There are an estimated 1.13 billion websites online, and this staggering figure demonstrates the desire for businesses, organizations, and individuals to create an online presence, drive sales, and inform the world about their mission.
Web design is only half the battle. Have you considered what is required for website hosting? An online presence comes with concerns over uptime reliability, maintenance, costs, scalability, backup, and restore; perhaps you may have compliance concerns, or maybe you struggle with the technical aspects of hosting a website.
Below, we explore website management services and how they can help your organization.
What Are Managed Website Services?
Managed website services refer to outsourcing comprehensive website maintenance tasks to a third party. These technical tasks are designed to ensure the smooth running of a business or organization’s website and typically include the outsourced management of website maintenance, day-to-day hosting services, performance optimizations, backups, security monitoring, updates, and support and troubleshooting.
With website management services, website owners can focus on growing their business, creating content for their site, and safely leaving the technical aspects of running a website to the website management specialists.
What Do Website Management Services Include?
Website management services include a diverse range of tasks designed to ensure that a website is kept up-to-date, secure, and operating efficiently.
These web management services include:
Website Hosting Services
Your chosen website management company will play a key role in ensuring that your website is accessible on the Internet. Instead of hosting your website on your own network server, your website management provider can host it on their specialized servers. Choosing the right hosting provider is essential to maintaining your website’s uptime.
How would you be impacted if your website experienced a prolonged period of downtime? If you are simply hosting a static website for information, then perhaps the impact would be minimal; however, if your website was a revenue stream for your business, every second your website is down costs you sales and income. Elastic cloud services are cloud instances (servers) that are resilient to downtime. You can design and scale your website to make it handle server issues with near-zero unexpected downtime.
It’s also important to have your website running on the correct hardware. If you have a high-traffic website or a website with seasonal traffic, you need to be prepared for surges and usage spikes. Can your infrastructure cope with the demand? Does your server have the capacity for the usage demands? It’s possible for your website management services provider to scale the infrastructure on demand or when you know spikes in traffic are expected.
Technical Maintenance Services
A web management agency that provides not only hosting but also comprehensive maintenance services is invaluable. From managed WordPress hosting to web design and ongoing maintenance, the best website management companies offer full-service solutions.
Your website is a reflection of your business. Outdated websites can turn away potential clients. A web design company that offers affordable, flat-fee services can help in redesigning and managing your website effectively. Positive user experiences, client testimonials, and a responsive design are crucial for online success.
Regular updates and maintenance to your website’s software and plugins are absolutely essential to succeed and ensure ongoing compatibility and security. Web designers and project managers working on your website should prioritize ongoing maintenance, introducing new features and pages to keep your site fresh. This approach not only satisfies search engines but also enhances the user experience.
Security Monitoring and Response
Implementing security measures to protect against malware, hacking, and other cyber threats and responding to any breaches that occur. A reputable website management service employs state-of-the-art tools for continuous security monitoring, ensuring your digital assets remain safeguarded from potential threats.
This proactive strategy not only addresses performance issues promptly but also provides small business owners and digital marketers with the confidence that their online business is well-protected.
For small businesses relying on a WordPress website, the importance of a well-maintained and secure digital presence cannot be overstated. Whether it’s addressing an outdated website, implementing a website redesign, or adding new pages to enhance engagement, a web management agency specializing in full-service solutions caters to the diverse needs of its clients.
Backup and Recovery
Backup and restore processes are essential for websites, and establishing and maintaining regular backups of your website and providing a plan for recovery from data loss is a critical task. Daily backups are the minimum expected for production websites; if you have an eCommerce site, regular backups and snapshots (perhaps hourly) may be needed as well.
It is recommended that businesses follow the 3-2-1 data backup strategy, which ensures there are always three copies of data from all web server infrastructure.
- Three Copies: Maintain at least three copies of your data.
- Two Different Storage Media: Store the copies on at least two types of storage media, such as Tape Media and Hard Drive.
- One Off-Site Location: Keep at least one copy of your data in a different physical location.
Performance Optimization
Monitoring the speed and functionality of your website and making adjustments to improve load times and overall performance is essential not only to satisfy your demanding customers but also for SEO rankings. Search engines hate badly optimized websites, and your site will rank very low if it is slow and cumbersome. Google’s SEO algorithms actively check the speed at which your websites load. Fast websites are ranked high, and slow websites are ranked lower—it’s that simple.
It’s also important to consider the user experience. For example, if you have a retail e-commerce site and your digital transactions are slow and laggy, it’s highly likely the customer will look elsewhere and possibly buy from a competitor.
Search Engine Optimization
Ensure that your website is optimized for search engines, which includes updating meta tags, improving on-page SEO, and monitoring search engine rankings. Again, your website’s responsive design is essential for ranking higher.
Analytics Monitoring
Monitoring website traffic and user behavior to inform strategies for improvement and report on key performance indicators (KPIs). Website management services offer uptime reports,
Content Management
Adding, editing, or removing content, such as text, images, and multimedia, to keep the site fresh and relevant. This could include content associated with social media accounts and email marketing.
eCommerce Management
E-commerce services enable your website management provider to oversee your e-commerce store and payment processing systems. This service could include tasks such as product catalog management, order processing, and payment gateway integration.
