Detroit, MI Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Detroit, MI Websites

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

• Updating your website platform.
• Installing app or plugin updates to improve security and functionality.
• Adding new web pages as you release new products or services.
• Writing new blog content to help you stay fresh.
• Rearranging your Detroit 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.
• Fixing 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 Detroit website support might look like. In fact, Detroit web maintenance is really anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website to change it in some manner.

Reactive Detroit Website Support

The reason we consider web maintenance to be a reactive service is that most Detroit website owners wouldn't want a web developer going into their website and changing things around without their knowledge. You can count on our company to keep your Detroit website running smoothly. However, we can offer some proactive Detroit web support services.

View Detroit Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Detroit Website Support

We're happy to help website owners in Detroit who need proactive website upkeep! As part of our proactive website management service, our team can take care of platform upgrades, app / extension updates, website backups, performance monitoring, and broken link monitoring.

View Detroit Website Management Pricing

If you live in Detroit, you probably love the Detroit Lions football team. Go Detroit Lions! In addition to supporting Detroit-area websites, our website support company also offers Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lansing, Sterling Heights, Taylor, and Troy small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Website Maintenance in Detroit, MI

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

• When a hosting company upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Detroit website was originally developed to support. 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.
• 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 Detroit were looking for ecommerce developers to help migrate their websites.
• An owner of a Detroit 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. This is time-consuming, and often happens when the website owner isn't paying attention to the first two web maintenance examples.
• You need to refresh your Detroit website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. Keeping your Detroit 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 Detroit business when planning budgets and schedules for website maintenance and support.

How We Perform Detroit, MI Web Maintenance

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

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

For requests that originate from phone or live chat, a similar process to handling your Detroit website support services unfolds. 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 Web Maintenance Service List for Detroit, MI Businesses

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

Simple Detroit Website Updates

A simple change to your Detroit website might include updating a paragraph on a page, swapping out an image, or adding a new page. These are just normal, routine website support tasks to keep content fresh for both search engines and visitors.

Detroit Page Speed Improvements

Let us check your Detroit 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 Detroit 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!

Extension / Plugin Updates

It's important to update your Detroit 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 Fixes

Did you get a report from Google Search Console telling you about a coverage issue? If so, we can review the coverage issues, fix the problems, and update you on the results. Make Google happy, and you'll rank higher throughout Detroit 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 Detroit business, or an ecommerce product.

Implement Open Graph 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

Interested in using Google Tag Manager for managing custom scripts? Not a problem! We can add Google Tag Manager to your Detroit 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 Detroit 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 Detroit website slow because of large images? Not 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

Is your website ready for 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 Detroit business!

Review Error Log Files

Have you noticed large error_log files on your hosting account? To stop recurring error messages, we can diagnose the problem and update programming code.

Reduce Spam with reCaptcha

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

Install a Caching Plugin

Interested in installing a caching plugin for your Detroit website, but don't know how to set it up? We can help you figure out which caching plugins to install and configure on your website!

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 IP Addresses

Is your Detroit 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.

Run Website & Database Backups

Would you like a backup of your Detroit website? Let us help you create one-time or scheduled backups that you can store locally or offsite.

Create a Testing Website

Before you do a major update or extension installation, it's a good idea to setup a development or staging site. 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 Detroit 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 Detroit website. We've seen businesses in and around Detroit 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 Detroit website? If your Detroit 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 Detroit, MI Websites

With years of experience developing websites for Detroit 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 Detroit websites:

• Detroit WordPress Web Maintenance
• Detroit WooCommerce Web Maintenance
• Detroit Shopify Website Maintenance

As a web support agency, we used to maintain and support Joomla and Magento websites for Detroit-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 Detroit, MI Website Maintenance Agencies

Ask the Detroit website 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 premium Michigan web maintenance services before you submit payment or provide website access. You can ask these simple questions:

• How do you handle website security? Do you run security scans of customer websites?
• What is the turnaround time for Detroit website maintenance requests?
• Do you outsource your Detroit web support services?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Detroit website?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Detroit 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 Detroit website services agency these questions before subscribing to their web 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.

Detroit, MI Website Maintenance Plans and Tips

Companies in and around Detroit often ask us for a web support plan to establish routines and procedures. Whether it's your website, hosting, or domain name, we'll make sure your Detroit business has a website support plan to ensure optimum performance.

Read through this list of annual Detroit web maintenance tasks to consider:

• Ask your web hosting company if they have newer servers you can migrate to.
• Check if your website platform has a new major release that will require an extensive website migration.
• 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 Detroit.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Detroit) 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.
• Delete any development or staging websites you don't need.

Read through this list of semi-annual Detroit web 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 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.
• Verify your website backup schedule is working properly, and you have remote backups outside of Detroit.
• 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 Detroit website maintenance tasks to review:

• Look for broken links on your website, which hurts SEO and user experience.
• Check your website for performance issues after recent updates or changes.
• 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 Support Service in Detroit, MI

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