Category: WEBSITE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

Your job is not over just by creating the website. The truth is that every website owner needs to bear a cost of maintaining the website.

Website maintenance is generally of two kinds. The first is maintaining the code of the website, the code that enables your site to work and display.

The other type of website maintenance involves updating the content of your website on a regular basis.

There are too many companies that offer Website Maintenance Services with varying degree of services fees.

How much is too much? Which company to choose to maintain your website?

Mentioned below are the 2 different systems of payment.

1. a) Pay as you go system of payment

The pay as you go system of website maintenance can make changes and add details on the websites. This system charges an hourly rate of 120 dollars. Some web maintenance companies charge per quota having a cap of 30 minutes.

For instance, if a project or a minor change takes 30 minutes or less than 30 minutes, then the amount that they are going to charge will be 60 dollars.

1. b) Fixed cost per month system of payment

The fixed cost plans of web maintenance enable clients to save their money. These plans are an incredible way to save money for existing campaigns of content marketing.

If your website requires regular maintenance, then the plan of fixed charges will be very beneficial for you.

Updating previous information, adding fresh pages, and sending out e-mail newsletters, redesigning the website, etc. can be done with fixed monthly programs of maintenance.

Here are some of the monthly support plans we offer.

• Standard Plan: In this plan, we charge $500 for 10 hours of maintenance work. That’s around $50 per hour.
• Deluxe Plan: In this plan, we charge $750 for 15 hours of maintenance work.
• Premium Plan: In this plan, we charge $1000 for 20 hours of maintenance work.

You can choose one of these plans that fit your website requirements.

$50 to $75 per hour is a nominal fee to maintain a website by any reputable company, provided they do a good job of maintaining your site in a timely manner.

Some companies charge more than $100 per hour. That’s an exorbitant amount of money for website maintenance.

 

“My site looks great. Why do I need a website maintenance? ”

This is the question I get asked many times in my career.

To function properly, most things in this world needs proper maintenance.

Your car needs an upkeep.

Your house needs maintenance.

Your relationship needs maintenance. This is one of the reasons why many marriages fail.

You create a website to get traffic to your site so that you can create sales for your business.

Continuous website maintenance is very important to get traffic to your site.

Google ranks your site higher in the search result based on how recent your content is.

If your content is stale and the site is not updated in months, then, Google thinks that the site is a ghost town and doesn’t have good information for its customers.

There are myriad companies that offer Website Maintenance Service.

Which company should I choose for my website?

Good question!

Consider these 5 things before choosing your Website Maintenance Company.

1. What Services Do They Offer?

You want to buy a brand new Tesla car.

The very first thing you want to know is, what do I get for my money?

What features are there?

Which ones are very important to me? Which ones don’t I care about?

Here are some of the things that a typical Website Maintenance Service provides.

• Update/add text content
• Update/add image content
• Take care of onsite-SEO
• Update software/plugins to the latest version
• Make sure the website loads fast
• Maintain the Blog with the new text/image content
• Redesign the site according to the client’s requirements
• Make the site mobile-optimized/mobile-responsive
• Repair broken links such as 401-Not found links, buttons, and imagery
• Integrate with E-Commerce (Shopping cart, Payment Processing, etc)
• Migrate the site to another host
• Add/Update upcoming meetings/events
• Add/Remove/Update services/categories
• Add/Remove new pages
• Install SSL certificates

Find out if they offer the service/feature you expect.

2) What’s the turnaround time?

Congrats! You got your brand new Tesla and you love all the new features.

You are able to warm up your car from your mobile app on those cold mornings.

It tells you the air-pressure on all the 4 tires and warns you if it’s below a threshold.

It’s voice-activated. You can ask it to play your favorite songs.

Everything is great. You are loving it.

On a fine morning, you get a warning on the dashboard that says,

“12V Battery Needs Replacement”

You have no idea what it’s about.

You call the customer service and the rep informs you that you need to take your car to the Tesla Service Center to fix the issue.

Now, the question that comes to your mind is,

How long will they take to fix the issue?

Will I be left with no car until they fix it?

All are fair questions.

You probably have similar questions when it comes to Website Maintenance Services.

How do I contact you if I have an urgent issue that needs to be fixed immediately?

What’s the turnaround time to fix my issues?

Will my site be down while you fix the issue?

Make sure you get answers to all these excellent questions before you subscribe to a Website Maintenance Service.

3) How Much Does It Cost?

You have reached the Tesla Service Center.

You are in the line of cars waiting to be signed up by a service person.

The service person comes to you and gets the details about the issue.

Then, you ask the important question.

“How long will it take to fix the issue?”

“It will take 30 to 45 minutes. If you prefer, you can wait in the reception area and have coffee. Or we can give you a loaner”

Now, you ask the million dollar question.

