Site Maintenance Rates

Site Maintenance

In order to be of use to your customers, your site must contain accurate and relevant content. As your business changes and grows you will likely require changes to information on your site. Unless you or an employee within your organization has the knowledge to work with a web page (HTML), you will need to contract a professional to make these changes.

Some examples of common site maintenance might include:

• Changing an email address, name, phone number, or physical address of your business

• Adding new information or changing information regarding your products or services

I provide general site maintenance on an as needed basis and do not require monthly or yearly contracts. Since no exclusive maintenance contracts are implied with any sites I design you are free to contract a third party to maintain your site or exercise any of the options below.

Your options in preparing for general site maintenance:

Have your site designed to be web manageable - A managed site allows you to log in to a specified page and make changes to the content presented in your site. This might be a page allowing you to add product descriptions and pictures to an on-line catalog or simply may allow you to change news bulletins presented on your homepage. Regardless of what the management tool is designed to allow, this type of site is more expensive than a standard site in both initial startup cost and web hosting expense . This is due to the fact that the site is usually requires a database to be hosted and a web application must be built to provide a means for you to change the information. E-commerce sites (on-line catalogs) would usually include manageability features by default.

Train a member of your staff to update the site - This option entails purchasing a copy of a web development software program (MS FrontPage, Allaire Homesite, etc.) and taking a few classes. One of the main concerns with this option is the time required to learn the design software.
* Even though it is not required, I highly recommend having the site designer develop your site under the same software package you will be using for maintenance!
what software packages do I develop under?

Contract a site maintenance provider - the final option is to contract web designer to update the site as needed. With a maintenance contractor you would notify the designer of any changes to be made to the site and provide verbal or written information as to the changes to be made. Many maintenance providers will contract on a monthly or yearly basis, so you should take into consideration the frequency in which you will need to update your site.