You can’t run an eCommerce site without a web developer. So you hire a developer who sets you up with a nice-looking site built on Magento, or whatever your platform of choice is, and you’re off to the races. But what happens next? For many eCommerce businesses, the answer is to wait until something goes wrong or the website starts looking dated and then contact the developer again. This is a bit like only taking your car for an oil change when the engine gives out. While the cost of an improperly maintained car is a new engine, the cost of an improperly maintained website is lost sales.
Sometimes, these lost sales are invisible. You simply never know that you are leaving money on the table. Other times, they are more dramatic. When problems compromise the security or functionality of the site, customers can’t pay you even if they wanted to until those problems are resolved. Website maintenance retainers are a bit like health insurance for your website, but they can be much more than that as well. Let’s take a look at what having a retainer can do for your Magento business.
What is Website Maintenance?
There are two aspects of proper website maintenance. The first is the regular updates and fixes that go into making sure that a website is performing at an optimal level. These are predictable maintenance issues that are important to a well-functioning website but often ignored. The second aspect of website maintenance involves the unexpected problems that come up. These issues can’t be ignored, but are often fixed via ad-hoc development rather than by someone on retainer who can take care of the problem promptly.
Why is a Website Maintenance Retainer Important?
Rapid service is just one of many reasons that having a website maintenance retainer for your eCommerce site makes sense. There’s a reason that large companies have full-time staff looking after their websites. Let’s look at some of the major benefits that your Magento site will get when you have a team of experts on retainer to handle known problems and identify issues you may not know about.
Security concerns
If you have a personal computer, then you know how often they notify you when software updates are available. Many of these updates are security patches to stay ahead of rapidly evolving threats. When Magento 1 reached its end of life and no longer received security updates, tens of thousands of sites were compromised by an exploit. If you aren’t updating your software with the latest security patches, then your site is just as vulnerable to attack. Keeping up with security patches is a great way to utilize your website maintenance retainer as it helps keep both you and your customers safe.
Performance improvements
In addition to security patches, Magento is frequently updated with new features and performance enhancements. Staying on top of these updates will give you these features as well as the benefit of increased security. But upgrades aren’t the only performance enhancements that can come from having a professional keep an eye on your site. Problems arise frequently that affect the functionality of a website. You’ve likely been to a website where things didn’t quite work like they were supposed to. It’s frustrating and will cause consumers to go elsewhere to purchase products. While you can have a professional fix the problem after the fact, having one monitoring the site gets the problem fixed fast, ensuring a minimal loss of sales.
Improving customer engagement
The reason customers leave your site when there’s a functionality problem isn’t just because the website won’t let them do what they want to do. The eCommerce market is huge and customers have many options available to them now. They leave sites because of friction. A broken site may be the most extreme example of friction, but it isn’t the only one. Keeping a website optimized to improve usability and ensure that users are finding what they need as quickly as possible is a continuous process. Any marketer can tell you that improving navigation helps increase conversions by reducing the bounce rate. By having a team on retainer ready to respond to customer pain points and address those concerns promptly, your customers will stay on your site longer and make it through checkout more frequently.
Search Engine Optimization
You can’t engage customers if you can’t get them to the site. While search engine optimization strategies don’t change nearly as much as security threats do, there are frequent changes to the algorithms used by Google and other search companies. Some of these changes can take your site from a top performer to the second page almost overnight. While complete knowledge of how search engines rank pages is outside the scope of a development team, they will be able to quickly implement changes recommended by an SEO expert.
Design modernization
An outdated website sends the message that your company is less professional than the competitors who keep their site modern and current. In this case, outdated could mean a design that looks like it came from a decade ago or it could simply mean that the content hasn’t been updated in a long time. Your website has to show signs that you are an active and stable company if customers are going to trust you with their purchases. Stagnant content is a sure way to tell them that you aren’t paying a lot of attention to your website and give the impression that you won’t pay attention to their needs and concerns either.
What does a Website Maintenance Retainer Include?
You now have an idea of the broad categories of things that can go wrong if you don’t have someone looking after your website. For big companies, the people managing the website are usually a part of a fully staffed IT department. Not every business has the resources for full-time staff but they all do need the benefits that come with it. This is where a website maintenance retainer comes in. But what exactly do you get when you begin paying that retainer? Let’s take a look at what a typical website maintenance arrangement will cover.
