Plymouth, MN Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Plymouth, MN Websites

We see web maintenance as a reactive support service where we provide your Plymouth 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 Plymouth website support firms, including:

• Making sure your website's platform is up to date.
• Updating apps and plugins to make them safer and more functional.
• Adding new web pages as you release new products or services.
• Writing new blog content to help you stay fresh.
• Rearranging your Plymouth 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.
• Improving technical SEO by adding structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing solutions to other website problems.

The previously mentioned services are just a glimpse of what we view as possible Plymouth web maintenance services. Basically, Plymouth website maintenance is anything a web developer or internet marketer does to change your website.

Reactive Plymouth Website Support

The reason we consider web support to be a reactive service is that most Plymouth website owners wouldn't want a web developer going into their website and changing things around without their knowledge. When you choose to have our agency maintain your Plymouth website, we'll be your web support team on standby for any request. However, we can offer some proactive Plymouth web maintenance services.

View Plymouth Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Plymouth Website Support

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

In addition to supporting Plymouth-area websites, our website maintenance agency also offers Bloomington, Duluth, Minneapolis, Rochester, St. Paul, and Woodbury small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Website Support in Plymouth, MN

There will come a time when every Plymouth website needs some sort of maintenance. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing. But don't worry, our Plymouth web maintenance costs aren't too high, so you can afford it! Website maintenance in Plymouth might be needed for these reasons:

• When a hosting company upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Plymouth 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 Plymouth 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 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.
• You need to refresh your Plymouth website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. This type of website maintenance is critical to ensuring your Plymouth website is benefiting you.

There are many reasons why a website might need maintenance, other than just to update something. When planning budgets and schedules for web support and support, consider your Plymouth business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Plymouth, MN Website Support

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

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

For requests that originate from phone or live chat, a similar process to handling your Plymouth web 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 Website Support Service List for Plymouth, MN Businesses

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

Simple Plymouth Website Tweaks

Your Plymouth website might need a paragraph updated, an image changed, or a new page added. These are just normal, routine website maintenance tasks to keep content fresh for both search engines and visitors.

Plymouth Page Speed Improvements

Let us check your Plymouth 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 Plymouth 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.

Plugin / Extension Updates

It's important to update your Plymouth website's plugins and extensions to reflect 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.

Google Search Console Issues

Has Google Search Console told you there's a coverage problem? If so, we can review the coverage issues, fix the problems, and update you on the results. This will help your search engine rankings, throughout Plymouth and beyond, by making Google happy!

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 Plymouth 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.

Setup Google Tag Manager

Interested in using Google Tag Manager for managing custom scripts? Not a problem! We can add Google Tag Manager to your Plymouth website and even teach you how to use it.

Add Conversion Tracking

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

Image Compression (Optimization)

Is your Plymouth 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

Do you want to try live chat on your website? If you'd like us to recommend the best live chat system for your Plymouth business, install the tracking code, and customize the design for your branding, we can do it!

Review Error Log Files

Do you have a lot of error_log files on your hosting account? If you're getting recurring error messages, we can update programming code or fix platform issues.

Integrate reCaptcha on Contact Forms

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

Install a Caching Plugin

Looking to install a caching plugin on your Plymouth 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

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

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.

Backup Your Website Files

Is it time to make a backup of your Plymouth website? We can help you create one-time or scheduled backups that store locally or at an offsite location.

Create a Development Website

When you're doing a major upgrade or extension installation, you should set up a development or staging site first. 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 Plymouth web design changes based on statistical data? We can help you run A/B testing to help you decide which design or content layouts are best.

Create 301 Redirects

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

With years of experience developing websites for Plymouth 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. Therefore, we tend to only maintain Plymouth websites on these platforms:

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

As a website maintenance agency, we used to maintain and support Joomla and Magento websites for Plymouth-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 Plymouth, MN Web Maintenance Agencies

Ask the Plymouth website maintenance 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 premium Minnesota website support services before you submit payment and provide website access. Here are some simple questions to ask:

• What kind of security do you have on your site? Do you scan client websites for security?
• What is the turnaround time for Plymouth web maintenance requests?
• Do you outsource your Plymouth website maintenance services?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Plymouth website?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Plymouth 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 Plymouth website services agency, you'll gain a better understanding of the future relationship, the security of your website, and the turnaround time for important maintenance requests.

Plymouth, MN Website Support Plans and Tips

Companies in and around Plymouth often ask us for a web maintenance plan to establish routines and procedures. We are happy to help your Plymouth business develop a web maintenance plan to ensure all aspects of your website, hosting, and domain name are routinely checked to ensure optimum performance and uptime.

Check out this list of annual Plymouth website maintenance tasks to review:

• Check if your web hosting provider has newer servers that your account can be migrated 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 Plymouth.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Plymouth) 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.

Here is a list of semi-annual Plymouth web support tasks to consider:

• 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.
• Ensure you have access to your hosting account and that it isn't expiring soon.
• Make sure you can access your DNS in case anything needs to be changed.
• Make sure your SSL certificate isn't expiring soon.
• Verify your website backup schedule is working properly, and you have remote backups outside of Plymouth.
• Check if you have an automated image optimization service running.
• Make sure the website doesn't throw any console errors.

Read through this list of monthly Plymouth 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's anything wrong being reported within Google Search Console.
• 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 Web Maintenance Service in Plymouth, MN

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

800-796-8263 Email Us