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FACT:
Site maintenance is FAR cheaper than site repair. Always.
When you invest in a new website, there is a common misconception that your website will work flawlessly forever with no maintenance or additional cost involved. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case at all. Something that worked fine yesterday may not work today; it’s like it broke on its own. It’s frustrating to the website owner, because you certainly didn’t do anything to break it, but there it is: A broken website that you now have to figure out how to fix. Imagine a scenerio in which you hire a stranger for $150 an hour and it takes 2 days to fix, then you’re $2400 in the hole. Wait… what?? That’s the cost of a 2 day fix. Can that be true? Unfortunately, it can often take more than two days to fix a broken website. And what guarantees do you have, if any? Especially if they are not local, you may never see your site or your money again.
It is not uncommon for a “professional” whom you’ve never actually met in person, breaks your site even worse than it was before, or simply disappears into the dark void of the internet.
Most often when websites seemingly break all on their own, it’s due to one of the following things:
Your website looks great in the current version of Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. Next thing you know, your site looks and behaves differently. It could be an update to the internet browser, the operating system running these browsers, or the device on which you’re viewing the site. Web designers and programmers can do a lot– but they don’t have the capability to look into the future to see how these updates will affect the current website.
Your website likely has multiple plug-ins for different functionalities on your website. Here at Lutz Media we love building in WordPress, however these fancy plugins all need to be updated on a weekly, if not daily basis. If they are neglected, they can break portions of, or your entire website! Your site and all the plug-ins will need regular updates, and occasionally there is a chance that the updates may not play nicely together. In these cases, you need someone to sort out the updates and get things back to normal.
At Lutz Media, you own everything form top to bottom. However, having full admin rights for your website means you have the ability to make changes and updates to the site on your timeline and not wait for your web developer to update (If that’s even a service they offer). This also gives you full access to break the site. It is both wonderful and potentially dangerous for you to have the keys to the Bugatti!
There are other issues that can affect the way your site behaves, including hardware failure, viruses, malware and firewalls among other things. When your website has a problem, it takes time to diagnose the issue, in addition to fixing the actual problem. Let me tell you from experience, it’s never the same thing. It is most always something new and puzzling! Depending on what the problem is, it can take some time to figure out what is going on. Sometimes, even longer that it takes to fix it. The worst thing you can do is wait till it breaks. Maintenance is always cheaper than repair! Always.
My Website is Broken: Who’s Fault is It?
Naturally when you have issues with your website, it’s easy to get frustrated, angry, and look for someone to blame. You know you didn’t break the site, so you may expect the website builder to fix it for free. But there’s a pretty good chance they didn’t either.
Your web designer’s job is to deliver a working website to you, free of bugs and glitches. Remember: This is not a lifetime guarantee. It is a promise that at the time of delivery, your website is in good working order and functional.
Your web hosting company’s job is to keep the software updated, apply security patches and take regular backups of the site.
*** Please note, it’s possible that your web design company can also host your site, however Lutz Media does not recommend using a hosting provider like your friend who owns a server or no-name hosting company with little to no real customer support. We heavily rely on industry leaders like GoDaddy who can be reached 24/7 to field any emergencies that may arise.
Your job as the website owner is to make sure your site is maintained, either by doing it yourself or hiring someone to do it. In addition to the monthly maintenance, you need to make sure to budget for the unexpected. Because as we’ve learned, a website isn’t something you purchase once and never look at again. And if something does go wrong, be prepared to pay an exorbitant hourly fee to have it fixed. Just as you would pay a contractor to come fix something at your house. Repair technicians know you are in a bind and almost always take advantage of strangers calling them in a frenzy begging to get their site live again. Avoid this at all costs.
If you have questions about why websites break, your site’s maintenance, hosting, or potential issues with your website, call us directly at 212-444-8894 or email us anytime. We are here to help.
Do The Math:
Compare a cost effective monthly fee, or built in annual plan with your trusted website agency, to paying a random gun-for-hire (programmer/coder) $100-$200 an hour to fix a broken site that could take days to fix. Who’s to say they actually remove the hidden malware or fix it properly? We have had to fix dozens of sites that were completely obliterated by “fixers” who came cheap, then disappeared, and ended up costing thousands.
WordPress sites fail, they break. Plugins, themes, jpegs, javascript code… it all breaks eventually. It is not if, it’s just when. Most sites start to fail within 90 days of being published and can experience total catastrophe within 6-12 months if left neglected.
Here’s some numbers that your competition and colleagues deal with every day.
On average 30 000 new websites are hacked every day. These 30,000 sites are usually legitimate small businesses sites, that are unwittingly distributing malware.
In 2019, thanks to CloudFlare, 1/3rd of the internet’s websites crashed overnight!
There are over 18.5 million websites infected with Malware at any given time, doing things like stealing clients credit card info from the sites and slowing them down dramatically… and they don’t even know it!
During 2019, Securi saw that over 60% of websites were vulnerable at the point of infection — a 4% increase from 2018.
It is estimated that 62% of websites have SEO spam infections and 47% of all infected websites contained one or more backdoors, allowing attackers to maintain access to compromised environments after initial infection.
In order to drive home these points, I’d like to share a mind numbing screenshot of some badly broken javascript code we recently cleaned up this week for a frantic client. We would have charged this client $1200 for this repair job however it came at zero extra cost to them, as they had opted for bundled and discounted site maintenance with the initial purchase of their site.
Here is a screenshot of her website once we cleaned up the javascript :
And here’s some Malware that a bot (automated hacking software) placed on one of our clients site :
Yikes! Enough to give you vertigo right? The worst part was that they had initially turned down site maintenance with us after we built the site thinking they could “set it and forget it.” Three months later their site became so slow it was almost unusable and cost them thousands of dollars in eCommerce revenue.
They eventually signed an annual site maintenance contract with us but the damage was done, they esitmated a $10-12k loss during the infection period. We scrubbed and repaired the site from malicious malware and made it blazing fast once again but the damage was done.
Stop and ask yourself and your team if you can afford this kind of risk? You certainly can not.
According to ADT, 9 out of 10 victims of home invasion go on to purchase a home security system. They will all invariably tell you it is better to buy the protection before tragedy happens. The difference is that you have a 100% chance of eventual and total catastrophic site failure if you neglect your website completely. It is not a matter of if, it is just a matter of when. We are here to help!
For more information please call us at 212-444-8894 or email us directly today. We are happy to help and all consultations are absolutely free.
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