Website planning for your small business is so important.
When you run a small company, whether it be a pool, patio, or landscaping business, you’re going to rely heavily on your website. As we move farther into the digital age, everything will run through your social media and website.
Your site is how people are going to find you and learn about what your business can do for them. Your site is also how you’re going to find meaningful leads and promote new deals and services to those leads.
For that reason, you need to make sure that it’s well maintained and up to date. If your website doesn’t perform well or has broken elements, customers that exclusively search online will find your competition instead of you.
How do you make sure that your website is up to snuff? If you’re busy running your business and overseeing your employees, it can be hard to focus on maintaining the digital side of things.
A website care plan can do this for you. If you’re worried about the quality of your site, then you’ve come to the right place. Let’s find out what a care plan is and why it’s so important to your company’s success.
Website Planning 101: Caring and Maintaining for Your Site
A lot of small business owners think that getting WordPress, a web host, building a site, and launching is where it ends.
That’s careless thinking and will lead to diminishing returns from the thing that helps so many other businesses. You need to take care of your site. Fortunately, there are services available that take this responsibility out of your hands and make sure that your site is up to industry standards.
Why Do You Need to Maintain Your Site?
You should think about your website like it’s a piece of old machinery. If you don’t give it the right amount of care and maintenance, a few unfortunate things might happen.
From an aesthetic standpoint, leaving your site alone will make it look dated and unappealing. When a site looks like it hasn’t been updated in years, anyone that finds it is going to think twice about the type of product or service that they’ll be getting.
Even worse, when you ignore your site, the domain name could actually expire. This means that all of your content and hard work setting up the site will disappear and it’s not guaranteed that you could get your domain back.
The world is driven by search engine optimization these days. Having a constant flow of content and a good looking and navigable website is essential to your good standing on search listings.
Simply put, when you don’t maintain your site, you’re making it harder for customers to find you, which isn’t good for business.
Can You Do It Yourself?
That depends. How much time do you have to dedicate to your site? If you’re running most of the operations at your business, then you probably won’t have time to ensure that your site is always up to date.
Most likely, you’ll be focusing on making your business operate well. If you’ve been in business for over 15 years, there’s a good chance that you’re still adjusting to the way marketing and sales have changed in the digital age.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not a bad thing to keep your focus on what matters most to you and your employees. There are services available that offer attentive website care. They make sure that your site is running optimally and change anything that might be outdated or harmful to your business.
This takes a weight off your shoulders and lets you and your workers focus on what you’re good at.
Often, putting your faith in a website care service is cheaper in the long run. You won’t have to spend time and money fixing problems when they become big. Also, you can let someone that knows the ins and outs of site building make sure that yours is optimized for the way people search in 2019 and beyond.
Website Care Plans
So, what exactly is a website care plan going to do for you?
Before you engage with a care plan, the company you hire will need to perform a site check. Since you or another party most likely built the site, a site check will give the website care company some insight into how it was made.
At Chili Pepper Design, our Care Plan Site Check will look at the key areas of your website to determine where things can be improved. Then, included in the plan is 2 hours of time spent resolving those issues.
Here are the 4 areas that we zero in on:
- Our design and construction analysis will look at how you built your WordPress website. This includes making note of any irregular or unlicensed themes and plugins and helping you fix them.
- We’ll conduct a problems audit to see if there are any glaring issues that will prevent us from assisting you with our care plan.
- Then, we’ll perform some speed tests to determine if your site is loading fast enough. Remember, site speed is a huge part of SEO.
- Lastly, we’ll look at the security protocols that are in place and check the backup systems to make sure it’s all working. Your WordPress site should be kept secure in order to work correctly.
Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to find the right website care plan for your company. Chili Pepper Design offers a standard care plan and an advanced care plan for ecommerce sites.
One of the most important elements of caring for your website has to do with hosting. Once we’ve reviewed your site and you choose a plan, we’ll move you on to our managed hosting service, where you can rest easy knowing that your site is well protected against any threats.
Other services that you’ll get from our care plans will be constant monitoring to keep your site secure and available 24/7 for your customers. You’ll also get daily backups in the event of a crash, regular software updates, tech support, and suggestions for improvement.
On top of that, you’ll get SEO tracking and analytics reports so that you can see what’s working and what isn’t.
Get Peace of Mind While You Grow
Our goal is to offer you peace of mind and to let you grow your business the way you want to, while also staying with the constantly changing landscape of digital marketing. Contact us to get started with your Care Plan Site Check today.
