North Carolina Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining North Carolina Websites

We view website maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your North Carolina business with the appropriate web developer resources to solve nearly any website problem. There are many examples of website issues that might require service from North Carolina web maintenance firms, including:

• Upgrading your website platform to the latest version.
• Keeping apps and plugins updated for better security and functionality.
• Adding new web pages as you release new information.
• Freshen up your blog with new content.
• Rearranging your North Carolina website's navigation menu.
• Improve your page speed to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Taking backups of your website's files and databases.
• Modifying the look and feel of your website's design.
• Fixing site audit issues or Google Search Console coverage problems.
• Improving technical SEO by adding structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing solutions to other website problems.

These are just a few of the North Carolina web support services we offer. In fact, North Carolina website support is really anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website to change it in some manner.

Reactive North Carolina Website Support

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

View North Carolina Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive North Carolina Website Support

Interested in a proactive website management service for some of your website upkeep? We're happy to help! 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 North Carolina Website Management Pricing

Emergency North Carolina Website Support

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

View Emergency North Carolina Website Support Pricing

Our website maintenance and support company is happy to provide Asheville, Burlington, Cary, Chapel Hill, Charlotte, Concord, Durham, Fayetteville, Greensboro, Greenville, High Point, Jacksonville, Raleigh, and Wilmington with fast website support services.

Who Needs Website Support in North Carolina

At some point in time, every North Carolina website will require some form of web maintenance. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing. Not to worry though, our North Carolina website maintenance cost isn't expensive so it should be affordable for you to maintain your website! There are a few reasons why a website in North Carolina might need maintenance:

• When a hosting provider upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your North Carolina 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. You can't expect custom web functionality from the past 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. This recently happened to Magento 1.x ecommerce store owners who were forced to migrate to Magento 2.x, or an alternative ecommerce platform, because Magento 1.x had reached an “End of Life” status and would no longer be maintained or updated by Magento. North Carolina-area ecommerce businesses running Magento 1.x found themselves looking for an ecommerce developer to help migrate their store.
• When a website owner has become a victim of malware or some other form of malicious activity, the North Carolina website will need to be reviewed for security exploits and cleaned of malware. This can be a time-consuming activity, and often happens because the website owner wasn't being mindful of the first two web support examples, listed above.
• You need to refresh your North Carolina website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. Maintaining your North Carolina website is key to making sure it's working for you.

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 North Carolina business when planning budgets and schedules for website maintenance and support.

How We Perform North Carolina Website Support

We have an experienced web maintenance team who puts forth great effort to understand your maintenance needs, schedule your work in a timely fashion, and follow up with your North Carolina business after the tasks have been completed.

Most web maintenance services start with an email from you, the owner of the North Carolina website. That email is routed into our ticket system and automatically assigned to the project manager on your account. We can then work on the ticket without delay, which leads to faster turnaround and easier internal communication.

The process for North Carolina 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 North Carolina Businesses

We are often asked for detailed examples of North Carolina website support requests that might come up after the launch of a website. Here are several examples of North Carolina web maintenance services we've been asked to perform in the past and would be more than happy to provide to you!

Simple North Carolina Website Changes

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

North Carolina Website Speed Improvements

We can analyze your North Carolina website for hosting issues, caching issues, unoptimized images, console errors, broken links, poor queries, and more if it's slow. It'll help improve page load times, which will make users and search engines happy.

Platform Upgrades / Security Patches

If your North Carolina website is running on a content management system, like WordPress, it is important to keep the platform updated. This helps improve security and functionality - sometimes the updates are relatively quick to perform, which is a win-win!

Plugin / Extension Updates

It's important to update your North Carolina website's plugins and extensions to reflect the latest changes by the developers. It's similar to updating the CMS platform since it helps patch security and functionality issues.

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 North Carolina 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 of describing content on the web, whether it's a local business in North Carolina or an ecommerce product.

Implement Open Graph 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 North Carolina 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'll happily install Google Tag Manager on your North Carolina website and teach you how to use it.

