Website maintenance

Maintaining and updating a website is just as important as building it in the first place!

One of the best ways to keep people coming back to your site is to provide new and interesting content. If your website isn't updated regularly people won't visit it as often to check for updates. Regular updates can also help make your site look current and topical. The more confidence people have in your website the more they are likely to have in your company.

High Forest Web Works can help you to achieve this by adding in the new content that you provide to help keep your website fresh.

The importance of website maintenance

Once your website is up and running you will need to consider how often you need to update the content, prices or dates;  add new content, pages and images and check that everything is working correctly.

A website that is not kept up-to-date, soon becomes stale.

Imagine a shop window where the display is never changed:
  - it becomes old and tired
  - bits start to break off the display items
  - it becomes dull and dusty
And people don't go there anymore

The same is true of websites

There will always be new information to add and old information to remove. You will come across ideas for new pages that add depth to your website and be able to offer your visitors more than just a list of items or services you are selling.

However, someone needs to make these changes so you need to consider whether you have the knowledge, equipment, skill and, most importantly, the time to do them yourself or who to employ to do it for you.

• Have you thought how often you will need to make changes to the site?
• How often will you want to update the site?
• How often will you want to add new content or new pages?
• Who will keep a backup of the website?
• Who will regularly check that links still work?
• Who will reply to email from the website?

The more frequently you update your website, the more often people tend to visit.

Website maintenance and support

All our website design packages include free maintenance for your site for the first 1-3 months which covers any minor changes that may be needed to “fine tune” your site.

After that, you can maintain your website yourself or choose one of our maintenance options.

If we haven't built your website

Whether you had your site designed by High Forest Web Works or not and you need it to be maintained and updated, contact us and see if we can help.

How will your website be maintained?

Once your website is online, you need to think about how your website will be maintained and updated.

You have a few options:

• Yourself

  You could do the updates and/or make the changes yourself. For this you do need a basic understanding of HTML and CSS or you will need to purchase and learn how to use the program the web designer used to build your site.

  We do not use any programs to build our site - they are hand coded. This means there isn't any redundant coding on the website - so the coding is cleaner and quicker to maintain and update.

• Your website developer

  They know the site and will usually be able to make changes quickly and cost effectively.

  We can agree a maintenance schedule to suit your needs: you may need to update prices and dates regularly or you may only need occasional changes.

• Or both

  For this to work effectively you do need a good relationship with your website designer and a clear understanding of who does what, and also a knowledge of HTML and CSS or the program used to build the site.

We can usually make simple changes to your site the same day. All you need to do is tell us what you want to change!

Maintenance costs

After your website is up and running we offer 2 types of maintenance support:

1. Pay as you go updates:

You tell us the changes you want to make and we tell you the price so that you know the cost before any work is done. Our minimum charge is £15

2. Monthly account:

We bill you monthly for all changes made to your website, based on our normal hourly rate.

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If you have more questions or you need more help or advice, please contact us and we will endeavour to help you ~ without any obligation.