I recently stopped offering “Website Hosting” directly and instead we call it “Website Management” as more of a holistic term. If you want to get hacked then by all means concentrate on paying a single bill for “Website Hosting”, don’t worry about your plugin updates, monitoring or the other security services applied to your websites health.
I believe it’s not beneficial for the industry or the customer. Simply providing a small aspect that is needed to successfully run your website is not enough to maintain an effective online presence. There’s much more involved.
Website hosting is 30% of what we actually provide
You might think transferring your hosting can save money, but what we offer goes beyond basic hosting. Companies like Crazy Domains might provide hosting for as little as $100 a year, but our services are quite different. You’re not comparing apples and apples and if you care about security and you should there’s more involved that no customer should need to know the details of unless they want to. Let me explain.
Website Licensing, dependency services
If you had a website built maybe 10-20 years ago, it could exist independently without relying on any external services. Today, however, your website depends on multiple layers of different services to function properly. Most people are not aware of these services. They are typically included, installed, and configured when your website is launched.
The issue here is that you might think your website is independent and will continue to run without any need for these third-party services. Unfortunately, many of these services require ongoing charges. It’s best to bundle these charges with a website management package, like the one we offer at GetLeads.
Each website we manage involves multiple licensing elements. These licenses are not always a one-time cost. For example, your website might use five different Google services that incur ongoing charges. Additionally, the emails sent from your website use a specialised transactional server like Mailgun, which is more reliable than typical hosting servers and also comes with its own costs. Sound like it’s a bit of a complex nightmare? Well that’s where we make things simple and charge the one cost that covers everything.
Onboarding Websites built by other Agencies
We generally prefer to build a website from scratch rather than taking over one created by another web design agency. This preference stems from the fact that web designers often change, yet the need for continuous website management persists. Many customers may not be fully aware of this ongoing requirement.
When we take over a website from another agency, we invest several hours in understanding its structure and functionality. This involves examining any custom plugins specifically developed for the website and reviewing the licensing for each plugin. We also assess any dependent services to determine if they need to be reconfigured or if we should integrate our own services instead.
Transferring a website involves more than just moving a database and files. Initially, the website might seem to be functioning well, but issues can arise if the previous agency or developer discontinues the API key or other service accesses. For example, you might discover that your maps no longer display correctly, or your reCAPTCHA fails, leading to a loss of contact submissions for months. These are tough lessons that highlight the complexities of website management.
Are you prepared for the extra cost, the extra pain or is your IT guy prepared and equipped with the website knowledge to fix the problems that may come, 1 month, 6 months after the move has been completed?
Plugin security
Moreover, there are various functional plugins that require yearly licensing to maintain security. When people get a website built, they often overlook these aspects. They assume once the site is built, all they need to pay for is hosting and domain registration. Unfortunately, that’s just the beginning.
Importance of staying up to date
I’ve learned that discussing security with clients is the most effective way to capture their attention regarding website maintenance. Sometimes, this might feel like the pest inspector who insists on annual visits to charge fees. Unfortunately, website hacking is a frequent occurrence. Last year, the ACCC reported that Australians lost over $16 million to redirection scams, many of which happened in the ways we’ve discussed.
SquareSpace (Saas) compromised
It’s important to note that this issue isn’t confined to WordPress. If you believe platforms like Squarespace, Wix, Drupal, or Joomla are safer, you are mistaken. All these platforms have their own vulnerabilities. For instance, hackers recently exploited a flaw in Squarespace’s migration process following their acquisition of Google domains. This breach compromised nearly 10 million domains.
As a side note, if you’re on SquareSpace and you need to break free we have a service for upgrading your tired old SquareSpace Site. Or if you don’t understand how SquareSpace isn’t the next step for many businesses in breaking free of hosting and technical problems you can read this article here.
What does keeping your site up to date involve
So, what does website security maintenance involve? It’s quite time-consuming. Our job isn’t just to check if your website is running. We monitor the security versions of plugins installed on your website. We ensure there are no new releases or updates needed. Moreover, we check if these updates are compatible with other elements of your website to prevent any disruptions.
Marketing
Outsourcing hosting to an IT company
We take care of all these complexities for you. However, I’ve noticed that some IT companies offer only hosting services, which is about 40% of the total job. They do this to cut costs, which can lead to websites breaking.
I always advise clients that if they move their hosting, they risk losing all the website management, licensing, plugins, and related services. Unless the new provider has a deep understanding of the system or the time to overhaul it, it’s not a wise move.
I don’t mean to sound threatening or negative, but this is the reality. Many business owners don’t fully grasp this. They see an annual bill for website management and immediately wonder if they can reduce costs.
The primary goal of your Website is a Marketing Tool
In addition to the basic functions of patching and updating your website, there are several other factors to consider. It’s crucial to choose a company that aligns with your business goals and understands that your website is more than just a marketing tool—it’s a solution to a problem. Unfortunately, many view websites as a necessary evil that doesn’t require frequent updates.
Ongoing Improvement of that Marketing Tool
This brings me to the topic of updates. By choosing a company like GetLead to manage your website, you’re not just ensuring regular hosting and updates. You’re also benefiting from ongoing monitoring and the exploration of new opportunities in the web space. These enhancements are designed to make your site more effective, efficient, and optimised for better results. Often, these additional services, such as implementing SMS for contact forms, are included at no extra cost. This feature allows you to respond immediately to customer inquiries, enhancing service levels and lead conversion.
Monitoring the health of your Marketing Tool
Another key service is our ongoing monitoring. We have systems in place that check all client sites every five minutes and alert us to any issues. This was integrated into your website last year. If your site is managed by GetLeads, rest assured it is well taken care of. You might have also noticed the monthly reports we send. These reports provide insights into your site’s management, updates to plugins, pages, and meta information, and detailed analytics on site visitors. You can use this data to compare performance month over month.
Business Opportunities
Additionally, we offer a collaborative folder for all our clients. This resource allows you to see which keywords your website is ranking for on Google, ensuring you’re fully aware of your online visibility and not missing out on potential results.
These are services that typical website hosting companies do not provide. Without them, you’re potentially not maximising your online presence, increasing the risk of being hacked, and missing out on optimising your website’s potential.
Communicating Value in Website Management
One of the biggest problems I have with any clients who may choose to leave is that they don’t understand what they’re missing out on. They think it’s website hosting and that’s it.
The excellent news is that Get Leads AU has a premium website management service available to all of our clients that takes the technical side of out of the pain it is to run an online presence. This includes a comprehensive hosting and maintenance plan where we handle everything backend so that you don’t have to.
A few features of our comprehensive package includes:
- Regular plugin updates – we’ll apply updates either as they come from the vendor or manually batch these to one of our regular bulk patch days where your website is checked after the updates is applied.
- Uptime Monitoring and Restore – When something goes wrong we pride ourselves on knowing about it before our customers. We run regular checks on all our managed sites at 5 minute intervals 24/7.
- Performance Monitoring – All servers have bandwidth, disk, cpu and memory constantly monitored with alerts set to be sent if anything isn’t quite right. No server has more than 50% of it’s resources depleted before a review and upgrade may be required to meet it’s demands.
- Best Practice Web Design – Where we’re different to the rest is not only making sure something is working on the front end but imagine if your website has errors on the backend. It’s like a car with something faulty, eventually you’ll have to fix it and it may even cost you more than you’d ever expect.
Nobody want’s to risk the reputation of a business because of a website being hacked. It’s certainly not a good look and could even spell the end for some.
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