Parker Web – Website Maintenance Services

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Category: Operational

Preparing Your Website for a Successful Year-End

Introduction: As the end of the year approaches, businesses and website owners must ensure that their online presence is ready for the upcoming challenges and opportunities. Whether you run an e-commerce site, a blog, or a corporate website, preparing for the year-end can significantly impact your success in the coming year. In this blog post, we’ll explore essential steps to ensure your website is in top shape as you bid farewell to the current year and welcome the new one. Conclusion: By preparing your website for the end of the year, you’re setting the stage for a successful start to the new one. These steps will enhance the user experience and contribute to the overall success and growth of your online presence. So, gear up, make those necessary updates, and get ready to welcome the opportunities the upcoming year offers!

Website Serviceability is a Key to Growth

  Can your website change at the speed of business?   Making sure your website is easy to update is like greasing the skids at a boatyard: without sufficient lubricant, the boat you want to slide easily into the water will get hung up, and just sit there on dry land waiting for some superior force to push it down the skids. A website that is not easily serviceable is in a similar state. It sits there useless until someone can finally figure out how to update it to reflect the current state of business. The need to continually update an active business website is a no-brainer. Every business owner knows, and every web developer will tell you, that keeping a site current is of utmost importance. By now it is well known that the more often a site is updated with new, quality content, the higher it will be ranked by search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and others. Despite this knowledge, however, a great many business websites stay virtually the same as the day they were launched for far too long; and those that do change are often updated long after their business has undergone significant changes. These sites never catch up to reality.  Why? Oftentimes it’s because they are not easy to service. If this describes your current website, there are a number of things you can do to make sure your site has a high serviceability rating. Choose web development tools that are easy to understand and update.   Website Serviceability depends on how your site was developed in the first place. You should consider the long-term maintenance implications of the software or systems used to build or redesign your site prior to building or redesigning it.  There are risks in using less well known and harder to manage development tools, and you should be aware of them. If your site is relatively complex and was custom developed using raw HTML, XML or other development languages, chances are its content can only be managed and updated by the developers themselves or by IT pros who are familiar with the programming languages used.  But what if the developer goes out of business or moves out of state? And what if your business can’t afford the luxury of a web dedicated IT professional in house? A better choice is to choose a CMS (Content Management System) development tool anyone can use and anyone can maintain – especially if serviceability is your goal. For example, WordPress is a program originally designed for blog creation and maintenance. In recent years, it has become the industry’s leading CMS and site building tool due to its robust content management capabilities, ease of use, depth, and flexibility. It requires that you already have a domain name and hosting service, but after that, designing and setting up a site is relatively easy. A WordPress-developed site can be easily updated in-house by virtually anyone, and it can be seamlessly tied to your CRM system for added user-oriented functionality. If WordPress is not your CMS, what CMS is your developer using?  Is it well known, easy to use? Does it support other popular business management programs? Use one or more of the following links to see how your CMS stacks up in comparison to others: http://trends.builtwith.com/ http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/programming_language/all   A dedicated maintenance team is critical to your site’s serviceability—and your success.   Website development is very project-focused.  Website maintenance, on the other hand, is very task-focused.   These are two different types of work flow and work management styles.  Development is extremely creative, much like the vision that goes into new car design.  This creative vision is the heart and value of what website development firms deliver. Maintenance is much more technical and mechanical, with a much smaller, narrower focus. It requires a repetitiveness that is not usually a strong suit of creative firms.  A company dedicated to maintenance—much like an auto repair shop—is focused on repetitive tasks day in and day out.  Your site’s serviceability will be well served by a team whose primary focus is maintenance. Enhancing user experience is your top priority.   The prime function of your website is not to serve you; it is to serve your customers (who in turn serve your business with its lifeblood – revenue).  When people enjoy using your site, and derive value from it, its value to your company increases many fold. Conversely, when the information or functionality of your site is out of date, inaccurate or otherwise behind the times, users will be frustrated and, in all likelihood, will not return.  It’s your responsibility to keep your site current in real time, so that it provides users a rewarding experience. This can only be accomplished if your site is easily serviceable. Helping you do that is our top priority. Parker Web Services specializes in fast, knowledgeable and affordable website maintenance services.  It is vital to keep your website up to date and looking as professional as you are. With regular and ongoing website maintenance, your site functions as a source of client attraction, lead generation, increased revenue, and streamlined daily operations. Being able to service it should be the last thing you have to worry about. Our proactive approach stops website crashes, out-of-date applications, malware attacks, and anything else that slows down your business success on the internet. Do you need help with optimizing your website serviceability? We’re here to help. Call 1-877-321-2251 or contact us online. Parker Web prides itself on providing a top-notch website experience. Schedule a call today.

