When you think about the costs of website maintenance, you can think of this two ways. First, what are the costs of having it done – and second, what are the costs of not doing it?
The Cost of Not Updating Your Website
The cost of not updating your website is bigger than you think. Today, websites are like Yellow Pages ads, which now basically don’t really exist anymore. The great thing is that, unlike a Yellow Pages listing, you can change what your website says any time you want. If you had just placed your YP ad and then you moved or your phone number changed, then you were out of luck for a year or more. Today, you just put all that information on your website because people are searching for your business on the web.
Speaking of searching for your business on the web, remember that your website is usually the first impression people get of your business. If it looks outdated or has the wrong information on it, you could be losing a lot of business. So really, the cost of not having a website up to date is much more than the cost of getting the website updated because you could be losing a lot of business, which may be repeat business that helps build your company.
The Cost of Not Upgrading Your Website
And what about the cost of not keeping up with website updates? Most websites today run on some kind of software. This software (usually called blogging software, shopping cart software or a content management system) needs to be updated just like you update software on your computer. If that’s not done, then your website could be compromised (hacked) or not run well (be slow or not even work with some web browsers or servers).
If that happens, you can run into huge costs with cleaning up the compromise as well as lose some business or trust from your current customers. And don’t forget about the stress you’ll have!
Website Maintenance Costs
After all that, I hope you’ll see how doing updates to your website and keeping up with software updates is relatively very cheap compared to losing business or cleaning up hacks.
Kinds of Packages
You will want to go with a package or system that’s easy to use because you will need maintenance work done on your website from time to time. The great thing is, really any website maintenance company out there is going to offer you some kind of plan since this helps them with their costs of billing, etc.
There are different kinds of plans out there. You’ll find monthly maintenance packages, yearly packages or à la carte website maintenance services. The kind you choose will depend on how much work you need done. We see some clients do updates once a month while others need work done a few times a week.
The risky part of getting monthly or yearly packages or retainers is that there will probably be some time that don’t use and that time that you paid for is gone. It doesn’t roll over to the next month. You basically paid for that company to just be there for you… and that’s not the best use of money, really.
Usually the best way to buy website maintenance is à la carte where you just pay for what you use. Usually these kinds of packages are set up so that if you pre-pay more time, you get better discounts. That’s exactly how our Maintenance Blocks work. One block is a half hour of time. The more you buy ahead of time and have in your account, the bigger the discount you get on the cost. They’re good forever, so there’s really no risk either.
Conclusion
Remember, to rank higher, Google is looking for websites that are up to date. They know that with any business, they can expect to see a certain amount of changes in a certain amount of time. They have figured out these formulas, so they know all the websites out there that are out of date. They will more likely give out results to searches showing websites that are up to date. This means you have a better chance of ranking higher if your website is up to date.
The time to order website maintenance is now. If you would have done it a few weeks ago, you’d already be reaping the benefits now, so why wait?
-Tony
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