Youngstown, OH Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Youngstown, OH Websites

We see web maintenance as a reactive support service where we provide your Youngstown 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 Youngstown web maintenance companies, including:

• Upgrading your website platform to the latest version.
• Keeping apps and plugins updated for better security and functionality.
• Adding new pages whenever you release something new.
• Staying fresh with new blog content.
• Rearranging your Youngstown site's navigation menu.
• Improving page speed to help you 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.
• Enhancing technical SEO with structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing a solution to any other website problem.

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

Reactive Youngstown Website Support

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

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Proactive Youngstown Website Support

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

If you live in Youngstown, you probably love the Youngstown State Penguins football team. Go Youngstown State Penguins! In addition to supporting Youngstown-area websites, our web maintenance agency also offers Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Hamilton, Kettering, Lakewood, Newark, Springfield, Toledo, small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Website Maintenance in Youngstown, OH

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

• Hosting companies sometimes upgrade their servers, removing PHP versions that were used by your Youngstown website. This means you have to refactor your app or upgrade to a newer framework that supports the new PHP version. There's no way you can expect custom web functionality to work forever.
• When an ecommerce platform or a content management system releases new versions, they eventually must deprecate the old versions so their teams can focus on maintaining the newer technologies. 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 Youngstown 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 is time-consuming, and often happens when the website owner isn't paying attention to the first two website support examples.
• To ensure future visitors to your Youngstown website receive accurate information about your organization, products, or services, your Youngstown website content needs to be refreshed. This type of web maintenance is critical to ensuring your Youngstown website is benefiting you.

Above and beyond just updating something, there are plenty of reasons why a website might need maintenance. It is important to understand the future needs of your Youngstown business when planning budgets and schedules for website maintenance and support.

How We Perform Youngstown, OH Website Maintenance

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

Most website support services start with an email from you, the owner of the Youngstown 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.

Phone or live chat requests follow a similar process to Youngstown web maintenance. We route the support request to the most appropriate web developer on our team based on the nature of the work needed on your website.

Example Web Maintenance Service List for Youngstown, OH Businesses

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

Simple Youngstown Website Changes

Changes to your Youngstown website could be as simple as updating a paragraph, swapping images, or adding a new page. Keeping content fresh for search engines and visitors is just normal, routine website support.

Youngstown Site Performance Improvements

Let us check your Youngstown website for hosting, caching, image optimization, console errors, broken links, poor database queries, and other potential problems that might be impacting your page speed. This will help improve page load times, which are beneficial to user experience and search engine optimization.

Platform Upgrades / Security Updates

It's important to keep your Youngstown 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.

Extension / Plugin Updates

It's important to update plugins and extensions on your Youngstown website if they were developed and maintained by a third-party. This is similar to the idea of updating the CMS platform since it helps patch security and functionality issues.

Fixing 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 Youngstown and beyond!

Add Structured Data

Do you ever see product prices or reviews in Google organic search results? This is structured data, which is a standardized way to describe the content on a webpage, whether it's a local Youngstown business, or an ecommerce product.

Add Open Graph Tags 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? No problem at all! We can add Google Tag Manager to your Youngstown website and even teach you how to use it.

Implement Conversion Tracking

Tracking conversions is important if you want to understand the benefits of online advertising for your Youngstown website. 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 Youngstown website slow because of large images? Not a problem! Using our image compression tools, we can compress all your images and even set up recurring compression for new 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 Youngstown 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? To stop recurring error messages, we can diagnose the problem and update programming code.

Setup reCaptcha on Forms

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

Install a Caching Plugin

Are you interested in installing a caching plugin in your Youngstown 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

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

IP Address Restrictions

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.

Run Website & Database Backups

Would you like a backup of your Youngstown 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!

Create A/B Testing Rules

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

Do you have a new website or are you removing pages? Make sure your Youngstown website has 301 redirects to prevent or at least minimize 404 errors. Having broken pages will cost your Youngstown business a lot of organic traffic if they aren't fixed with 301 redirects. We can help you create 301 redirects within .htaccess files, nginx templates, and CMS platforms.

Offer Website Training

Want to learn how to make simple edits to your Youngstown website? We'll be happy to help if your Youngstown site was built on a platform we work with, such as WordPress or Shopify.

The Platforms We Maintain for Youngstown, OH Websites

With years of experience developing websites for Youngstown 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 web maintenance firm for Youngstown websites tends to service only the following platforms:

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

As a web maintenance company, we used to maintain and support Joomla and Magento websites for Youngstown-area businesses. However, we chose not to use those platforms so our web support experts could focus on training and support within the more popular platforms.

Questions to Ask Youngstown, OH Website Support Companies

Ask the Youngstown 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 expert Ohio website support services before you submit payment and provide website access. 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?
• What's the turnaround time for Youngstown web maintenance?
• Is your Youngstown web maintenance outsourced?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Youngstown website?
• Do you have minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Youngstown 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 Youngstown 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.

Youngstown, OH Web Support Plans and Tips

Companies in and around Youngstown often ask us for a website support plan to establish routines and procedures. We are happy to help your Youngstown 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 Youngstown 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.
• Ask your web developer if your website has a major platform release coming up that will require a lot of work to install.
• Try restoring a website backup to make sure the data is good enough for a full recovery. Also, make sure your backups are stored somewhere else besides Youngstown.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Youngstown) to see if you're missing out on anything.
• Perform a full security review of your website to ensure nothing has been compromised or left vulnerable.
• 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.

Read through this list of semi-annual Youngstown web support tasks to review:

• Make sure you have access to your domain name and it's not about to expire. When you have to renew your domain name, this will come in handy.
• Ensure you have access to your hosting account and that it isn't expiring soon.
• Make sure you have access to your DNS.
• 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 Youngstown.
• If you have an automated image optimization service, verify it is working properly.
• See if there are any console errors on the website.

Check out this list of monthly Youngstown website support tasks to consider:

• 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.
• 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 Maintenance Service in Youngstown, OH

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