Website Maintenance – Defining the New Services Industry Segment

High performance websites need a maintenance service plan.   Websites are the central hub of communications for most companies. A proprietary website is the only place on the Internet over which you have total control of your message. Only you determine the purpose, function and content of your custom built website. The phrase “online marketing” fades away as being online is part of everyone’s daily life, work and entertainment reality. As such, the idea of “digital marketing” no longer works because websites are where brands live and breathe today. Virtually all communications technologies have gone digital. Keep in mind that your website can serve your business in many ways beyond displaying information and generating leads. Some businesses perform multiple operations through their websites which engage customers, strategic partners and employees. Others use websites as their primary customer transaction centers as in e-commerce. We call this “Operational Integration.” As you realize all of the ways to integrate the Internet into your business operations, major advances become achievable. With something as important to your business as the design and functionality of your Web infrastructure, you would think by this day and age a website maintenance service industry would be well defined and burgeoning. Amazingly, there is no clearly recognized website maintenance services category in the market. We know of no trade associations specifically dedicated to developing and supporting this (new) industry segment. Your website maintenance choices are generally limited to your website designer, agency or in house staff. If it’s in house, you probably use a CMS which may limit your ability to make certain changes you want. Of course, you or your staff must dedicate time to website maintenance. If you use your designer or agency, you may wince knowing that more invoices are coming once you pick up the phone or send a change request. Years ago we heard the clamoring for a better way to keep a substantial investment – your website – performing efficiently and delivering a solid return. We recognized this need and developed a business plan to provide the service. Having succeeded in building the service model, we now believe it’s important to develop standards and best practices for our new services industry category – website maintenance services. It will help to point out that we are not in the website design business, but practically every other web services company is. If a client spends $10,000 – $20,000 perhaps $50-grand or more on their company’s web design & development, it should start paying for itself quickly without another thick layer of expense just to keep it relevant and performing effectively. Convenient, affordable maintenance service plans should be plentiful in the market, but they are very hard to find. Obviously, it’s nice to be a diamond in the rough at this point, but we know there are market forces driving our niche business model toward a growing services segment. We’d like to help serve the marketplace by sharing best practices we’ve learned through patience, practice and continuous improvement of website maintenance services. We’ll begin by defining the website maintenance space using a simple analogy. Ford Motor Company designs new cars.  Other people maintain them – for a good reason! It will help to clearly delineate Website Maintenance Service as separate and apart from Website Design & Development, so let’s expound on our analogy: Let’s say you’ve identified your new vehicle choice by looking through auto manufacturer brochures, comparing the designs, features and options you want. You place an order which goes to the manufacturer (Ford Motor Company) and your customized vehicle arrives at your local Ford dealer. The moment you drive off the lot, you have options for maintaining your new Ford. You can use your Ford dealership service department. You can also use any other dealership service department. They all have access to replacement parts and the tools to work on your car. Of course, most new car dealerships charge top rates for service to help cover their large overhead. Maybe your ideal auto maintenance choice is your experienced local mechanic shop. They too have access to all the tools, parts and technology to keep your Ford running sweet. They keep rates reasonable because all they do is work on cars and their overhead is much lower than a dealer’s. You appreciate knowing they’re an ASE Certified auto mechanic, being trained in current technologies and automotive best practices. Liken a website maintenance service company to your highly skilled and experienced local mechanics. They can be your best option for almost all of your service needs. You really can’t hire Ford Motor Company to service your new Ford. You can get pretty close by using your authorized Ford dealer, but Ford and other manufacturers are smart enough to know it’s better to have maintenance services handled locally and independently. Ford is in the business of designing and building vehicles, not operating thousands of service centers around the world! Your marketing agency or website design firm is in the business of designing and building websites. Providing affordable maintenance services drains resources from what they’re really good at – creating and building – so many of them treat web maintenance like a “forgotten stepchild.” Agencies and designers who offload maintenance to a trusted third party can keep their focus on better strategic marketing and design services for their clients. In fact, some of our best referral partners are marketing agencies and website design firms. The synergy of our relationships serves our mutual clients very well. Establishing and Codifying the Website Maintenance Services Industry Parker Web Service defines Website Maintenance as: Technical and content development services designed to monitor and maintain existing websites to keep them functioning and performing at optimal efficiency; services that perform updates and changes in five major areas: technical, operational, marketing, user-experience and Internet standards. We have coined the acronym – TOMUS – as an easy way to remember the 5 Website Maintenance service categories: Technical Operational Marketing User-experience Standards Setting Website Maintenance Standards Parker