“That’s fine. I will wait here. I will do my work on the laptop. How much will it cost to fix the issue?”

“It’s covered under the warranty. There is no charge”

“Wonderful! Thanks!!”

You pat yourself on the back for buying a Tesla car.

When it comes to Website Maintenance Service, the one billion dollar question is,

“How much will it cost to subscribe to Website Maintenance Service?”

Find out the details from the company.

Find out how many hours of service you get in a month.

Do you save money if you use Pay-As-You-Go model? This means, you pay only for the hours of service you get.

But it may be a bit more expensive than a monthly service plan.

For example, the monthly service plan will give you 10 hours of service for $750. This means, $75 per hour! But In Pay-As-You-Go model, they charge $100 per hour.

If you need more than 7 hours of maintenance work in a month, then, it’s not feasible to use Pay-As-You-Go model.

Also, with the monthly plan, they are obligated to take care of your maintenance tasks.

With Pay-As-You-Go model, they may say “No” to take care of your emergency issues.

You are back in Google or Craiglist trying to find a good, reliable, ethical Website Maintenance Company that wouldn’t screw you over.

Weigh the pros and cons and decide accordingly.

Do you need Website Maintenance Service?

It depends.

There are more than 1 billion websites on the world wide web.

Millions of them are ghost-towns.

They are not visited by anyone, not even by its owner.

There are different types of websites. Let’s look at the business websites. We can divide business websites into two categories.

• Website for offline business
• Website for online business

Either it’s an offline or online business, it needs a website to survive or thrive in this age.

People are increasingly turning towards online to find the service they need.

It’s mandatory that you need a website for your business.

But do you need to maintain it with the latest updates, bug fixes, software, etc.?

Let’s look at the reason why Google likes the recently updated sites than ghost-town sites.

Google makes money by helping the regular Joe find what he wants.

He is their main customer. Google wants to make him happy.

There is a small town in the middle of nowhere.

There are only 2 plumbers in that town.

Tom and Jerry!

Both are excellent plumbers and have 15 years of experience under their belts.

However, Tom has hired a Website Maintenance Company to maintain his site.

The company keeps the site up to date with the latest software,  bug-fixes, plugins, etc.

They make sure the website content is updated regularly with blog posts, articles so that it improves the website’s onsite SEO.

They fix all the broken links, add/update text and images, add new pages, make sure the website loads faster, etc.

They also ensure the site loads faster so that the customer has a better viewing experience.

They take care of onsite SEO with the good Title tags, Header tags, Meta Description, etc.

However, Jerry is an old school guy.

He got the website. But there is no one to maintain it.

It’s a ghost town.

He himself hasn’t visited the site in years.

He thinks, “If we build it, people will come“.

Unbeknownst to him, it doesn’t work this way when it comes to a website.

You need to nurture, maintain and grow it to get the website traffic you need.

Now, Google with its omnipotent algorithm tries to find the best match for the average Joe when he searches for a plumber.

Who do you think it’s going to list first?

Of course, Tom’s website is going to rank high in the search result.

The reason is simple.

Here is how Google thinks.

“If the site is being continuously maintained and is up to date with all the latest software, plugins, bug-fixes, it probably has the latest and relevant data and details the average Joe is looking for.”

If Tom’s site has more pages than Jerry’s site, then, it’s all the more reason for Google to rank Tom’s site higher than Jerry’s site.

Due to more number of pages, Tom’s site will rank for more keywords.

This will get the site more visitors.

So, if your objective is to get more traffic to your site, improve your business and profit more, then, you definitely need a good Website Maintenance Service.

A good Website Maintenance Company will keep your interest in their minds and will do the needful to get the traffic you deserve.

Clients often have questions for me about what information they should include on their websites, so I’m going to run through 4 things that every business website should have.

1) What products and services you offer

People are very busy and will leave your website in a matter of seconds if they’re not sure that they’re “in the right place.”

Including specific information on your website about what products and services you offer (as well as things like where you’re located and when you’re open) will make it easy for people to confirm that you can provide what they need.

2) Who you are

People tend to be cautious when doing business online. Therefore, you need to build trust with them by telling them a little bit about yourself or your business.

Photos of yourself or your team, photos of your office or building, and information about any membership organizations that you’re part of can all help build trust with your potential customers

3) Why customers should choose you specifically

A lot of business owners focus on getting their websites to the top of search engines and getting a lot of people to go to their websites, but few business owners ask the next question…

How can I get my website to be as effective as possible at actually getting people to contact me and become customers?

Once you’ve told people what you do and who you are, the next step to making your website effective at turning visitors into paying customers is to tell them why they should become customers of your business specifically.

