After a website is launched, managing it effectively is a challenge that many businesses are not prepared to tackle.
Website management involves keeping your website up to date with current trends, functioning properly, and working as a tool to achieve a set of goals for your company.
Although website management is so important, many businesses struggle to find the time and resources needed to keep up.
For this reason, companies turn to managed website services as a solution for having an affordable team of professionals executing their website tasks and projects.
In this article, we’ll discuss the top 10 reasons why managed website services might be the best option for your company.
Managed vs. In-House: What’s the Difference?
When deciding to hire a website manager, there are two popular options that companies choose:
- Managed website service
- In-house employee(s)
A managed website service is a team of experts that you hire from an outside company. Meanwhile, an in-house employee is hired internally and works directly for your company.
Hiring in-house is more common with large companies who can justify the cost. Small and medium-sized companies usually opt for managed website services as they offer a better value for their level of scale.
What Managed Website Services Can Offer
Understanding what types of managed website services are available is crucial when deciding if it’s the best option for your company.
Below, we’ll list and explain some of the most common managed website services that agencies offer. These are typically offered as part of an all-encompassing service package.
Design and Editing
Changing your website’s content, adding new pages, and advancing your design are important aspects of managing your website in the long-term.
A managed website service will handle the design and editing process for you. This will keep your website up to date with the latest design trends and changes in your business.
Managed Software Updates
Nearly every website has software integrations, such as plugins, that add functionality to the website. Software developers frequently release new versions to patch security flaws, fix bugs, and add new features.
A managed website service will manage and test any new software updates so your site always remains functional and secure.
Troubleshooting and Repair
When something goes wrong with your website, you’ll want an expert who can diagnose and resolve the problem as soon as possible. Many companies struggle to find this expertise within their own team and scramble to resolve problems as they occur.
Troubleshooting and repair will be provided by a managed website service. A good website management company will offer quick response times to emergencies so you can minimize downtime.
Usability Testing
User experience is one of the most important factors contributing to your website’s success. Testing your website for usability and design issues will help eliminate any problems that degrade the user experience.
A managed website service will perform hands-on visual and functional tests on a regular basis to ensure your site is always working as it should.
Security Protection
Website protection is an essential component of website management that companies often don’t prioritize. The threat is real, and you should proactively take action to prevent your site from being compromised.
Luckily, many managed website services will also provide security services to keep your site protected. This includes a firewall, file monitoring, activity logging, malware removal, and backups.
10 Benefits of Managed Website Services
Now that you understand the importance of website management, as well as some of managed website services available to you, let’s talk about how it will benefit your company.
Below, we give the top 10 benefits of managed website services. Consider how your company could take advantage of these benefits!
1. Work with experts for a fraction of the cost
When hiring a managed website service, you’ll instantly gain access to a team of experts who are ready to get to work on your site.
A managed website service company tends to be a much better value than hiring in-house.
Hiring a full-scale in-house website team with the skills and capabilities for design, development, and security would use up a lot of resources. When you’re a larger company, this may be most cost effective, however, most companies do not have the need for such a robust in-house team.
Read our full article for hiring a website manager, where we help you decide whether you should hire in-house vs. a website management agency.
2. Maximize your marketing efforts
Unfortunately, many companies are throwing marketing dollars down the drain because their website is not working properly.
Perhaps you’re running ads to a broken lead form or promoting a product on social media that isn’t available on your site.
There are plenty of different scenarios, but they can be mitigated by using a managed website service.
With a managed service provider, your website will be inspected and tested regularly for issues that could impact your marketing results.
3. Improve user experience
Over 88% of purchasers and decision-makers research companies online before making a purchase (source). This means your website is a critical component of your sales process.
One of the biggest factors contributing towards your website success is user experience. If your website is outdated, broken, or lackluster, your user experience will be significantly degraded.
A website management agency can help you keep your website functioning properly, loading quickly, and looking beautiful so you can improve your overall user experience.
4. Increase your team’s focus
Oftentimes the role of website management is placed on an existing department, such as marketing or IT. Although these departments may seem like a good fit for the role, they lack the full range of expertise needed to properly manage a website.
When you hire an outside company to handle your website management, your departments will be relieved of these responsibilities. This allows them to focus on their core job duties, which increases their effectiveness.
5. Stay a step ahead of the competition
Keeping up with today’s web trends is not easy. That’s why good website management is essential to push your web presence ahead of your competitors.
You may struggle to find the internal resources to prioritize website management, which means your site will eventually fall behind.
Managed web services will give you the resources and expertise you need to stay ahead of your competition without bogging down your team. All this can be accomplished at an affordable cost.
6. Keep your site updated and healthy at all times
Your website’s health is an important aspect to manage but is sometimes overlooked. Over time, poorly maintained sites turn into larger problems that are expensive and time-consuming to fix, especially if you don’t have the resources on hand to manage them.
As a part of your website management services, your site will be well-maintained to help reduce downtime and eliminate website errors.
7. Spend less time dealing with your website
How many hours have you spent trying to make small website tweaks or fixing problems that a professional could have fixed in a fraction of the time?
We understand the stress and time involved when dealing with a website.
Luckily, a managed web services company will take this time-consuming activity off your plate so you can focus on more important tasks.
8. Protect your reputation
You want to help your company achieve a stellar reputation in your industry. In modern times, one of the best ways to showcase your reputation and credibility is through your website.
Customers, leads, investors, employees, and other important individuals will visit your site to research your company, analyze your products or services, and get in touch with you.
A website management service will help you protect your reputation by minimizing downtime and site errors, prioritizing website security, and keeping your content relevant.
9. Keep your data safe
Since you’ve invested so much into your website, keeping it safe should be a top priority.
There are many things that could compromise your website, but a few common examples are:
- Accidental content deletion
- Critical website errors
- Website hack or malware
When these events occur, the best way to restore your site is with a website backup. Without having backups, you may face large repair expenses and significant downtime.
When you enroll in managed website services, your data will be backed up frequently to off-site servers so there is minimal risk of your site being permanently compromised.
10. Easily scale to meet your website needs
When your company is rapidly expanding, your website typically expands along with it.
As your company grows, you may need to update information about your products or services, integrate a customer support system, or attract new hires through your site.
Keeping up with these web changes can be difficult if you don’t have the resources available to scale your web team quickly.
A website management company will have the resources available to quickly adapt to the growing needs of your business so your website can always reflect the current state of your company.
