CONTENT MAINTENANCE

Once you've actually put your website online, the real challenge is in maintaining and updating it. Keeping your site fresh encourages people to return. Poor maintenance is a sure way of losing visitors. Not only will we give you a dynamic presence on the web, we can also assist you in maintaining your website on a monthly basis to ensure it's seamless functionality at all times. Whether you need graphical changes or routine maintenance like image uploads, we're here to help you run your business online.

What is Updating? Updating a site involves changing content. This may be as simple as checking links to other sites to make sure they are current. Remember, adding new content doesn't necessarily mean erasing the old. Dated material such as press releases, software updates and articles or transcripts of speeches can be useful and should be archived. Make sure that archived information is organized in a way that is easy to access.

Good maintenance for a small site may take as little as two to three hours a month. For a large site, maintenance may be a full-time job. We can update your site for you so that it remains fresh and up-to-date with current information about your company, products, and services. Our maintenance rates start as low as $35 per hour for basic HTML edits, corrections, and content changes. View our Maintenance Packages

Maintenance Strategies

Start by deciding how often you want or need to update your site and how extensive those updates will be. For example, a news publisher will likely update information on a daily basis; in some cases, even hourly. A retailer may update its site whenever there is new merchandise as well as for special sales and promotions.

Next, pay attention to what your users are doing and saying. How many people are visiting your site and where are they looking? There are ways of tracking which pages of your site are being frequented. If your site is hosted by a web hosting service, it should supply you with detailed and timely reports of this information.

Maintenance Methods

There are a number of ways to update and maintain your website. The easiest is by way of Visual Editing software. A Visual Editor will allow you to make changes to your site visually, as opposed to editing of the [HTML] coding.

Visual Editing Software

Contribute - I believe this is the easiest web maintenance software around today. Anyone can use it without knowledge of

HTML. All the user needs to do is open a pre-created file, make a change and press "Save." The file uploads to the Internet and the site has been updated.

Dreamweaver - This software is used to develop and maintain websites. Dreamweaver works best for experienced web developers. All the developer has to do is open a pre-created file, make a change and press "Save." The file uploads to the Internet and the site has been updated.

GoLive CS - This is another software that is used to develop and maintain websites. GoLive CS works best for experienced web developers. Just like Dreamweaver, all the developer has to do is open a pre-created file, make a change and press "Save." The file uploads to the Internet and the site has been updated.

Microsoft Frontpage - is a Microsoft software product which is used to design web pages. It is made with ease of use in mind, and does not necessarily produce the most elegant or reliable code. While it may be suitable for the novice, it is generally frowned upon by the professional web design community.

Hosting Provider's Control Panel - A Control Panel comes with any standard hosting subscription, which includes a file manager, a website editor, FTP and a ton of other features. This allows you to edit and update your files via the Internet. This works best for those who do not have software.

The GOOD & BAD about Hosting Control Panels - The good thing about this system is that you don't have to be at your home or office to make a change to your website. You can access the Internet from any computer, enter your website's control panel and make a change. You’re done!

The bad is, you have to enter a username and password every time you want to update your website. This is fine for infrequent updates, but for frequent use, it can become a hassle. Most panels feature a built-in web editor, which is supposed to allow editing of a web page. But it often limits your ability to make changes the way you want. Most web editors require knowledge of HTML and most are not Visual Editors.

In my opinion, using software like Contribute is the best way to update your website; I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to maintain their own website. Purchasing a program such as these will save a lot of money in monthly maintenance fees from a webmaster.

Web Maintenance Rules

Rule 1: Clean & Functional. Good maintenance generally means making sure that your files and links are functional and that fresh information is placed on the homepage as a link to new content. Sometimes announcements for updates clutter the home page, making it look loaded and cluttered.
New information should only appear on a homepage as a snippet - a brief statement that notifies the visitor that the site has been updated. This should be done sparely, so as to keep the homepage clean. The homepage is the first thing a user sees, so you want to make a good impression.

Rule 2: Update Consistently. Users will begin to know when to check your site for new information by looking at your homepage. You must add updates at a specific r time – consistently. If you do not, you will lose visitors. If every Friday is the day you update your site, make sure you do this every Friday, (and say so on your website). If you don't know exactly when you'll have new content, encourage your visitors to get on your mailing list so that you can notify them when new information is available.

Rule 3: Get Feedback. Allow users to give you feedback, via e-mail. This can play a big part in quickly finding any errors on your site such as broken links, typos and missing images.

Contact us to make the changes for you!