What makes your business unique?

What special services, products, capabilities, add-ons, guarantees, or advantages does your business offer?

4) Your contact information

Your contact information should be included on your website in multiple places. It should always be up-to-date and be easy for visitors to find.

It’s also important that it’s clear to visitors how they should contact you to take the next step.

For instance, it’s better to have one large phone number at the top of your website with the words “call now for a free consultation” than to have a page with contact information for twelve different employees.

The reality is that if someone doesn’t know who to call or what to do next, they are more likely to leave your website than to try to figure it out.

Facebook advertising has become a very powerful option for businesses that want to generate leads and customers online.

In this email, I’ll walk through the basics of how Facebook ads work.

Why Facebooks Ads?

Not only does Facebook have over 1 billion active users, but Facebook also knows an enormous amount of information about these users.

If you have a profile, then Facebook knows your age, your relationship status, where you live, your gender, and your employment history.

But that is just the beginning…

Facebook uses complex algorithms and data from other sources to figure out your income, your home value, whether or not you’re a small business owner, whether you’re looking to buy a new car, and much much much more.

This might seem a little bit creepy, but it makes Facebook advertising extremely powerful.

When you run an ad on Facebook, you can choose exactly who should see the ad based on all of this information.

Offering a B2B service? No problem. You can run ads that are only seen by small business owners.

Offering exterior home remodeling services? No problem. You can run ads that are only seen by people who own a home worth more than $250k and live within 25 miles of your city.

How Do Facebook Ads Work?

Facebook ads show up in your newsfeed among the things posted by your friends, and they look like normal posts on Facebook.

When you click on a Facebook ad, you’ll either be taken to a page on the advertiser’s website or to their business Facebook page.

How Much Do Facebook Ads Cost?

With Facebook ads, you set a maximum budget for how much you want to spend, but you’re only actually charged when someone clicks on your ad.

You can technically start with any budget, but I recommend that you start with a minimum budget of $500/mo in order to do a solid test.

I’m going to run through 5 things that you might not know about how Google works.

1) You should create individual pages for each of your products or services.

Google likes web pages that are all about one topic.

If a page on one website is entirely about a specific service and a page on another website just mentions that service, Google will rank the first one higher.

Therefore, in order to dramatically increase the number of people who find your website on Google, you should create individual pages for each of your products or services rather than having one page that lists them all.

This technique of creating separate pages for each product or service is something that I do for almost all of my clients.

Using this technique, we were able to get one client from the 19th page of Google to the 1st page in less than 48 hours.

2) You should include keywords in the headings and sub-headings on each of your pages.

Google gives more weight to the words in the headings on your webpages than to the words in the rest of the text.

This means that you should use headings with keywords in them, rather than generic headings like “welcome to our website.”

3) Google penalizes (and sometimes completely ignores!) websites that use outdated technology.

Google judges your website based on the underlying technology that it is built on.

Web technology changes extremely quickly. A website built 10 years or even 5 years ago was built using very different technologies than a website built today.

Well, hopefully…

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of web designers and web design companies that haven’t upgraded to modern technologies.

Anyway…

Google penalizing websites that are built on outdated technologies while preferring websites built on modern technologies. Simply having a high-quality, modern website gives you a leg up on your competition.

Additionally, and this is really important…

If your website is built with certain technologies, Google will completely ignore it! Many older websites are built in such a way that search engines can’t read them at all.

4) You should set up profiles on websites like Yelp, YP.com and Angie’s List in order to make your business look more reputable.

Google wants to list the most reputable companies in an industry at the top of the search results.

Google looks at things like how many profiles your business has on other websites, how much your business is talked about on social media sites like Facebook, and how many other websites link to yours in order to determine how established and legitimate your business. Setting up profiles on sites like Yelp, YP.com and Angie’s List will go along way towards making your business look reputable to Google.

5) You can pay to show up on the first page of Google.

Google has a paid advertising program called Google Adwords where you can pay to show up on the first page of search results.

Paid search results show up either above the normal search results or on the right side of the page, and they are either highlighted in yellow or have a yellow “Ad” icon to identify them as advertising.

With Google advertisements, you write your ad, you choose what keywords you want to show up for, and you only pay when people actually click on your ad.

This doesn’t make sense for everyone, but for businesses that are serious about generating new leads and customers online, it is one of the most powerful options available.

My team and I have helped our clients generate thousands of leads using Google ads.

Did you know that there are two different ways to show up on the first page of Google?

People frequently ask me how they can get their business found on Google, and the answer is that there are two different ways.

1) You can do search engine optimization to get your website to show up in the normal search results on Google.

2) You can run an advertisement on Google and show up at the top immediately.

