Website Hosting and Support

Support being the operative word.

Disturbing Website Support Trends

The disturbing trend witnessed lately is a total lack of support.

A number of business owners I have had the pleasure to speak with in the last few months have extraordinary difficulty getting what they want from their webmaster. This is a common occurrence for organisations where the webmaster is often a voluntary position and someone who has other priorities than doing free work. But these are businesses and businesses pay.

Business clients pay their webmaster. Is it time you asked your webmaster what for?

Website Hosting and Support Expectations

Hosting
Everyone is different but it is fair to say that you pay for your site to stay live online. Within that I have an expectation that my site is backed up regularly and that updates are performed for me.

The issue of backups dramatically entered our consciousness in June this year when over 4000 Australian websites were lost. The hosting provider was hacked and the backup servers were hacked. It would be fair to say that nobody ever expected this to happen.

Backups
Do you know when and how your backups are done and how they are stored should a similar incident happen again? You should. Reliable backups are your business backstop should anything malicious ever happen to your website. They are your ability to get back online quickly and with minimal damage.

Updates and Upgrades
I include updates as I prefer to build in WordPress. WordPress has upgrades and plugins have upgrades. It is often important for site security that these are done. You don’t need the stress of managing them that is what your webmaster should be doing for you.

Support
Some hosting includes support. Some offer hosting packages alone and separate support packages or hosting and support.

Support needs to be defined. What is does and doesn’t include. We base it on time.

Suffice it to say you need to know what you’re getting and what you can expect. This is the background work that makes your website keep working and helps you recover in the event things go wrong. You need a reliable host and support - or it could be very expensive indeed.

You Get What You Pay For

Well you should. If you have a webmaster who argues against any change, or who takes their own sweet time to make changes maybe it is time to weigh up the cost to your business or staying versus changing.

If you have a webmaster who argues against SEO, or conversion testing strategies you need to know why. These are things you do to build your business why would any ‘partner’ you have fight against that.

Your website is your salesman online. It needs to work for you and you need to know it is in the hands of someone you trust who is supporting your business not undermining it.

Have you experienced website hosting and support issues - write us a comment to tell us below.

Belinda Faulkner is getting business seen online at WebSIGHT Revolution WebSIGHT
6524542