Ongoing Technical Support
Providing ongoing support to deal with any technical issues with your website as and when they arise.
Benefits of Outsourcing to Website Management Companies
In order to grow and succeed, businesses of all sizes must foster a robust online web presence. By promoting their business online, companies can connect more effectively with their audience, build brand awareness, and broadly showcase their unique expertise.
Benefit From Expertise
Website management services are typically provided by web experts who have a deep understanding of the technical aspects of running a website. By using website management services, website owners can benefit from this expertise without having to spend time learning these skills themselves.
Save Time
Managing a website can be extremely time-consuming, particularly if you are unfamiliar with its technical aspects. By outsourcing the management of your website to a third party, you can focus your time on other aspects of your business, such as creating high-quality and engaging online content, marketing, and customer service.
Cost-Savings
Partnering with a top website management company can be a cost-effective decision, especially for smaller businesses. This is because it eliminates the need to hire and train a full internal team of web management experts. Website management companies typically charge a monthly subscription fee for their services, which can be customized to meet your specific needs.
Scalability
Each business or organization is unique, and its needs can vary greatly. Website management companies can scale their services either up or down depending on the company’s individual needs. This means that you can benefit from a flexible website management solution that can grow with your business while only paying for the services that you need and use.
Enhanced Security
Website management companies can deliver enhanced security features. These ensure that your website remains protected against security threats at all times without you having to worry.
Website Optimization
By outsourcing to a website management company, you will gain access to skilled search optimization experts. These experts can help you improve your website’s ranking and visibility in search engine results pages. A leading website management company can also help you improve your website’s user experience. This can include optimizing website speed, fixing broken links, improving navigation, and making the website mobile-friendly.
You may also wish to outsource the creation of online content to a website management company. Content management specialists can help to ensure that the content on your website remains fresh and up to date.
Choosing a Website Management Provider
When it comes to establishing and maintaining an effective online presence, businesses and organizations often turn to website management services. These services include website maintenance, security monitoring, and digital marketing to ensure that websites remain functional, secure, and optimized for success.
Website management services offer numerous benefits for small businesses, in particular. From affordable solutions to ongoing maintenance and support, these services can help small businesses establish a strong online presence, attract more leads, and enhance brand recognition.
With so many options available, it’s important to consider several key factors to ensure you select the right partner for your specific needs.
Expertise and Experience: Look for a website management company with a proven track record of success. Consider their experience in managing websites similar to yours and inquire about the expertise of their team members, and the technology they support.
Range of Services: Assess each provider’s range of services. Do they offer comprehensive solutions that align with your requirements? Consider whether they offer services such as website hosting, maintenance, security monitoring, performance optimization, and technical support.
Customization and Flexibility: Every business has unique needs, so seek a website management provider that offers customizable solutions. Ensure they can tailor their services to accommodate your specific goals, budget, and preferences. Enquire about their scalability to accommodate future growth or changes should your website flourish quickly.
Security Measures: Evaluate each provider’s security measures, including malware detection, intrusion prevention, SSL certificate management, and regular security updates. Ensure they follow industry best practices to safeguard your website and sensitive data.
Support and Communication: Assess the level of support and communication offered by each provider. Determine how accessible they are for addressing technical issues or inquiries, and inquire about their response times for resolving issues. Clear and transparent communication is essential for a successful partnership, so look for a provider offering 24x7x365 support.
Reputation and Reviews: Research each website management provider’s reputation and reviews. Look for testimonials from satisfied clients and assess their overall reputation in the industry. A reputable provider with positive feedback is more likely to deliver reliable and high-quality services.
Cost and Value: While cost is a factor, prioritize value over price when selecting a website management provider. Consider the return on investment (ROI) provided by their services, including the impact on your website’s performance, security, and overall success. Compare pricing models and ensure there are no hidden fees or unexpected costs.
Website Hosting Services from Atlantic.Net
Atlantic.Net has been providing IT services throughout the United States and beyond for over 30 years. We offer affordable hosting, including Virtual Private Servers, Dedicated Hosting, and Compliance Hosting. We also host a wide range of websites for our various customers, offering the best hosting solutions for various industries, including Healthcare, Big Pharma, Legal, Finance, E-Commerce, technology, and everything in between.
We specialize in providing HIPAA-compliant WordPress hosting for our healthcare clients. Our state-of-the-art hosting solutions meet and exceed the strict administrative, physical, and technical safeguards of HIPAA Compliance.
We also offer Dedicated and Virtual Private Servers that are perfect for your website management needs. Our VPS services can cater to small, medium, and enterprise-scale websites, and you can take the hosting experience to another level with our dedicated hosting. Perhaps you want to manage multiple sites or become a cPanel reseller. We have a website management hosting solution for you.
All Atlantic.Net offers a 100% uptime SLA. We will protect your investment by guaranteeing class-leading uptime availability. Our hosting regions are strategically located across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia so you can reach direct to your customers.
Ready to make your website hosting aspirations a reality? Need guidance hosting your website application in the cloud? Contact the team today.