Now let’s talk more about those options…

Search Engine Optimization

When your potential customer is searching, Google uses a complex formula to determine whether or not your website is included in the search results and where it ranks.

In future articles, we’ll talk more about how this works, but basically Google looks at how your website is setup and how popular your website is (in terms of how many other websites link to yours, how many visitors your website gets, and how much your website and business are talked about on social media sites like Facebook).

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website and doing online public relations to make it more popular— in order to show up higher on Google.

The advantage of doing SEO and showing up in the normal search results is that you don’t have to pay anything to Google.

The disadvantage is that it sometimes takes a long time to show up on the first page, and it can be an unpredictable process because Google is always changing their formula.

Google Advertising

With Google’s advertising program, which is called Google Adwords, you can show up on the first page immediately.

Paid search results show up either above the normal search results or on the right side of the page, and they are either highlighted in yellow or have a yellow “Ad” icon to identify them as advertising.

With Google ads, you write your ad, you choose what keywords you want to show up for, what geographic area you want to show up in, and you only pay when people actually click on your ad.

The advantage of running ads on Google is that you can show up on the first page immediately, and you can easily run ads for as many keywords and geographic areas as you want.

The disadvantage is, obviously, that you need to pay Google.

Which Option Makes More Sense for My Business?

In many cases, the best strategy is to do both.

With Google ads, you can be on the first page and be getting phone calls within few days, and then you can do SEO as a longer-term strategy.

However, there are some cases and some industries where one makes more sense than the other.

You see, the whole subject of marketing on the Internet can seem extremely complex— especially with lots of tech people throwing around jargon and lots of snake oil salesman trying to sell you on the latest thing.

But the reality is that getting more leads and customers online really comes down to two things.

1) Traffic

With brick-and-mortar businesses, traffic refers to the number of people who walk into your store. On the Internet, traffic refers to the number of people who visit your website.

Getting more traffic is the first step to getting leads and customers online.

In just the same way that the local antique store needs to get people to walk in the door before they can make a sale…

You need to get people to visit your website before they are going to become a lead or customer.

There are a number of ways to get more traffic to your website including improving your rankings on Google and running ads on social media sites like Facebook.

2) Conversion

Conversion refers to the percentage of your website visitors that become leads or customers (i.e. they either pick-up their phone to call you or they fill-out a form to express interest in your services or products).

The goal is, obviously, to have a high conversion and convert as many website visitors into leads and customers as possible.

There are a lot of factors that determine the conversion on your website, including how easy it is to find your phone number, whether or not there are testimonials, and whether or not it looks modern and up-to-date.

What Is the Bottom Line?

The bottom line is that if you want to get more leads and customers online, you need to focus on getting more traffic and/or increasing your conversion…

Because these are the only things that matter when it comes to getting leads and customers via the Internet.

And if someone is trying to sell you a website re-design or an online marketing service, and they can’t explain how their service is going to improve either your traffic or conversion, then that should raise a red flag.

If your website isn’t effective at turning visitors into customers, then it really doesn’t matter if your website shows up on the first page of Google or if thousands of people go to your website each day.

Here are 5 keys to converting website visitors into customers.

1) Include a large heading that immediately lets people know that they’re in the right place—so they don’t leave!

When someone comes to your website, you only have a few seconds to grab their attention before they leave.

You need to have a large heading that will catch their attention and immediately tell them that they’re in the right place— that you can provide the services or products they need.

2) Include a call-to-action so that potential customers know exactly what to do next.

If potential customers can’t figure out how to take the next step quickly, they’ll leave your website and be gone forever.

Include a call-to-action (such as “call for a free estimate” or “request a quote”) and visible contact information at the top of your website to make sure potential customers know exactly what to do next.

3) Tell potential customers why they should choose you.

Your website visitors may also be considering contacting your competitors. So, it’s extremely important that you make a case for why they should contact you and do business with you specifically.

4) Build trust by looking authentic and providing proof.

In order to build trust with your potential customers, you need to do two things.

First, you need to make your business look real and authentic with things like real photos (as opposed to generic stock photos) and detailed information about your business.

Second, you need to provide proof that you offer high-quality services with things like testimonials, case studies, and reviews.

All of this can go a long way to convincing people to actually fill-out your contact form or pick up the phone to call you.

5) Make sure that your website works on smartphones and tablets.

These days, almost 50% of the people who visit your website won’t be using a computer. They’ll either be using a smartphone (such as an iPhone) or a tablet (such as an iPad).

Websites that haven’t been specifically optimized to be “mobile-friendly” can be very difficult (or even impossible) to use on these other devices.

Make sure that your website works on smartphones and tablets. Otherwise, you might be missing out on 50% of the potential leads and customers that your website could be generating.