Duluth, MN Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Duluth, MN Websites

We see web maintenance as a reactive support service where we provide your Duluth business with the right web developer resources to fix just about any problem. There are many examples of website issues that might require service from Duluth website maintenance agencies, including:

• 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 your Duluth site's navigation menu.
• Making your page faster to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Take backups of your website's files and databases.
• Modifying the look and feel of your website's design.
• Troubleshooting Google Search Console coverage issues.
• Improving technical SEO by adding structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Investigating the cause and providing a solution to any other website issue.

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

Reactive Duluth Website Support

Most Duluth 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 company to keep your Duluth website running smoothly. However, we can offer some proactive Duluth web support services.

View Duluth Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Duluth Website Support

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

If you live in Duluth, you probably love the Minnesota–Duluth Bulldogs hockey team. Go Minnesota–Duluth Bulldogs! In addition to supporting Duluth-area websites, our web maintenance firm also offers Bloomington, Minneapolis, Plymouth, Rochester, St. Paul, and Woodbury small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Web Support in Duluth, MN

There will come a time when every Duluth website needs some sort of maintenance. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing. Not to worry though, our Duluth website support cost isn't expensive so it should be affordable for you to maintain your website! Here are some common reasons why a website in Duluth might require web maintenance services:

• When a hosting provider upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Duluth 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. 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". Duluth-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. This can be a time-consuming activity, and often happens because the website owner wasn't being mindful of the first two web maintenance examples, listed above.
• When the content on your Duluth 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. This type of website maintenance is critical to ensuring your Duluth website is benefiting you.

Above and beyond just updating something, there are plenty of reasons why a website might need maintenance. Plan your budget and schedules for website support and maintenance based on your Duluth business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Duluth, MN Web Support

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

Most web maintenance services start with an email from you, the owner of the Duluth website. 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 Duluth 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 Duluth, MN Businesses

After the launch of a website, we're often asked for detailed examples of Duluth website support requests. Here are several examples of Duluth web maintenance services we've been asked to perform in the past and would be more than happy to provide to you!

Simple Duluth Website Changes

A simple change to your Duluth 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.

Duluth Website Speed Improvements

Let us check your Duluth 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

If your Duluth 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 Updates

If your Duluth 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. This is similar to the idea of updating the CMS platform since it helps patch security and functionality issues.

Fixing Search Console Issues

Did Google Search Console tell you about 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 Duluth and beyond!

Implement Structured Data

Have you ever noticed information like reviews or product prices in the listing of a Google organic search result? This is structured data, which is a standardized way to describe the content on a webpage, whether it's a local Duluth business, or an ecommerce product.

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 Duluth business.

Setup 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 Duluth 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 Duluth website. This will help you understand where your conversions are coming from, such as a Google search or a Bing Ads campaign.

Image Compression (Optimization)

Are large images slowing down your Duluth 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!

Integrate a Live Chat

Is your website ready for live chat? If you'd like us to recommend the best live chat system for your Duluth 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? We can help diagnose the issue and update programming code or repair platform issues to prevent recurring error messages.

Reduce Spam with reCaptcha

If spambots are attacking your Duluth 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 Duluth website, but not sure how to properly configure the settings for best website performance? 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 Malicious IP Addresses

Have you been getting fake orders, contact submissions, or live chats from a particular 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 Duluth 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 Duluth 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 Duluth website. We've seen businesses in and around Duluth 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 Duluth website? If your Duluth 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 Duluth, MN Websites

With years of experience developing websites for Duluth businesses (and those in other areas of the country), our web designers and web developers have been immersed in multiple platforms. That said, it is better to become a master of a handful of platforms rather than try to specialize in them all. For that reason, our website maintenance firm for Duluth websites tends to service only the following platforms:

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

As a web support company, we used to maintain and support Joomla and Magento websites for Duluth-area businesses. However, we chose to move away from those platforms to allow our web maintenance experts to focus more heavily on training and support within the other systems.

Questions to Ask Duluth, MN Web Maintenance Companies

Ask the Duluth web support company some questions about their services before you sign up for a package. This will help you get a better idea of the experience you will have with their expert Minnesota web maintenance services before you submit payment and 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 Duluth website maintenance request to be completed?
• Are you outsourcing your Duluth web support services?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Duluth website?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Duluth website updates?
• At what times of the day are you working and able to take our maintenance requests?
• Will you keep me informed about new updates within my platform?

If you ask these questions to a Duluth website services company, you'll gain a better understanding of the future relationship, the security of your website, and the turnaround time for important maintenance requests.

Duluth, MN Web Maintenance Plans and Tips

Companies in and around Duluth often ask us for a web maintenance plan to establish routines and procedures. We are happy to help your Duluth 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.

Here is a list of annual Duluth web support 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.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Duluth) 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.
• 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.

Here is a list of semi-annual Duluth website support tasks to consider:

• 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.
• Ensure you have access to your hosting account and that it isn't expiring soon.
• Make sure you have access to your DNS.
• Find out if your SSL certificate will expire soon.
• Make sure you have remote backups outside Duluth 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.

Here are a list of monthly Duluth web maintenance tasks to review:

• Look for broken links on your website, which hurts SEO and user experience.
• 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.
• Take a look at your website platform and extensions for any available updates.

The Cost of Website Maintenance Service in Duluth, MN

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