Handling A Website When You Just Don’t Have The Time

A couple of decades ago, handling a website may have not been a big deal. Today, some businesses thrive on digital commercial success and bank their livelihoods from their websites. If you finally manage to build a website from the ground up and think that you’ll just sail off into the sunset from here on out, you are probably mistaken.

Just like any motor vehicle, if you don’t keep track of the maintenance, you’ll have a lot of problems on your hands. While the costs of building a website and maintaining it are certainly cheaper than they used to be, it’s still quite hard to put an exact price tag on what the total costs are. If you have neither the expertise nor the time to handle your website, you’ll need to abide by the pay-more-to-get-more rule. This still doesn’t rule out the possibility of reducing fees by understanding what exactly you need and how you’re going to achieve it.

 If you still haven’t launched your website, you’ll need to do some research on different web hosting providers.  Your web hosting provider charges you on a monthly or yearly basis, just like a room rental. It should be clear that paying for the hosting service is the minimum fee, but there are other options and packages that make it easier to create and maintain your website. 

Building your website is a time-consuming job, but it’s still much easier than it used to be at the beginning of the internet era. The problem in a tight-schedule case is that handling a website requires a lot of dedicated time, and if you don’t have enough time to learn the craft, you’ll be quickly overwhelmed.

Most hosts require you to maintain a standard level of maintenance so they don’t suspend it, as negligence or poor maintenance can cause a lot of problems. Large businesses typically have a team of IT professionals who monitor and manage the website around the clock. 

The problem that startups or small businesses face at the beginning of their digital endeavor is taking care of the website without putting its maintenance in the background. Before you look for ways to keep a strong grip on your website, you should ask yourself what kind of care and support it needs. There are thousands of website builders that can get the job done, so don’t lose track of the long-term plan you have in mind.

While there is an abundance of website designers and builders, the same can also be said for webmasters and hosting providers that handle and maintain websites. We’ll be providing you with a little guide that can introduce a few ways that would help you handle your website on a tight schedule.

Security

When you don’t have the time to take care of every security precaution while handling the website smoothly, you’ll be in serious trouble. This is why it’s very important to use the services of a professional when it comes to securing your customers’ information.

To be able to do this, visit the professionals at ThriveWP to see how they can ensure your data is never lost while keeping the website is secure at all times. Regularly scanning using test automation tools, uptime monitoring, speed tests, and cloud backup are all important features that can keep the security in tip-top shape.

All the confidential documents and data should stay confidential at all times, and loose gaps that could easily allow someone to peek into them should be sewn shut by your webmaster.

Even if you don’t have a database of credit card numbers or other important information, any information can be used maliciously against your customers if you leave room for hackers to snoop inside. You should keep in mind that, even if the information is restricted and confidential, your webmaster should be able to make it easy for your customers to access it.

Who do You Need?

When you’re looking to save as much time as possible, you’re bound to start thinking about the kind of person or provider you’d like to give the reins to. Your web developer can be a freelancer who only steps in when asked to, a full-time developer who keeps an eye on everything and only reports to you, an all-inclusive web hosting and development agency that takes care of every little detail from building the website to handling it, or perhaps a dedicated webmaster.

Choosing between these options is going to be tough if you don’t know what you need from your webmaster or developer. While thinking from a financial standpoint is usually positive, you need to analyze the cost and value of these different services. Picking the wrong one would only have you paying money for incomplete or even unnecessary support.

Freelance Website Developer

Freelancers are usually the go-to when you’re looking to make a small modification. While freelancers are great, cost-effective solutions to small problems, maintenance and handling of your website can either be beneficial or ineffective depending on your needs. When you’re still looking for a developer to take care of your website, you get to negotiate the terms of the costs involved and the time spent on the website, which is a huge advantage. If your schedule allows you to manage the website yourself, you should talk to your webmaster about only stepping in certain situations. It’s common to find a great developer who starts doing business with you as a freelancer and then turns into a full-on specialist that takes care of your website full-time.

Full-time Specialist

If you don’t have a lot of experience building and maintaining websites, a full-time specialist is one of the most recommended choices out there. You don’t want to be bogged down by negotiations with freelancers every time you need their services.

Using a full-time specialist is also cost-effective, as you’ll be agreeing to a contract for specific hours of work and certain demands that must always be met for your website to stay afloat.

