Kirkland Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Kirkland, WA Websites

We view web maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your Kirkland 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 Kirkland website support firms, 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 products or services.
• Staying fresh with new blog content.
• Rearranging your Kirkland site's navigation menu.
• Improve your page speed to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Take backups of 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.
• Investigating the cause and providing a solution to any other website issue.

The previously mentioned services are just a glimpse of what we view as possible Kirkland web maintenance services. In fact, Kirkland website maintenance is really anything a web developer or digital marketer does to your website to change it in some manner.

Reactive Kirkland Website Support

The reason we consider web support to be a reactive service is that most Kirkland website owners wouldn't want a web developer going into their website and changing things around without their knowledge. Our agency will be your web support team on standby for any questions you have. However, we can offer some proactive Kirkland web maintenance services.

View Kirkland Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Kirkland Website Support

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

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

Who Needs Website Support in Kirkland, WA

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

• When a hosting company upgrades their servers, they may remove older versions of PHP that your Kirkland website was originally developed to support. 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.
• In order to focus on maintaining the newer version of an ecommerce platform or content management system, they eventually have to deprecate the previous releases. 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 Kirkland 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 Kirkland 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.
• When the content on your Kirkland 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. This type of web support is critical to ensuring your Kirkland website is benefiting you.

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 Kirkland business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Kirkland, WA Website Support

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

Most website maintenance services start with an email from you, the owner of the Kirkland 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.

For requests that originate from phone or live chat, a similar process to handling your Kirkland web support services unfolds. 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 Website Support Service List for Kirkland, WA Businesses

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

Simple Kirkland Website Changes

Changes to your Kirkland website could be as simple as updating a paragraph, swapping images, or adding a new page. These are just normal, routine website maintenance tasks to keep content fresh for both search engines and visitors.

Kirkland Site Performance Improvements

Let us check your Kirkland website for hosting, caching, image optimization, console errors, broken links, poor database queries, and other potential problems that might be impacting your page speed. It'll help improve page load times, which will make users and search engines happy.

Platform Upgrades / Security Updates

It's important to keep your Kirkland 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

If your Kirkland 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. This is similar to the idea of updating the CMS platform since it helps patch security and functionality issues.

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. By making Google happy, you'll boost your search engine rankings throughout Kirkland and beyond!

Implement 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 Kirkland business, or an ecommerce product.

Add Open Graph to 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 Kirkland business.

Add Google Tag Manager

Are you interested in adding Google Tag Manager to your website to help you manage custom scripts more easily? Not a problem! We can add Google Tag Manager to your Kirkland 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 Kirkland website, it is important to setup conversion tracking. Then you'll know where your conversions come from, whether it be direct traffic, organic search, or paid ads.

Image Compression (Optimization)

Do you have a Kirkland website that's 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!

Setup Live Chat

Is your website ready for live chat? 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 Kirkland business!

Review Error Log Files

Have you noticed large error_log files on your hosting account? To stop recurring error messages, we can diagnose the problem and update programming code.

Integrate reCaptcha on Contact Forms

We can set up a checkbox or invisible reCaptcha to help minimize unwanted submissions on your Kirkland website.

Install a Caching Plugin

Interested in installing a caching plugin for your Kirkland website, but don't know how to set it up? We can help you figure out which caching plugins to install and configure on your website!

Send Website Emails Over SMTP

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 Kirkland 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

Would you like a backup of your Kirkland website? We can help you create one-time or scheduled backups that store locally or at an offsite location.

Create a Staging Website

When you're doing a major upgrade or extension installation, you should set up a development or staging site first. Just let us know if you need help creating and managing that development / staging site!

Create A/B Testing Rules

Are you a fan of making Kirkland 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.

Add 301 Redirects

Are you launching a new website or removing pages from your website? You should create 301 redirects for your Kirkland website. We've seen businesses in and around Kirkland 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 Kirkland website? If your Kirkland 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 Kirkland, WA Websites

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for Kirkland 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 web support agency for Kirkland websites tends to service only the following platforms:

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

As a website support firm, we used to maintain and support Joomla and Magento websites for Kirkland-area businesses. 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 Kirkland, WA Website Maintenance Firms

Before signing up for any Kirkland website support package, it is important to ask the Kirkland web 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 Washington web 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 is the turnaround time for Kirkland website support requests?
• Is your Kirkland web maintenance outsourced?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Kirkland website?
• Are there minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Kirkland 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?

We find it beneficial to run these questions by any Kirkland website services agency before subscribing to their website 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.

Kirkland, WA Web Support Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a website support plan by larger companies in and around Kirkland looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. We are happy to help your Kirkland 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 Kirkland 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.
• Check if your website platform has a new major release that will require an extensive website migration.
• 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 Kirkland.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Kirkland) to see if you're missing out on anything.
• Take a look at your website's security to make sure nothing's been compromised.
• 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.
• Remove any unnecessary development or staging websites.

Read through this list of semi-annual Kirkland web support 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.
• Ensure you have access to your hosting account and that it isn't expiring soon.
• 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 Kirkland.
• Make sure you're running an image optimization service.
• Make sure the website doesn't throw any console errors.

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

• 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.
• Check Google Search Console for any coverage issues.
• Update some of your service pages or blog articles to keep your website fresh.
• Check if there are available platform or extension updates.

The Cost of Web Maintenance Service in Kirkland, WA

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