Bellingham Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Bellingham, WA Websites

We view website maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your Bellingham business with the appropriate web developer resources to solve nearly any website problem. These are some examples of website issues that Bellingham web maintenance agencies might fix:

• Upgrading your website platform to the latest version.
• 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 your Bellingham website's navigation menu.
• Making your page faster to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Backing up your website's files and databases.
• Making your website look and feel better.
• Troubleshooting Google Search Console coverage issues.
• Enhancing technical SEO with structured data, open graph tags, etc.
• Investigating the cause and providing a solution to any other website issue.

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

Reactive Bellingham Website Support

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

View Bellingham Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Bellingham Website Support

Interested in a proactive website management service for some of your website upkeep? We're happy to help! 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 Bellingham Website Management Pricing

In addition to supporting Bellingham-area websites, our web support company also offers Auburn, Bellevue, Everett, Kennewick, Kent, Kirkland, Redmond, Renton, Seattle, Spokane, Tacoma, and Vancouver small businesses and large corporations help with their websites.

Who Needs Web Maintenance in Bellingham, WA

At some point in time, every Bellingham website will require some form of web maintenance. It's just that the internet changes all the time. Not to worry though, our Bellingham website maintenance cost isn't expensive so it should be affordable for you to maintain your website! Here are some common reasons why a website in Bellingham might require web support services:

• When a hosting company upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Bellingham 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. Because of that, Magento 1.x ecommerce businesses in Bellingham were suddenly looking for an ecommerce developer to help migrate their website to a supported platform.
• 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.
• When the content on your Bellingham 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. Keeping your Bellingham 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 Bellingham business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Bellingham, WA Web Maintenance

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

Most Bellingham web support 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. 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 Bellingham website 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 Web Maintenance Service List for Bellingham, WA Businesses

We are often asked for detailed examples of Bellingham web maintenance requests that might come up after the launch of a website. We've performed these Bellingham website maintenance services in the past, and would be happy to do it for you too!

Simple Bellingham Website Changes

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

Bellingham Website Speed Improvements

We can analyze your Bellingham 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

Keeping your Bellingham website's content management system updated is important if it's running on WordPress. Updates help improve security and functionality - and they're usually quick, so it might be a simple task.

Extension / Plugin Updates

If your Bellingham 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. 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 can review the coverage issues, fix the problems, and update you on the results. This will help your search engine rankings, throughout Bellingham and beyond, by making Google happy!

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 of describing content on the web, whether it's a local business in Bellingham or an ecommerce product.

Add Open Graph to Your Website

When people share links of your Bellingham 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.

Implement 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 Bellingham website and even give you a crash course in using Google Tag Manager.

Setup Conversion Tracking

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

Are large images slowing down your Bellingham website? No problem at all! All your images can be compressed by our tools, and we can even setup recurring compression for newly added images!

Add Live Chat

Is your website ready for live chat? Our experts can help you pick the right live chat system, install the tracking code, and customize the design to match your Bellingham business branding!

Resolve Errors in Log Files

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

Integrate reCaptcha on Contact Forms

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

Setup a Caching Plugin

Looking to install a caching plugin on your Bellingham website, but not sure how to configure it? 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 Malicious IP Addresses

Is your Bellingham website getting fake orders, contact submissions, or live chats? Our team can help set up IP restrictions so your website doesn't get hit with as much malicious traffic.

Backup Your Website Files

Is it time to make a backup of your Bellingham website? Let us help you create one-time or scheduled backups that you can store 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!

Implement A/B Testing

Are you a fan of making Bellingham web design changes based on statistical data? 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 will want to create 301 redirects for your Bellingham website to prevent broken pages from hurting your SEO. Businesses in and around Bellingham have lost a lot of organic traffic because of broken pages. It is a very common mistake when launching new websites, removing content pages, or disabling product pages. We are happy to help you resolve broken pages through the creation of 301 redirects within .htaccess files, nginx templates, and CMS plugins.

Train You on Your Website

Need help learning how to make simple changes to your Bellingham website? We'll be happy to help if your Bellingham site was built on a platform we work with, such as WordPress or Shopify.

The Platforms We Maintain for Bellingham, WA Websites

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for Bellingham businesses, who have been immersed in multiple website platforms over the years. Nevertheless, mastering a handful of platforms is better than trying to be an expert on everything. For that reason, our website support company for Bellingham websites tends to service only the following platforms:

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

We've managed Joomla and Magento platforms for Bellingham businesses in the past. The reason we moved away from those platforms was to let our web maintenance experts focus more on training and support.

Questions to Ask Bellingham, WA Web Maintenance Companies

Before signing up for any Bellingham web support package, it is important to ask the Bellingham website support company some questions about how their services work. By doing this, you'll be able to better understand your future experience with their professional Washington website maintenance services before you submit payment or provide website access. Let's go over 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 Bellingham web support requests?
• Are you outsourcing your Bellingham website support services?
• How much does Bellingham web maintenance cost?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Bellingham website updates?
• Can you tell me what your normal business hours are?
• How will I know about new updates to my platform?

If you ask these questions to a Bellingham website services agency, you'll gain a better understanding of the future relationship, the security of your website, and the turnaround time for important maintenance requests.

Bellingham, WA Website Maintenance Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a web support plan by larger companies in and around Bellingham looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. Whether it's your website, hosting, or domain name, we'll make sure your Bellingham business has a website support plan to ensure optimum performance.

Here is a list of annual Bellingham 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.
• Check out competitor sites (even those outside of Bellingham) 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.
• Check if any 3rd party tracking, live chat, or heat map scripts are installed but no longer necessary.
• Take down any unnecessary development or staging sites.

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

• 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 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.
• Verify your website backup schedule is working properly, and you have remote backups outside of Bellingham.
• Check if you have an automated image optimization service running.
• Check if the website is throwing any console errors.

Read through this list of monthly Bellingham web support tasks to review:

• Ensure your website doesn't have any broken links, which affect user experience and SEO.
• Make sure your website isn't having performance issues after recent updates.
• See if there are any coverage issues in Google Search Console.
• Keep your website fresh by updating your content within one of your service pages or blog articles.
• Take a look at your website platform and extensions for any available updates.

The Cost of Website Support Service in Bellingham, WA

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