Hamilton, OH Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Hamilton, OH Websites

We view website maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your Hamilton business with the appropriate web developer resources to solve nearly any website problem. Here are a few examples of website problems that might need Hamilton web maintenance:

• Making sure your website's platform is up to date.
• Installing app or plugin updates to improve security and functionality.
• Adding new web pages as you release new products or services.
• Freshen up your blog with new content.
• Rearranging the navigation menu of your Hamilton website.
• 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.
• Improving technical SEO by adding structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Investigating the cause and providing a solution to any other website issue.

These are just a few of the Hamilton web maintenance services we offer. Basically, Hamilton website maintenance is anything a web developer or internet marketer does to change your website.

Reactive Hamilton Website Support

The reason we consider web support to be a reactive service is that most Hamilton 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 Hamilton website running smoothly. There are some web maintenance services we can provide your Hamilton website in a proactive manner though.

View Hamilton Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Hamilton Website Support

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

In addition to supporting Hamilton-area websites, our website maintenance agency also offers Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Kettering, Lakewood, Newark, Springfield, Toledo, and Youngstown small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Website Support in Hamilton, OH

At some point in time, every Hamilton website will require some form of web maintenance. It's because the internet is always changing. But don't worry, our Hamilton web maintenance costs aren't too high, so you can afford it! Here are some common reasons why a website in Hamilton might require website maintenance services:

• When a hosting company upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Hamilton 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 programmed in the past to work forever without any improvements.
• 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 Hamilton were looking for ecommerce developers to help migrate their websites.
• An owner of a Hamilton 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 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.
• When the content on your Hamilton 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. Maintaining your Hamilton website is key to making sure it's working for you.

There are many reasons why a website might need maintenance, other than just to update something. It is important to understand the future needs of your Hamilton business when planning budgets and schedules for website maintenance and support.

How We Perform Hamilton, OH 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 Hamilton business after the tasks have been completed.

A Hamilton website maintenance service usually starts with an email from you. Your email gets routed into our ticket system and automatically 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 Hamilton web support services unfolds. 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 Website Support Service List for Hamilton, OH Businesses

We are often asked for detailed examples of Hamilton web maintenance requests that might come up after the launch of a website. The following are some examples of Hamilton web maintenance services we've provided in the past.

Simple Hamilton Website Tweaks

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

Hamilton Website Speed Improvements

If your Hamilton website isn't running as fast as it once was, we can review your website for hosting issues, caching issues, unoptimized images, console errors, broken links, poor queries, and much more. User experience and SEO will both benefit from better page load times.

Platform Upgrades / Security Updates

It's important to keep your Hamilton 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!

Plugin / Extension Updates

If your Hamilton 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. It's similar to updating the CMS platform since it helps patch security and functionality issues.

Google Search Console Issues

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 Hamilton and beyond!

Setup 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 Hamilton business, or an ecommerce product.

Add Open Graph to Your Website

When people share links of your Hamilton business on social media, your website will look better if you add Open Graph Tags. These tags help define an image, title, and description for your each page on your website.

Setup Google Tag Manager

Are you interested in adding Google Tag Manager to your website to help you manage custom scripts more easily? That won't be a problem! We can add Google Tag Manager to your Hamilton website and even teach you how to use it.

Implement Conversion Tracking

If you are interested in understanding the benefit of an online advertising campaign for your Hamilton website, it is important to setup conversion tracking. It'll help you understand where your conversions come from, like direct traffic, referral links, organic search, or paid ads.

Optimize Images

Is your Hamilton 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

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 Hamilton business!

Resolve Errors in Log Files

Do you have a lot of 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

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

Setup a Caching Plugin

Looking to install a caching plugin on your Hamilton 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

We can configure your contact form and website platform to send emails through an SMTP account instead of PHP mail to improve email deliverability.

Restrict IP Addresses

Is your Hamilton website being bombarded with fake orders, contact submissions or live chats from a specific network? If you want to protect your website from malicious traffic, we can help by implementing IP restrictions.

Backup Your Website Files

Do you want to create a backup of your Hamilton website? We can help you create one-time or scheduled backups that store locally or at an offsite location.

Create a Testing Website

It is often recommended that you setup a development or staging website before proceeding with a major upgrade or extension installation. 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 Hamilton web design changes based on statistical data? A/B testing can help you decide between two or more design layouts based on the data collected.

Create 301 Redirects

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

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for Hamilton businesses, who have been immersed in multiple website platforms over the years. Having said that, it's better to master a few platforms than try to specialize in them all. Therefore, we tend to only maintain Hamilton websites on these platforms:

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

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

Before signing up for any Hamilton website maintenance package, it is important to ask the Hamilton web support company some questions about how their services work. It'll give you a better idea of the experience you'll have with their expert Ohio web maintenance services prior to making payment and providing website access. Here are some simple questions to ask:

• How do you handle website security? Do you run security scans of customer websites?
• What is the turnaround time for Hamilton website maintenance requests?
• Are you outsourcing your Hamilton web support services?
• What are your Hamilton website support costs?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Hamilton 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 Hamilton website services firm 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.

Hamilton, OH Website Maintenance Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a web support plan by larger companies in and around Hamilton looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. We can help your Hamilton business set up a website support plan so all aspects of your website, hosting, and domain name are monitored regularly.

Check out this list of annual Hamilton web maintenance tasks to review:

• 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.
• Restore a website backup to make sure the data is enough for full recovery. Also, make sure your backups are stored remotely.
• Look at competitor websites (even those outside of Hamilton) to see if you are missing out on new functionality for your own customers.
• 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.

Here is a list of semi-annual Hamilton website maintenance 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.
• Check that your hosting account isn't about to expire and you can access it.
• Make sure you can access your DNS in case anything needs to be changed.
• 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 Hamilton.
• If you have an automated image optimization service, verify it is working properly.
• Check if the website is throwing any console errors.

Read through this list of monthly Hamilton web 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 are any coverage issues in Google Search Console.
• 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 Website Support Service in Hamilton, OH

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