If your website is an online store, forum, news portal, or any other traffic-heavy platform with a lot of changes, then it’s a project that most definitely needs a full-time webmaster to keep up with such a quick rhythm.

All-inclusive Agencies

If you’re just starting in the digital realm and your time is extremely limited as you’re stretched between the pursuit of a business plan and website development, a full-cycle agency is your best bet.

An agency can help you build a website from scratch in very little time as they’ll take care of the smallest details. Different fields of expertise are involved in the creation and maintenance of a website, and the best agencies usually have experts who have specialized knowledge in each and every step to execute it perfectly and quickly.

Digital marketing is also in action as they offer to produce content, handle SEO, social media promotions, and many other aspects of marketing that you still may not have a lot of experience in.

Full-cycle agencies usually cost more than full-time specialists and freelancers as they deal with a heavier body of work and keep a close eye on many details of the project.

Discerning the Amateur from the Professional

When you’re in the market looking for webmasters, you’ll be faced with the obstacle of trying to know if the webmaster would be able to keep up with your demands or not.

Although you may shop around on freelancing websites and search for agencies online, it’s quite hard to form an opinion on whether you’re dealing with full-fledged professionals or amateurs still testing the waters.

The rule of thumb is to look for famous or renowned professionals who are known for their good reputation. While higher fees may not always yield the best results, the laws of probability dictate that you should go in the direction of the least risk.

Professional specialists know their way around and have years of experience, which means fewer errors and less time spent repairing any unexpected event. Inexperienced ones can set you back greatly.

While they cost much less, their mistakes take longer to fix, and you’ll find yourself trying to free up time in your already tight schedule to deal with hot issues.

Website/Project Analysis

When dealing with a new webmaster or if you want to make sure you get off on the right foot, you’ll need to establish clear lines and some core targets to work on.

The first thing you should do is verify the fees and make sure you get the cost of the whole project, in addition to knowing how much exactly you should expect to pay every month or year for maintenance.

Make sure there are no hidden fees that could come back and impact your budget. After you’ve settled the costs and found a specialist within your budget, you need to know how much a specific project is going to take.

If you are only looking for someone to maintain and manage your website on a daily basis, you may not need to worry about the time frame; however, if you are looking to make some changes or rebuild the website, you must account for the time it will take to complete.

You need to settle on the tasks that are included in the initial agreement and make sure you won’t need to hire more than one specialist to handle your website or online project.

Agencies are usually used when there is more than one field that needs to be maintained or handled on your websites.

It’s a good idea to make a list of the names and specialties that the experts are brought in for so you can keep track of their specific performances.

Getting the portfolio of whoever you decide to work with is always important. You may want to take a look at the websites they’ve worked on or created to see the quality of their work firsthand.

Some professionals may give you a little training and show you the ropes of their content management system (CMS) of choice.

This can prove to be very beneficial if you’d like to offer constructive feedback and work together when you have the time to further improve the management of your website.

Administration

In most cases, your webmaster is going to handle your website at all times. What professional webmasters do is make sure that the software and hardware on which the website is running is up-to-par with the latest standards so you don’t suddenly find your website slow, crashing, or even forgotten by search engine algorithms.

The system should be consistently backed up to ensure that no information is ever lost in the event of an emergency. Restoring backed-up information is far easier than trying to restore it after losing it completely.

To avoid being caught off guard by hardware or software failure, the servers should be constantly monitored and monitored.

A full-fledged webmaster should be an expert on languages like Perl, HTML, and JavaScript to be able to resolve simple problems without needing to wait for a developer to fix them.

Traffic

At first glance, you may think that your webmaster won’t help you a lot when it comes to thinking of marketing schemes and pushing sales.

A webmaster can help you increase sales by analyzing how many people visit your website and what they are interested in. This should be useful information when it comes time to plan digital marketing campaigns.

A professional webmaster should use the latest tools to help you monitor the traffic and gather as much accurate information as possible to form a precise picture.

They are also responsible for experimenting with new tools and designs while coordinating with your marketing plan for a synchronized approach to improving your website.

The launch of a website can be an ordeal, especially if you don’t have enough time to handle it properly and keep it consistently maintained. Losing business because your website isn’t properly maintained can snowball quickly and affect the business’s reputation.

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