North Charleston, SC Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining North Charleston, SC Websites

We view website maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your North Charleston 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 Charleston web support companies, 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 Charleston website's navigation menu.
• Making your page faster to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Backing up 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.
• Enhancing technical SEO with structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing a solution to any other website problem.

Those services are just a taste of what North Charleston web maintenance might look like. In fact, North Charleston web maintenance is really anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website to change it in some manner.

Reactive North Charleston Website Support

Most North Charleston website owners wouldn't want a web developer messing around with their site without their permission. That's why we consider website maintenance a reactive service. You can count on our firm to keep your North Charleston website running smoothly. However, we can offer some proactive North Charleston website support services.

View North Charleston Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive North Charleston Website Support

For website owners in North Charleston interested in a proactive management service for some of their website upkeep requirements, we are happy to accommodate! There are several web maintenance 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 North Charleston Website Management Pricing

If you live in North Charleston, you probably love the Charleston Southern Buccaneers basketball team. Go Charleston Southern Buccaneers! In addition to supporting North Charleston-area websites, our website maintenance agency also offers Aiken, Charleston, Columbia, Florence, Greenville, Hilton Head Island, Mount Pleasant, Myrtle Beach, Rock Hill, and Summerville small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Website Support in North Charleston, SC

At some point in time, every North Charleston website will require some form of web maintenance. The reason is simply that the internet is always changing. Not to worry though, our North Charleston web 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 Charleston might need maintenance:

• When a hosting provider upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your North Charleston 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.
• 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. North Charleston-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 Charleston 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 website maintenance examples.
• To ensure future visitors to your North Charleston website receive accurate information about your organization, products, or services, your North Charleston website content needs to be refreshed. Keeping your North Charleston website up to date is key to its success.

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. Plan your budget and schedules for website support and maintenance based on your North Charleston business's potential future needs.

How We Perform North Charleston, SC Web Support

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

Most web maintenance services start with an email from you, the owner of the North Charleston 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 Charleston 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 Charleston, SC Businesses

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

Simple North Charleston Website Changes

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

North Charleston Website Speed Improvements

We can analyze your North Charleston website for hosting issues, caching issues, unoptimized images, console errors, broken links, poor queries, and more if it's slow. User experience and SEO will both benefit from better page load times.

Platform Updates / Security Fixes

If your North Charleston 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!

Extension / Plugin Updates

It's important to update plugins and extensions on your North Charleston website if they were developed and maintained by a third-party. The idea is similar to updating the CMS platform since it fixes security and functionality problems.

Google Search Console Fixes

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. Make Google happy, and you'll rank higher throughout North Charleston and beyond!

Implement Structured Data

Do you ever see product prices or reviews in Google organic search results? This is brought to you by structured data, which is a standardized way of describing the content on the web page, whether it be of a local business in North Charleston, and ecommerce product or some other common data type.

Add Open Graph Tags 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 Charleston business.

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 North Charleston website and even teach you how to use it.

Setup Conversion Tracking

It's important to setup conversion tracking for your North Charleston website if you want to understand the benefits of online advertising. 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 Charleston website slow because of large images? Not a problem! All your images can be compressed by our tools, and we can even setup recurring compression for newly added images!

Setup Live Chat

Is your website ready for live chat? If you'd like us to recommend the best live chat system for your North Charleston 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? 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 North Charleston website, we can setup a checkbox or invisible reCaptcha to help minimize unwanted submissions on your forms.

Setup a Caching Plugin

Looking to install a caching plugin on your North Charleston 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 Malicious IP Addresses

Is your North Charleston website getting fake orders, contact submissions, or live chats? We can help setup IP restrictions to prevent malicious traffic from interacting with your website.

Create Website Backups

Would you like a backup of your North Charleston website? Backups can be performed one-time, or scheduled at specific intervals, and stored locally or offsite.

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 North Charleston 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.

Setup 301 Redirects

Are you launching a new website or removing pages from your website? You should create 301 redirects for your North Charleston website. We've seen businesses in and around North Charleston lose huge amounts of organic traffic due to widespread broken pages. We are happy to help you resolve broken pages through the creation of 301 redirects within .htaccess files, nginx templates, and CMS plugins.

Offer Website Training

Want to learn how to make simple edits to your North Charleston website? Let us know what training you need if your North Charleston site was built on a platform we work with, like WordPress or Shopify!

The Platforms We Maintain for North Charleston, SC Websites

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for North Charleston 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 website maintenance firm for North Charleston websites tends to service only the following platforms:

• North Charleston WordPress Website Support
• North Charleston WooCommerce Web Maintenance
• North Charleston Shopify Website Maintenance

We've managed Joomla and Magento platforms for North Charleston businesses in the past. However, we chose to move away from those platforms to allow our web support experts to focus more heavily on training and support within the other systems.

Questions to Ask North Charleston, SC Website Support Firms

Before signing up for any North Charleston web maintenance package, it is important to ask the North Charleston website maintenance company some questions about how their services work. This will help you get a better idea of the experience you will have with their premium South Carolina 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?
• When can I expect an average North Charleston web maintenance request to be completed?
• Are you outsourcing your North Charleston website maintenance services?
• How much does North Charleston web support cost?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for North Charleston website updates?
• Can you tell me what your normal business hours are?
• Will you keep me informed about new updates within my platform?

We find it beneficial to run these questions by any North Charleston website services company 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.

North Charleston, SC Web Maintenance Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a website maintenance plan by larger companies in and around North Charleston looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. We are happy to help your North Charleston business develop a web support 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 Charleston website support 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 Charleston) to see if you're missing out on any competitive advantages they have over you.
• Ensure your website is secure by performing a full security review.
• Make sure structured data, open graph, and social links are working.
• Verify the necessity of any 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts that are installed.
• Remove any unnecessary development or staging websites.

Read through this list of semi-annual North Charleston web maintenance 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.
• Check your hosting account credentials and make sure it's not about to expire.
• Ensure you have access to your DNS in case you need to change anything.
• Find out if your SSL certificate will expire soon.
• Make sure you have remote backups outside North Charleston and that your website backup schedule is working.
• If you have an automated image optimization service, verify it is working properly.
• Make sure the website doesn't throw any console errors.

Check out this list of monthly North Charleston website maintenance tasks to consider:

• Check for broken links on your website, which negatively impact user experience and SEO.
• Check for website performance issues from recent updates or changes on the website.
• Check Google Search Console for any coverage issues.
• 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 Support Service in North Charleston, SC

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