to help!

The Platforms We Maintain for Iowa Websites

For Iowa businesses, we have a team of web designers and web developers who have experience with 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 Iowa websites:

• Iowa WordPress Website Support
• Iowa WooCommerce Web Maintenance
• Iowa Shopify Web Maintenance
• Iowa BigCommerce Website Maintenance
• Iowa Laravel Web Support

We've managed Joomla and Magento platforms for Iowa businesses in the past. However, we chose to move away from those platforms to allow our website support experts to focus more heavily on training and support within the other systems.

Questions to Ask Iowa Web Maintenance Firms

If you're thinking about signing up for any Iowa web support package, make sure you ask the company how their services work. This will help you get a better idea of the relationship you will have with the Iowa website support team before you give them money, provide them website access, and give them complete access to your website for one of their web maintenance packages. You can ask these simple questions:

• What kind of security do you have on your site? Do you scan client websites for security?
• What's the turnaround time for Iowa web maintenance?
• Do you outsource your Iowa website maintenance services?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Iowa website?
• Are there minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Iowa website updates?
• Can you tell me what your normal business hours are?
• Will you keep me informed about new updates within my platform?

If you ask these questions to a Iowa 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.

Iowa Website Support Plans and Tips

Larger companies in and around Iowa often ask us for a web maintenance plan. We are happy to help your Iowa business develop a website maintenance 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 Iowa web support tasks to consider:

• Check if your web hosting provider has newer servers that your account can be migrated 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 Iowa.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Iowa) to see if you're missing out on anything.
• Take a look at your website's security to make sure nothing's been compromised.
• Make sure structured data, open graph, and social links are working.
• Verify the necessity of any 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts that are installed.
• Take down any unnecessary development or staging sites.

Check out this list of semi-annual Iowa website support tasks to review:

• Make sure you have access to your domain name and it's not about to expire. When you have to renew your domain name, this will come in handy.
• Ensure you have access to your hosting account and that it isn't expiring soon.
• Make sure you have access to your DNS.
• Make sure your SSL certificate isn't expiring soon.
• Make sure your website backup schedule is working and you have remote backups.
• Check if you have an automated image optimization service running.
• Make sure the website doesn't throw any console errors.

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

• 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.
• Check Google Search Console for any coverage issues.
• Provide some kind of update to your content to keep your website fresh.
• Check if there are available platform or extension updates.

The Cost of Web Maintenance Service in Iowa

The starting price for our Iowa 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 Iowa websites, starting at $50/month, if you'd like the peace of mind knowing a company is proactively upgrading your site. For Iowa businesses with mission-critical applications, we offer emergency Iowa website support subscriptions, starting at $495/month, to extend our availability into nights & weekends.

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