Website Management

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Launching your newly designed website is a culmination of what has probably been months of hard work, creativity, and skill; but managing that site in the long term is an often overlooked key factor in the success of your website. Ongoing website management services is essential to ensure that you maintain your advantage in the ever-changing landscape of the internet.

As a Google and Bing partnership agency, we are constantly reviewing the latest updates and best practices recommended by the search engines. This puts us in an ideal position to manage even the most technically demanding changes to your website. We’ll let you run your business while we manage your website.

What is website management?

After launching a new website, it’s imperative that it continues to evolve. Adding new content to your blog pages, or new products to your store, allows it to grow naturally, but these additions are far from the only steps required to see your business flourish online. Website management companies allow you to access a wealth of knowledge and technical skill to manage this for you.

Many of these website management tasks can be categorised as:

  • Front end (changes to what the visitor sees on your site)
  • Back end (technical changes behind the scenes)

Managing the content of a website might seem as simple as uploading new items, but the continual evolution of SEO can often require you to review existing content and update it. In addition, conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and A/B testing can be extremely useful tools in improving performance.

Front end management can include such tasks as:

  • Adding new pages to the site
  • Creating contact forms
  • Content additions (text, images, video etc)
  • Alerts & pop-ups for time-critical messaging
  • CRO & A/B testing to boost conversions
  • UI & UX changes to improve usability

The changes behind the scenes are those which the visitor doesn’t see, but is often based on technical recommendations for best practice from the search engines. This helps your site get found, load quicker, or work on multiple devices.

Back end management can include such tasks as:

  • Improving site structure
  • Managing redirects and error pages
  • Speed enhancements
  • Multi-device compatibility (PWA, AMP, etc)
  • Databases and APIs
  • Backups and security

What areas of your site do website management services cover?

Every website and every business is unique, but there are several key features of website management that are common across all sites. Some of the first tasks on any site management list are related to security and backups.

Website backups

If the worst should ever happen, losing an entire website would be catastrophic for most businesses. Taking regular backups and storing them securely is an absolutely essential task for any website manager. All files, pages, content, and your all-important database must be backed up.

Uptime monitoring

If you’re waiting for a (potential) customer to tell you that your website is down, just think how many you’ve already lost?

Monitoring the status of your website and receiving timely alerts means that you can avoid a potential loss of business by getting your site fixed quickly. In many cases, a good website management service will probably have it fixed before you even realise there was a problem.

Security reporting

Keeping your site secure, and in particular, your customers’ data, is one of the most important things you are responsible for when you operate any type of website. Malware and malicious attacks need to be quickly identified and stopped, with any potential vulnerabilities fixed to prevent future issues.

Periodic testing

In addition to these regular tasks, successful management includes periodic testing of various components to ensure that everything is working correctly.

These periodic tests could include ensuring that your site works on all of the latest browsers still, that your contact forms are collecting data correctly, or that any external services, APIs, or plugins are running on the latest version.

Domain and hosting

Your domain name is one of the most important assets when you’re doing business online, so it’s essential that you manage it correctly and make sure it doesn’t expire without you knowing. It’s also tied tightly to your email, so domain management and email server management are key to keeping lines of communication open.

Hosting plays a big part in SEO and affects the type of site you want to run. Changes to your site over time could well see you outgrow your current hosting provider package. Experienced website management service providers will be able to navigate the often confusing world of cloud hosting, shared servers, CDNs and other hosting related specifications that are so important to your site.

Managing your contact information

Few website owners appreciate the importance of having your contact information (sometimes called NAP for Name, Address, Phone) correctly displayed across all of your marketing channels. Featuring correctly on local search, maps, social media etc., is often tied very much to this data.

Google My Business accounts, contact pages, social media profiles, and anything online that has your contact details should be properly managed. This becomes crucially important if your business should relocate. Having a properly managed system allows you to quickly update your various profiles and properties to ensure your customers are able to get in touch with you without delay.

Using website management to protect your brand

It’s true, your website reflects your brand online and so it’s important that you maintain your brand identity here most of all. From the use of your brand colours to imagery, tone of voice, style of video; there’s so much information on your site it’s easy to slip out of character at times.

Your website management team should always have a copy of your brand guidelines in front of them, looking out to see if the content that’s being added is in line with the voice of your brand. This careful brand management should be carried through to all of your customer contact points, like social media profiles.

How do we put all this into action?

At novi.digital, we work in a three-step cycle: Analyse, Action, Maintain. This allows us to constantly analyse the changes that need to be made, make the changes required, and review the results of these actions.

By continuing to use this cycle of website management, we’re able to provide a website that consistently improves and reaches new customers. By focusing on your KPIs, we can work with you to ensure your website meets your needs as well as providing a user-friendly experience for your visitors.

Frequently asked questions on website management

“It’s a brand new site, why does it need updating already?”

In order for your website to remain effective, it has to work well with others. Search engines and social media networks make hundreds of changes to their algorithms each year, and then there’s accessibility guidelines, cookie policies, privacy compliance etc. Website management services allow you to keep up with these changes as they happen.

“Is website management and SEO the same thing?”

No, but they are integral to each other. Whilst SEO will inform many of the tasks that require updates, it’s only one part of the overall management requirements. CRO, UX, security, and many other factors will feature in your website management tasks too.

“Doesn’t our CMS manage all of this?”

A content management system (CMS) can help with some of these aspects, but essentially they are designed for managing the content on the site and not so much of the technical management. Whilst many content management systems have plugins to help, adding too many plugins slows down your site and you find yourself in a ‘Catch 22’ situation.

“Which website management services do I need?”

You might be great with producing content but less sure on the difference between 301 and 302 redirects. You could be great with a database but unsure of how UI and UX affect customer conversions. Whatever your strengths and weaknesses, partnering with a website management service that can build you a bespoke package means that you’ll be able to create an extended team around you to help you with what you need.

Of course, you may want to be completely hands-off, in which case we can take care of everything and let you get on with managing your business while we manage your website.

“Will you ‘take over’ my website?”

Whilst we can take charge of the day-to-day maintenance of your website, we’ll never take it over. We work hard from the very beginning to find out exactly what you want to achieve and we work together to meet these outcomes. Many businesses worry that website management companies will take over their website, but with novi you will always be in control of your business.

We work closely with each and every one of our clients to understand your goals.

Want to work with us?

Our website management service is designed to allow business owners to run their business and let us take care of running the website. Our experienced and qualified team will work with you to create a strategy for your site, set out your goals, and maximise the potential of your website.

If you’d like to start a conversation about how novi.digital can help you manage your website, fill out the contact form below and one of our team will get back to you to discuss your requirements.