You’ve got your brand-spankin’-new website up and running. You’re jazzed up and ready to take on the world.
Your web developer says, “Hey, now that everything’s complete, what kind of maintenance plan do you want to sign up for?”
Not this time, champ, you think.
Six months go by, and everything seems alright…
Guess I didn’t need that maintenance plan after all, you think.
You can probably guess where this is going…
Or maybe you can’t — there are so many ways this could go wrong.
Maybe you get an email from a potential customer one day asking if your website is a joke.
You pull it up on your phone and see that you’ve been hacked, that all your content has been replaced with memes (and no, not funny ones).
Or maybe a potential customer asks why there’s nothing on your website at all.
And you find out the hacker just deleted your whole website.
You know, the one you haven’t been bothering to back up because you didn’t want a maintenance plan…
Or maybe nothing goes wrong for a few years, until one day you realize that you haven’t done any of the things that web developer said you needed to do to keep your website fresh. After years of no new content, no updates, and tons of outdated pages or broken links, customers are starting to wonder if you’re still in business.
Or maybe your website just starts to look stale. Times change, and design and development techniques and trends change too.
If you don’t change with them, you look like you’re stuck in another era — an era without customers.
All of these problems could be solved if you had just sprung for a maintenance plan.
But, you think, I’m going to do it all myself!
Is that so?
If I had a nickel for every time a client said those exact words and then didn’t “do it themselves,” well…
I’d have quite a few nickels, let me just tell you.
But even if you really are going to maintain and update your website yourself, there’s one big reason why you shouldn’t…
You’re A Problem Solver, Not A Web Developer
Whatever your business is, it’s probably not web development.
Whatever your business is, you’re in it for a reason.
And I’m guessing that reason is that you’re pretty good at what you do.
If not fantastic at it.
Which means that, if you really want your business to grow, you probably should be focused on what you do best instead of your website.
Listen, you’re a problem solver, not a web developer. You solve some problems that your customers have. That’s what you do best. That’s where you create the most value in your business.
When you’re wasting time messing around with your website, you’re not creating value in your business.
Think of it like this.
How much revenue do you generate per hour when you’re doing the things that only you can do for your business?
How much is your time really worth?
Because that’s how much revenue you’re throwing away when you waste time on your website instead of letting a professional handle it.
From what I’ve seen, you could easily make so much money focusing on what you do best that whatever you’d save by maintaining your website yourself would be covered several times over.
You need to be solving client problems. Period.
Website Technology And User Expectations Are Constantly Changing
One of the biggest problems with having a website is that, especially these days, it doesn’t take long for your website to become outdated.
That’s not just in terms of looks — that’s in terms of the technology underlying your website itself.
Even well-established content management systems like WordPress can change massively in only a few years.
The method by which your website is built today might become outdated quicker than you think, and even if it still looks okay on the front end, it might not be okay on the back end.
When you have someone maintaining your website, they’re going to be on top of changes to things like the code that underlies your website or the plugins that were used to build it. They’ll make sure that, if a plugin is no longer supported or a new version of that code comes out, your website will get updated to solve these potentially website-breaking issues.
Another problem is that what users expect out of a website also changes with the times. You have to stay on top of changes to design just as much as the technology behind your website.
If you don’t, and clients start having trouble using your website, you lose leads and sales.
Your Website Is Your Most Important Digital Real Estate
Remember, your website is your most important digital real estate — period. Much more important than social media. It’s the one place on the web that you own.
You want to keep it in tip-top shape. If you’re not willing to make a backup of your website every day, you need to have someone doing it for you.
You also need someone whose job it is to ensure your website is always up. Hosting providers aren’t going to call you and tell you if your website got hacked and there’s nothing but a blank page when you visit.
Are you going to check your website multiple times a day (and throughout the night) to make sure it’s up and running?
No?
Didn’t think so….
Managed Hosting Plans Aren’t Really Managed
The reality of “managed” hosting plans is that they aren’t really managed.
Sure, they do backups and updates (probably not as many or as often as you’d like), but there simply isn’t one person dedicated to the success of your website.
What you want is a real person on your side, someone you can call when you have a serious problem with your website, someone who can fix the problem right away.
But even if you have someone like that managing your website, it’s very unlikely they’re offering what we offer…
Our Maintenance Plans Go A Step Further
When you get a maintenance plan with us, you get regular coaching on a wide variety of marketing topics to help make your website and marketing in general more effective.
It’s much more than a website maintenance plan — it’s a business growth plan, with your website at the center.
I’d love to show what it can do for your business.
Need A Maintenance Plan? Let’s Talk
If you’re reading this and thinking, “dang, I really do need a better website maintenance plan!” then let’s talk.