Aiken, SC Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Aiken, SC Websites

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

• Updating your website platform.
• 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 Aiken site's navigation menu.
• Making your page faster to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Backing up your website's files and databases.
• Changing the look and feel of your website.
• Fixing site audit issues or Google Search Console coverage problems.
• Enhancing technical SEO with structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing solutions to other website problems.

Those services are just a taste of what Aiken web support might look like. In fact, Aiken website support is basically anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website.

Reactive Aiken Website Support

Most Aiken 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. Our agency will be your web support team on standby for any questions you have. However, we can offer some proactive Aiken website maintenance services.

View Aiken Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Aiken Website Support

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

In addition to supporting Aiken-area websites, our web support agency also offers Charleston, Columbia, Florence, Greenville, Hilton Head Island, Mount Pleasant, Myrtle Beach, North Charleston, Rock Hill, and Summerville small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Web Maintenance in Aiken, SC

There will come a time when every Aiken website needs some sort of maintenance. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing. However, we don't charge a lot for Aiken website maintenance, so you'll be able to afford it! There are a few reasons why a website in Aiken might need maintenance:

• When a hosting provider upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Aiken 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 had reached "End of Life" status and wouldn't be maintained or updated. As a result, Magento 1.x ecommerce businesses in Aiken were looking for ecommerce developers to help migrate their websites.
• When a website owner has become a victim of malware or some other form of malicious activity, the Aiken website will need to be reviewed for security exploits and cleaned of malware. This is time-consuming, and often happens when the website owner isn't paying attention to the first two web support examples.
• You need to refresh your Aiken website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. Keeping your Aiken website up to date is key to its success.

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 Aiken business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Aiken, SC Website Support

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

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

The process for Aiken 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 Aiken, SC Businesses

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

Simple Aiken Website Updates

Changes to your Aiken 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.

Aiken Website Speed Improvements

Let us check your Aiken 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 Updates / Security Fixes

It's important to keep your Aiken website updated if it runs on a CMS like WordPress. This helps improve security and functionality - sometimes the updates are relatively quick to perform, which is a win-win!

Extension / Plugin Updates

It's important to update your Aiken website's plugins and extensions to reflect the latest changes by the developers. The idea is similar to updating the CMS platform since it fixes security and functionality problems.

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. By making Google happy, you'll boost your search engine rankings throughout Aiken 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 Aiken 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.

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 Aiken website and even teach you how to use it.

Setup Conversion Tracking

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

Image Compression (Optimization)

Is your Aiken 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

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

Review Error Log Files

Are your error_log files big? To stop recurring error messages, we can diagnose the problem and update programming code.

Reduce Spam with reCaptcha

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

Install a Caching Plugin

Looking to install a caching plugin on your Aiken website, but not sure how to configure it? We can recommend caching plugins, or we can install and configure them for you!

Setup SMTP Email

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

Restrict IP Addresses

Is your Aiken website being bombarded with fake orders, contact submissions or live chats from a specific 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 Aiken 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 Aiken 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 Aiken website. We've seen businesses in and around Aiken 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 Aiken website? If your Aiken 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 Aiken, SC Websites

With years of experience developing websites for Aiken 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. Because of that, we tend to service only these platforms for Aiken websites:

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

We've managed Joomla and Magento platforms for Aiken businesses in the past. However, we chose not to use those platforms so our web maintenance experts could focus on training and support within the more popular platforms.

Questions to Ask Aiken, SC Website Maintenance Firms

Ask the Aiken website 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 professional South Carolina website maintenance services before you submit payment and provide website access. You can ask these simple questions:

• Can you tell me how you handle website security? Do you run website security scans for clients?
• When can I expect an average Aiken web support request to be completed?
• Are you outsourcing your Aiken website support services?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Aiken website?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Aiken website updates?
• Can you tell me what your normal business hours are?
• When there are new updates on my platform, will you let me know?

We find it beneficial to run these questions by any Aiken website services firm before subscribing to their web maintenance 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.

Aiken, SC Website Maintenance Plans and Tips

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

Read through this list of annual Aiken web maintenance tasks to consider:

• 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.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Aiken) to see if you're missing out on anything.
• Ensure your website is secure by performing a full security review.
• Make sure structured data, open graph, and social links are working.
• Remove any unnecessary 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts that may have been installed in the past.
• Remove any unnecessary development or staging websites.

Read through this list of semi-annual Aiken website maintenance tasks to review:

• 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 your hosting account credentials and make sure it's not about to expire.
• Make sure you have access to your DNS.
• Find out if your SSL certificate will expire soon.
• Make sure you have remote backups outside Aiken and that your website backup schedule is working.
• Make sure you're running an image optimization service.
• Make sure the website doesn't throw any console errors.

Here are a list of monthly Aiken 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'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 Website Support Service in Aiken, SC

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