When it comes to keeping your website online and happy there is only about a billion (or two) choices for a provider. And to be honest we all offer about the same thing. Updates to your site and monitoring to keep it online. So, in the end you are left with an impossible choice.
You see while most all care plan providers are offering to do the updates and all, there is more to care than just updates. Just like every other service, trust is HUGE. Do you want to know, like and trust the chosen provider, or just pick one based on price? I know that when it comes to choosing a service, I base a good part of my decision on trust and likability. Do I feel comfortable with the provider?
This means the first thing our care plan provides you with is comfort. You have the comfort in knowing that your website will be online, up to date and ready to go. Not just when you go to look at it, but when your clients look at it. You also get the peace of mind knowing that when something does go wrong, we are on it. Our goal is to have everything running smoothly 99% of the time. Yea, I would love to say 100%. Life happens, things break. But when it does, we are on it.
Another factor to comfort is knowing the skills the provider has. Knowing they can solve your problem. For most of our care plan clients, we built the website. This means with have an intimate knowledge of your website, and to some extent your business. We spent hour developing and talking about your goals. This gives us an insider prospective when it comes to know what you want out of your site and providing you with just the right information. Nothing extra.
And speaking of nothing extra, we don’t send you constant spam about your site. We get it, you have a business to run. Your website is helping you with that goal. But it should not have to be your only focus. Our clients don’t want to know about how many updates their site ran last month, or that we have 60 backups on file. They care about it being up and ready. To that end, we don’t send out monthly reports. Yea, they could be mildly interesting if you are looking to jump start a nap. But nobody has time for that. Instead what we do send are the important things. Notices about upcoming maintenance windows, critical changes, and problems. Sure, we might still send a cool article that we think would help you are your business, but not junk.
So just what are we doing in the background that you don’t need to worry about?
Plugin, Theme & Core Updates
Each week we go through and check for updates to the plugins and themes that your site is using. When updates are found, we install them in a delayed manor. Usually this is a few days after the initial release. We delay updates to ensure that all the bugs are found and fixed before they break your site. Once we are satisfied that the update is safe, we install it and then check to ensure the site is still functioning like it should.
Uptime Checks
24 hours a day, 7 days a week we have a tool that is checking your site. If something happens and the site becomes unreachable, we get a notification. Normally within a couple minutes we get a second email saying everything is fine. But if we don’t, we jump right on it to see what is happening. In addition, if the situation is bad enough that we anticipate an okay amount of downtime, we send you an email right away. Once everything is all clear, we let you know. Does not matter if it is middle of the day or night, we will work to resolve the issue and get your site back online.
Unlike most shared hosting, your site lives on a server with only a few other sites. It has a dedicated amount of hardware. We monitor the server and if it seems to be running slow, we take measures to increase the hardware ability or move your site to hardware that is not having issues.
During these checks, we also monitor the SSL certificate and ensure it remains active. A broken SSL can cost your site ranking and hurt the trust you are building with your clients. Most the SSL’s are renewed on a quarterly basis.
Security Checks
Sites get hacked all the time. But we have put in place security measure to help prevent your site from being hacked. We perform regular checks on the security, and ensure your site is not ending up on blacklists. Should something go sideways, or we determine that your site is under attack, we will do whatever is needed to get it back the way it should.
Backups
Your site is backed up regularly. Should the unthinkable happen, we can restore a backup and get you running again. Even if it was an accidental change that was made to the site. Before any updates we take a backup. A daily backup is completed both internally on the site, and externally at the server level. At least 8 weeks’ worth of backups are kept on file. We are notified immediately if any of these backups should fail.
Software Licensing
Many of the sites on our care plans have all their licensing covered on our developer licenses. It is one of the perks to the care plan. You don’t have to pay for those extra licenses. We also handle the renews, so you don’t have to stress it. Should your site have a plugin that is not part of our license set, we track the date of the renewal and let you know in advance that it is time to renew.
Traffic & Search Console
The goal of your site is to convert new traffic to be your client. But with that comes monitoring to see that it is reaching that goal and adjusting it if it is not performing well. We monitor the analytics and search console of your site on a monthly basis. This allows us to get with you as we see a trend that is not looking good for your site and get it fixed before it’s too late. With thing like Google’s push for mobile friendliness, correcting errors in the search console can be crucial to your ranking on search engines.
Content Updates & Strategy
Each month you have some much time (depending on your plan) of content updates. Many of our clients use this time to publish new blog articles or update pages with new information such as hours. This eliminates the headache of trying to do it all yourself. We are also available for consultation calls about strategy or other concerns you many have about your site.
Knowledge & Advice
There is way too much going on with the web for any one person to know it all. To that end, we are always taking the time to learn as much as possible. From courses, to the latest new we keep track of what is happening in the world and use that knowledge to plan for upcoming changes. This allows us to provide you with the best advice and complete service.
Do you have a question about how something relating to your website works? We can provide you with the advice you need to make an informed decision about a new service you are looking to try, like an email provider, or newsletters, or anything else website related.
Wrap Up
So now you know that choosing a care plan provide is more than just updates. And it is way more than boring reports. In the end it boils down to trust and comfort. Hopefully, this article helped you understand why our specialized services are built around providing that comfort while taking the headache of running a website away so you can focus on the most important things: Your family and your business.
Ready to start a care plan of your own? Head on over to our care plans page.
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