Vermont Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Vermont Websites

We see web maintenance as a reactive support service where we provide your Vermont business with the right web developer resources to fix just about any problem. These are some examples of website issues that Vermont website maintenance agencies might fix:

• Upgrading your website platform to the latest version.
• Updating apps and plugins to make them safer and more functional.
• Adding new web pages as you release new products or services.
• Freshen up your blog with new content.
• Rearranging your Vermont site's navigation menu.
• Making your page faster to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Take backups of your website's files and databases.
• Modifying the look and feel of your website's design.
• Fixing Google Search Console coverage issues.
• Improving technical SEO by adding structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Providing solutions to other website problems.

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

Reactive Vermont Website Support

The reason we consider web maintenance to be a reactive service is that most Vermont website owners wouldn't want a web developer going into their website and changing things around without their knowledge. Our company will be your web support team on standby for any questions you have. There are some web support services we can provide your Vermont website in a proactive manner though.

View Vermont Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Vermont Website Support

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

Our website maintenance and support company is happy to provide Burlington, Colchester, Essex, Middlebury, and Milton with fast website support services.

Who Needs Website Support in Vermont

There will come a time when every Vermont website needs some sort of maintenance. It's just that the internet changes all the time. Not to worry though, our Vermont web maintenance cost isn't expensive so it should be affordable for you to maintain your website! Website maintenance in Vermont might be needed for these reasons:

• When a hosting company upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Vermont 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 was no longer maintained by Magento after it reached "End of Life". Vermont-area ecommerce businesses running Magento 1.x found themselves looking for an ecommerce developer to help migrate their store.
• An owner of a Vermont 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 website maintenance examples, listed above.
• You need to refresh your Vermont website content when it's outdated or doesn't explain your organization, products, or services well enough for future visitors. Keeping your Vermont 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 Vermont business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Vermont Web Support

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

Most Vermont web maintenance services start with an email from the website owner. That email is routed into our ticket system and automatically assigned to the project manager on your account. Anyone on our team can work on the ticket without delay, resulting in faster turnaround time.

For requests that originate from phone or live chat, a similar process to handling your Vermont web maintenance 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 Maintenance Service List for Vermont Businesses

After the launch of a website, we're often asked for detailed examples of Vermont web support requests. We've performed these Vermont website support services in the past, and would be happy to do it for you too!

Simple Vermont Website Changes

Your Vermont website might need a paragraph updated, an image changed, or a new page added. These are just normal, routine web maintenance tasks to keep content fresh for both search engines and visitors.

Vermont Website Speed Improvements

Let us check your Vermont 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 Upgrades / Security Updates

If your Vermont website is running on a content management system, like WordPress, it is important to keep the platform updated. The updates improve security and functionality - sometimes they're quick, so it's an easy win!

Plugin / Extension Updates

It's important to update your Vermont 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 can review the coverage issues, fix the problems, and update you on the results. By making Google happy, you'll boost your search engine rankings throughout Vermont 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 Vermont 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.

Setup Google Tag Manager

Would you like to manage custom scripts more easily with Google Tag Manager? Not a problem! We'll happily install Google Tag Manager on your Vermont website and teach you how to use it.

Setup Conversion Tracking

Tracking conversions is important if you want to understand the benefits of online advertising for your Vermont website. It'll help you understand where your conversions come from, like direct traffic, referral links, organic search, or paid ads.

Optimize Images

Do you have a Vermont website that's slow because of large images? No problem at all! All your images can be compressed by our tools, and we can even setup recurring compression for newly added images!

Integrate a 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 Vermont 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.

Integrate reCaptcha on Contact Forms

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

Setup a Caching Plugin

Are you interested in installing a caching plugin in your Vermont 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!

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 Vermont 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 Vermont 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 Vermont 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 Vermont website. We've seen businesses in and around Vermont 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 Vermont website? If your Vermont 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 Vermont Websites

With years of experience developing websites for Vermont businesses (and those in other areas of the country), our web designers and web developers have been immersed in multiple platforms. Nevertheless, mastering a handful of platforms is better than trying to be an expert on everything. For that reason, our website maintenance agency for Vermont websites tends to service only the following platforms:

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

As a website maintenance firm, we used to maintain and support Joomla and Magento websites for Vermont-area businesses. However, we chose to move away from those platforms to allow our website support experts to focus more heavily on training and support within the other systems.

Questions to Ask Vermont Web Maintenance Firms

Ask the Vermont web support company some questions about their services before you sign up for a package. By doing this, you'll be able to better understand your relationship with the Vermont website support team before you give them money or give them access to your website. Let's go over some simple questions to ask:

• What kind of security do you have on your site? Do you scan client websites for security?
• What is the turnaround time for Vermont web maintenance requests?
• Are you outsourcing your Vermont web maintenance services?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Vermont website?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Vermont website updates?
• At what times of the day are you working and able to take our maintenance requests?
• Will you keep me informed about new updates within my platform?

If you ask any Vermont website services company these questions before subscribing to their web support 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.

Vermont Website Support Plans and Tips

Companies in and around Vermont often ask us for a web maintenance plan to establish routines and procedures. Whether it's your website, hosting, or domain name, we'll make sure your Vermont business has a website maintenance plan to ensure optimum performance.

Here is a list of annual Vermont web support tasks to review:

• Check if your web hosting provider has newer servers that your account can be migrated 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.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Vermont) to see if you're missing out on anything.
• Ensure your website is secure by performing a full security review.
• Ensure that structured data, open graph, and social links are all working.
• Verify the necessity of any 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts that are installed.
• Delete any development or staging websites you don't need.

Here is a list of semi-annual Vermont website 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 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.
• Verify your website backup schedule is working properly, and you have remote backups outside of Vermont.
• Make sure you're running an image optimization service.
• Check if the website is throwing any console errors.

Read through this list of monthly Vermont web maintenance 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.
• Provide some kind of update to your content to keep your website fresh.
• See if there are any updates for your website platform or extensions.

The Cost of Web Maintenance Service in Vermont

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