Add Conversion Tracking

If you are interested in understanding the benefit of an online advertising campaign for your North Carolina 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

Is your North Carolina 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!

Add Live Chat

Would you like to try 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 North Carolina 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.

Reduce Spam with reCaptcha

We can set up a checkbox or invisible reCaptcha to help minimize unwanted submissions on your North Carolina website.

Setup a Caching Plugin

Are you interested in installing a caching plugin in your North Carolina 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!

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

Is your North Carolina website getting fake orders, contact submissions, or live chats? If you want to protect your website from malicious traffic, we can help by implementing IP restrictions.

Create Website Backups

Do you want to create a backup of your North Carolina 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. Just let us know if you need help creating and managing that development / staging site!

Implement A/B Testing

Do you prefer to make design changes based on statistical data regarding how users interact with your North Carolina 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.

Add 301 Redirects

Have you launched a new website or removed pages? You will want to create 301 redirects for your North Carolina website to prevent broken pages from hurting your SEO. Businesses in and around North Carolina have lost a lot of organic traffic because of broken pages. It is a very common mistake when launching new websites, removing content pages, or disabling product pages. We can help you set up 301 redirects in .htaccess files, nginx templates, and CMS platforms.

Provide Website Training

Do you need help learning how to make changes to your North Carolina website? If your North Carolina 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 North Carolina Websites

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for North Carolina businesses, who have been immersed in multiple website platforms over the years. 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 web support company for North Carolina websites tends to service only the following platforms:

• North Carolina WordPress Web Maintenance
• North Carolina WooCommerce Web Maintenance
• North Carolina Shopify Website Maintenance
• North Carolina BigCommerce Web Support
• North Carolina Laravel Website Support

In the past, we provided website maintenance and support for Joomla and Magento platforms of North Carolina 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 North Carolina Website Maintenance Agencies

Before signing up for any North Carolina website support package, it is important to ask the North Carolina web maintenance company some questions about how their services work. This will help you get a better idea of the relationship you will have with the North Carolina web maintenance team before you give them money, provide them website access, and give them complete access to your website for one of their website maintenance packages. Let's go over some simple questions to ask:

• Can you tell me how you handle website security? Do you run website security scans for clients?
• When can I expect an average North Carolina web support request to be completed?
• Are you outsourcing your North Carolina website support services?
• How much does North Carolina web maintenance cost?
• Are there minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for North Carolina website updates?
• What are your normal hours of operation?
• Will you keep me informed about new updates within my platform?

We find it beneficial to run these questions by any North Carolina website services firm before subscribing to their web support packages, since it will provide much better understanding for you regarding the future relationship, the security of your website, and the expected turnaround time for important maintenance requests.

North Carolina Website Support Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a web maintenance plan by larger companies in and around North Carolina looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. We are happy to help your North Carolina 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.

Here is a list of annual North Carolina website maintenance tasks to review:

• 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.
• Restore a website backup to make sure the data is enough for full recovery. Also, make sure your backups are stored remotely.
• Check out competitor sites (even those outside of North Carolina) to see if you're missing out on any competitive advantages they have over you.
• Take a look at your website's security to make sure nothing's been compromised.
• Verify structured data, open graph, and social links are all working properly.
• Verify the necessity of any 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts that are installed.
• Remove any unnecessary development or staging websites.

Here is a list of semi-annual North Carolina 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.
• Check that your hosting account isn't about to expire and you can access it.
• 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 North Carolina.
• 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 North Carolina website support tasks to review:

• Ensure your website doesn't have any broken links, which affect user experience and SEO.
• Check your website for performance issues after recent updates or changes.
• 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 North Carolina

The starting price for our North Carolina 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 North Carolina websites, starting at $50/month, if you'd like the peace of mind knowing a company is proactively upgrading your site. For North Carolina businesses with mission-critical applications, we offer emergency North Carolina 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 North Carolina, 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 North Carolina 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 North Carolina 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 North Carolina to charge a much higher hourly rate, but not bill out for communication and organization. Likewise, there are website support companies in North Carolina 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 North Carolina 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.