6 Benefits of an Ongoing Support Plan for Your Website in 2019

Why you need a support plan for your website - Big Red Design Co.

Having ongoing support for your website is the most ideal for business owners that want peace of mind after their website is live. Investing in a new website can be very beneficial to business owner’s that are looking to either prove their worth in their market, re-establish themselves in their market, or remain on top of their market. After all, websites are the foundation of your online presence. It is the hub in which all social channels link to, and when done correctly, is the thing most users will interact with when they are searching for something relatable on Google.

What happens after that shiny new website goes live and your website developer hands off the website to you? Is the website left for you to manage, all while keeping your business running smoothly? Have they gone completely radio silent because the website was “completed”?

It’s 2019 and if one thing is for sure at the time of writing this, websites have been around for decades and there are no signs of them going anywhere anytime soon. With the digital real estate that some sites have come to take up, a website can very well be a business’ most important asset. With that in mind, it is very important to keep your website maintained and in tip-top shape to help maximize performance, reduce security threats, and give business owners peace of mind that allows them to run their business smoothly.

Benefits of a support plan for your website

1. Staying current on content

Growing a website once it is launched is easier said than done. This does not mean, “if you build it they will come” as some would suggest. It needs to really grow:

From a content standpoint.
From a performance standpoint.
From a total page standpoint.
From a sales standpoint.

This means adding new pages, blog posts or products regularly, and finding ways to keep all of that content relevant. If there is one thing that Google favors when it comes to search results, it is relevant content. A very well written and designed website that ranks well initially will fall down the rankings over time if the content becomes stale and unmaintained.

2. They let you focus on your business

When you set up your business, I am willing to bet you did not do so on the basis that you would be dedicating multiple hours a week into maintaining your website and keeping it in tip-top performance shape, all while trying to grow the size of its footprint. That is probably because you were good enough at something else to be able to start a business revolving around it.

Website support plans allow business owners to focus on what is most important to them, without having to worry about a single thing when it comes to their website. Many business owners find that they value for the peace of mind they get when they are on a support plan pays for itself.

3. They offer a great ROI

Support plans are often the best buy for your digital marketing spend when it comes to the return on investment (ROI) you get when you have one. Often times developers use $100’s or even $1,000’s of dollars worth of software on your website. Because they buy bulk licenses, they can usually offer ongoing support for all of the paid software as part of their support plan, potentially saving you thousands of dollars! Furthermore, having a website designer develop your website and then support it all year round is generally much cheaper than it would be to hire a full-time designer on staff.

Investing in the ongoing support of your website is a lot like any sort of insurance you invest in elsewhere. You could risk worrying about issues as they arise, but most of the time the price to fix a one-off issue will tend to exceed the annual cost of a support plan.

Most importantly, you get to do what you do best – run your business. What is the ROI of you getting an extra 5-10 laser-focused hours a week towards growing your business?

4. Performance

Let’s face it – most things become obsolete a few hours after they make it to the internet. Unfortunately, the web has a very quick expiration date for anything that gets put out. This makes it a tough job trying to keep up with all of the advances in technology, trends in website design, and Google’s ever-changing algorithm. All of these help drive the overall performance of your website. If your websites plugins are outdated, or if your website design is not optimized for the latest screen size, Google ranks it as less relevant to someone searching for keywords related to you.

Website support plans stay on top of these updates by routinely checking your CMS and plugins to make sure you aren’t running anything out of date that could potentially hurt your Google ranking. Like a personal trainer, your web developer should always make sure your website is in its meanest, leanest shape.

5. Invaluable insights

Having an analytics dashboard set up on your site is pivotal for not only tracking the traffic your site gets, but also for the users that are visiting your site. More importantly, they allow you the insight towards these important data points when it comes time to make important decisions on how to market your company online. Simple (and free) tools like Google Analytics allow you to see how many visitors are coming to your site and, more specifically, where they are coming from. This is an important insight to have if you have an increasing number of website users from a specific referral source. Getting a lot of organic traffic from Google and not a lot from Facebook? You now know where you might have the leverage to increase visibility when it comes time to budgeting for online marketing. Your web developer should also be knowledgable enough to help guide you through these insights and give you professional advice based off of these metrics. It is like hiring a consultant – but for a lot less!

Analytics Dashboard for Support Plans - Big Red Design Co.
A snapshot of the metrics you'll tend to see on the average analytics dashboard.

6. 24/7 monitoring

As much as you love your website, you aren’t going to be on it all day every day – or at least I hope not. If your website were to go down, would you know? Even if you did know, would you know what the cause is how to fix it? Good support plans will generally give you 24/7 uptime monitoring to keep tabs on your site an make sure it is always up and running. The better support plans will get your website back up and running as quickly as possible with no additional charge to you.

The same goes for security breaches. You could set up software for your site to monitor any suspicious login attempts, but even if you were warned, you need to be technical enough to remedy the threat.

Website support plans are misunderstood

While some business owners see a website support plan as another incurred expense, other business owners have seen the value in the peace of mind and positive ROI that they truly bring. Websites aren’t cheap to build. They aren’t cheap to fix either. Having ongoing protection of that investment is crucial in order to allow you the freedom to run your business without constantly worrying about the status of your website.

Grow your business with a support plan for your website

Big Red Design Co. offers website support plans tailored to meet the needs of your business. At the core, all support plans come baked in with man hours dedicated to help you grow your website and its content as you see fit. Other benefits like 24/7 uptime monitoring, plugin/CMS updates, website security and a customized Analytics dashboard are all available as well.

If you would like to find out more about support plans and if one is right for you, email support@bigreddesignco.com.