Do I Need A Website Care Plan For My New (Or Old) Website?
Do I Need A Website Care Plan For My New (Or Old) Website?
Think of your website as a member of staff. One who works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and represents your company nationally and internationally. If that website were a person, we reckon you'd be looking after them with a pretty special package. With that in mind, does your website really get the care, attention, love, and updates it deserves (and needs)? We've been around long enough to know that the answer is almost always 'no'.
Is Your Website A Little Neglected?
The last blog you posted was months ago (maybe even years). You are not sure if your site is backed up, let alone where the backup lives. You are not sure who you would call if the site gets hacked or who would be able to sort it without a hefty bill and a chunk of downtime.
Don't worry; you are not alone.
After all, you are busy doing what you do best: growing your business, delivering products, services, and value to your clients.
On the other hand, maybe you do know all those answers above.
You have recently blogged or updateD your site for Google, and you do possess the internal skills to care for your site yourself, but.... you and your team are struggling for the time to monitor and keep things up to date regularly.
One thing is for sure; you cannot afford to ignore it any longer. It is time for a change, and website care plans are a great solution.
But my site is brand new, do I really need to worry?
This is a quick one.
If you are lucky enough to have a brand new and shiny site, there is a very high chance that it'll have updates pending and potentially be at risk by the end of its first week.
My website has been around ages and has never gone down or been hacked before!
The chances are both have happened.
Sometimes your host's servers may have recovered your site. Sometimes downtime is limited, and you didn't notice.
Hacks can be background hacks and not affect the front end, but put users at risk.
Whether old or new, whether it's built-in WordPress (or another system), you really should consider the impact of your website not being online for a period of time.
It's not just potential loss of business; there is the hassle and stress of fixing it or finding someone to fix it. There is also the cost of that fix and then the cost of future protection.
That's why a good care plan is very much worthwhile, even if you've been lucky enough not to have encountered a failure yet.
Think of a website care plan as a little bit of insurance
Eliminating/reducing risk is what insurance is all about. So website care and maintenance plans help do exactly that.
Here are just a few things that can quickly go wrong.
Lost business: Number 1 in our eyes is the potential loss of customers for every minute your website is down. Will your customers or prospects head off to a competitor's site? Those after an immediate answer almost certainly will. In the short term, you may lose that next order; in the long term, you may have lost a customer for good.
Features / Plugins / Element & Components Stop Working: Most sites are now made up of plugins, themes, components, frameworks and content management systems. All these have to play together nicely to ensure your site looks and functions as it should. But all these get regularly updated to keep up with the latest requirements for hosting and security, so at times they conflict. Sometimes we have to update manually, sometimes we can update automatically, but checks, testing, and monitoring are key.
The dreaded website hack: You may wonder why anyone would want to hack your website when there are millions of other sites out there full of data and more. Well, it's not always for the data. Sometimes it's for fun; sometimes it's to use your server for some 'behind the scenes stuff' like phishing or sending spam emails.
“Show Me Some Benefits” We Hear You Say
Well how about you…
Always being open for Business: How about your website being open for business and in great condition all of the time. Around 60% of visitors make a purchasing decision before even setting foot in a business or picking up the phone. If your website is on it's 'A' game all the time, then we've quickly hopped over that first hurdle.
Having time to focus on you: Running your business is what you do best. Firstly we give you a little more time back. Secondly, we remove the worry about what you would have to do if your site went down on a Friday night… Who would you call? Your designer? Your developer? Your host? And what would they say? Once on our website plan, you can sit comfortably knowing we are keeping a close eye and are ready to pounce should something crop up.
Not needing to learn more skills: Much like we don't need to know how you do what you do, your team (or you) will not need web admin skills to keep things up to date. A little like the point above, you can focus on your business while we do what we do.
Receiving Quality Reports: You'll get insightful reporting from our team, with updates, thoughts and even ideas from our web team.
You get insightful reports sent at regular intervals to guide future decisions. Reports like these help assess the success of your offline sales and marketing efforts too.
Getting Discounted and Priority Support: You get access to discounted and priority support if anything happens that you don't understand or can't deal with in-house.
It's absolute peace of mind that you've reduced your exposure to risk.
What Are The Common Features/Functions Of Website Care Plans?
Typically, a website care or maintenance plan will include some or all of the following (ours of course, include them all):
Regular software, theme, and plugin updates.
Dual Backups – across two separate locations.
Rock solid hosting.
Regular security scans.
Free SSL certificates (you know, the padlock)
Quality Reporting.
Broken links checking.
Uptime monitoring.
Phone and email support.
Discounted web admin and development.
Here at Orca we also include Compliance tools, Google My Business support, and reputation management with our care plans – we're pretty sure you won't find these elsewhere for the same money either.
Can’t I Just Do All This Myself?
Of course, you can.
But sometimes it’s simpler, cheaper, more cost-effective, and way less stressful to let the experts do it for you.
Want to know more about our website care plans or even just our hosting services? Then get in touch with Graham, our Web and Operations Lead today to discuss your site and how simple it is to join our POD for ultimate care.