Round-the-clock support
It would be nice if everything that went wrong with your website did it during normal working hours, but it doesn’t work that way. You never know when a bug will prevent users from getting to the site or you may need to quickly update some of the information on the page to reflect time-sensitive information. In these types of situations, you can’t wait for the next business day when a developer checks your contact request. You need someone on retainer who can respond immediately.
On-demand changes and content updates
Whether they are emergency changes to the website like the example above or just regular updates to the content, your website has to be updated or your business will seem just as stagnant as your site is. Having a developer on retainer who can make these changes for you saves your staff time and allows them to focus on what they do best, serving your customers.
Software updates and security patches
While it isn’t often a new version of Magento comes out, you’ve seen what can happen if a website that relies on it doesn’t upgrade before the old version hits its end of life. Security patches, on the other hand, do often happen and one of the most important functions that you’ll receive as part of your website maintenance retainer is the assurance that your site is as secure as it can be.
Regular backups
Data loss is a major problem for businesses. Entire companies have had to shut their doors because they suffered data loss without having the proper backups in place. As part of your website maintenance retainer, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that your data is safe should something happen to the primary storage medium.
Feature upgrades and new functionality
Software updates aren’t all about Magento and the other products that power your website. As your business grows, you’ll find that you need more features than what was developed when the site launched. While these can certainly be developed on an ad-hoc basis, their development is also a benefit that you’ll get from having a maintenance retainer.
Pros and Cons of a Website Maintenance Retainer
Unless you want to go out of business, you can’t simply create a website once and then let it sit. Problems will arise and they’ll need to be taken care of. The software will reach its end of life and need to be replaced. These facts are just the nature of the business. As an eCommerce merchant, you have two options to handle these problems. You can utilize a website maintenance retainer to be there when you need them or you can wait until something goes wrong and hire the developer on an as-needed basis. Let’s examine the pros and cons of choosing to use a retainer.
Pros
- More affordable — Many things go into the cost of development. Retainer rates tend to be lower than ad-hoc rates and features can easily be added at those lower rates. Another big source of savings is that having the website properly maintained over time helps to reduce costs later on.
- Stronger business relationships — A web development firm will be at their most effective when they understand your business. The relationship that develops when you work with one on a retainer basis gives time for that understanding to grow and allows them to make more informed recommendations.
- Quicker response time — It can take a while before a busy development firm can make time for new work. Even when they are ready to go, the process of starting new work can take longer than you’d like. The whole concept behind a retainer is that you’re paying for something in case you need it. This makes you an active customer, with a higher priority than new work would be, and no need to go through the new work intake process.
- Dedicated account manager — Project management can be a time-consuming task, especially in a field that you’re not familiar with. With a retainer model, you’ll always have an account manager available to help you coordinate the changes that you’d like to have completed and keep you apprised of the progress being made.
Cons
- Larger projects can be harder — A retainer-based project works best when a lot of small, independent features are implemented over time. If you have a very large project, such as a whole new website or a significant redesign of an existing one, then it’s faster and more affordable to go with a per-project development strategy and a retainer strategy to maintain it afterward.
- Your needs may not stay consistent – It’s fairly easy to determine your needs when you are just setting up your maintenance plan and a good account manager will be able to help you. Your needs may change over time though, so it’s important to work closely with the account manager to always ensure that the retainer agreement fits.
Are You Ready to Be Proactive About Your Website Maintenance?
Picking the right team to handle your website maintenance is just as important as the initial decision to start being proactive about the health and functionality of your website. An inexperienced developer, or one who doesn’t have the resources to invest the proper amount of care in your site, is almost as bad as leaving the site to stagnate. Unless you are a web professional yourself, you don’t always know what your website needs. Keeping track of the software patches, SEO algorithm changes, and changing APIs is a full-time job. You need someone you can trust doing that job.
At Pineapple Development, we offer a full range of website maintenance services along with our Magneto and Shopify development offerings. To learn more about how a professional website retainer can work for the unique needs of your business, contact us today.