Tacoma Website Maintenance Services

What is Involved in Maintaining Tacoma, WA Websites

We view website maintenance to be a reactive support service that provides your Tacoma business with the appropriate web developer resources to solve nearly any website problem. Here are a few examples of website problems that might need Tacoma web support:

• Upgrading your website platform to the latest version.
• Installing app or plugin updates to improve security and functionality.
• Adding new pages whenever you release something new.
• Staying fresh with new blog content.
• Rearranging your Tacoma site's navigation menu.
• Making your page faster to pass Google Core Web Vitals.
• Taking 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.
• Adding 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 Tacoma website support services. Basically, Tacoma web maintenance is anything a web developer or internet marketer does to change your website.

Reactive Tacoma Website Support

Most Tacoma 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. You can count on our company to keep your Tacoma website running smoothly. There are some web support services we can provide your Tacoma website in a proactive manner though.

View Tacoma Website Maintenance Pricing

Proactive Tacoma Website Support

For website owners in Tacoma interested in a proactive management service for some of their website upkeep requirements, we are happy to accommodate! As part of our proactive website management service, our team can take care of platform upgrades, app / extension updates, website backups, performance monitoring, and broken link monitoring.

View Tacoma Website Management Pricing

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

Who Needs Website Maintenance in Tacoma, WA

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

• Hosting companies sometimes upgrade their servers, removing PHP versions that were used by your Tacoma website. 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.
• Content management systems or ecommerce platforms eventually deprecate old versions so their teams can focus on the new ones. This recently happened to Magento 1.x ecommerce store owners who were forced to migrate to Magento 2.x, or an alternative ecommerce platform, because Magento 1.x had reached an “End of Life” status and would no longer be maintained or updated by Magento. As a result, Magento 1.x ecommerce businesses in Tacoma 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 Tacoma website will need to be reviewed for security exploits and cleaned of malware. In most cases, this happens because the website owner didn't pay attention to the first two web maintenance examples.
• When the content on your Tacoma 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 website maintenance is critical to ensuring your Tacoma website is benefiting you.

There are many reasons why a website might need maintenance, other than just to update something. When planning budgets and schedules for web support and support, consider your Tacoma business's potential future needs.

How We Perform Tacoma, 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 Tacoma business after the tasks have been completed.

A Tacoma website maintenance service usually starts with an email from you. 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.

Phone or live chat requests follow a similar process to Tacoma web support. 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 Tacoma, WA Businesses

We are often asked for detailed examples of Tacoma web maintenance requests that might come up after the launch of a website. The following are some examples of Tacoma web maintenance services we've provided in the past.

Simple Tacoma Website Changes

A simple change to your Tacoma website might include updating a paragraph on a page, swapping out an image, or adding a new page. Keeping content fresh for search engines and visitors is just normal, routine website maintenance.

Tacoma Site Performance Improvements

Let us check your Tacoma 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 Patches

It's important to keep your Tacoma 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!

Plugin / Extension Upgrades

If your Tacoma 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 Issues

Has Google Search Console told you there's 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 Tacoma and beyond!

Setup Structured Data

When you search Google organically, have you noticed reviews or prices in the 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 Tacoma, and ecommerce product or some other common data type.

Implement Open Graph 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 Tacoma business.

Setup Google Tag Manager

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

Setup Conversion Tracking

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

Do you have a Tacoma website that's slow because of large images? No problem at all! We can run all your images through our image compression tools and even setup recurring image compression for newly added images in the future!

Add Live Chat

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

Review Error Logs for Issues

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 Tacoma website.

Setup a Caching Plugin

Are you interested in installing a caching plugin in your Tacoma website, but not sure how to properly configure the settings for best website performance? We can recommend caching plugins, or we can install and configure them for you!

Implement SMTP Email

If you want to improve email deliverability, we can set up your contact form and website platform to send emails via SMTP instead of PHP mail.

Restrict Malicious IP Addresses

Is your Tacoma website being bombarded with fake orders, contact submissions or live chats from a specific network? Our team can help set up IP restrictions so your website doesn't get hit with as much malicious traffic.

Create Website Backups

Do you want to create a backup of your Tacoma 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 Tacoma 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 Tacoma website. We've seen businesses in and around Tacoma 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 Tacoma website? If your Tacoma 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 Tacoma, WA Websites

We have a diverse team of web designers and web developers, for Tacoma businesses, who have been immersed in multiple website platforms over the years. Having said that, it's better to master a few platforms than try to specialize in them all. For that reason, our web support agency for Tacoma websites tends to service only the following platforms:

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

In the past, we provided website maintenance and support for Joomla and Magento platforms of Tacoma businesses. However, we chose not to use those platforms so our website support experts could focus on training and support within the more popular platforms.

Questions to Ask Tacoma, WA Web Maintenance Agencies

Before signing up for any Tacoma website maintenance package, it is important to ask the Tacoma web support company some questions about how their services work. It'll give you a better idea of the experience you'll have with their expert Washington web maintenance services prior to making payment and providing 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's the turnaround time for Tacoma website maintenance?
• Is your Tacoma web support outsourced?
• How much might it cost to maintain an average Tacoma website?
• Are there any minimum deductions or minimum billable expenses for Tacoma website updates?
• What are your normal hours of operation?
• When there are new updates on my platform, will you let me know?

We find it beneficial to run these questions by any Tacoma 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.

Tacoma, WA Web Maintenance Plans and Tips

We are often asked for a website maintenance plan by larger companies in and around Tacoma looking to establish routines and procedures within their IT department. We can help your Tacoma business set up a web support plan so all aspects of your website, hosting, and domain name are monitored regularly.

Here is a list of annual Tacoma website support tasks to review:

• Ask your web hosting company if they have newer servers you can migrate to.
• Ask your web developer if your website has a major platform release coming up that will require a lot of work to install.
• 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 Tacoma.
• Take a look at the websites of your competitors (even those outside Tacoma) to see if you're missing out on anything.
• Ensure your website is secure by performing a full security review.
• Verify structured data, open graph, and social links are all working properly.
• 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.

Check out this list of semi-annual Tacoma web 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.
• Ensure you have access to your hosting account and that it isn't expiring soon.
• Make sure you can access your DNS in case anything needs to be changed.
• Make sure your SSL certificate isn't expiring soon.
• Make sure you have remote backups outside Tacoma and that your website backup schedule is working.
• If you have an automated image optimization service, verify it is working properly.
• Check if the website is throwing any console errors.

Read through this list of monthly Tacoma website maintenance tasks to review:

• Check for broken links on your website, which negatively impact user experience and SEO.
• Check your website for performance issues after recent updates or changes.
• Check Google Search Console for any coverage issues.
• 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 Support Service in Tacoma, WA

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