When you build a new house, you (hopefully) don’t ignore it for years after it’s completed until the roof starts to leak and the basement floods. Ideally, you get the support of professionals to help you with regular maintenance, such as getting your gutters cleared, or draining water out of your heater.
Similar to keeping your home in good shape, your website needs regular care and attention. And similar to leaving something minor unchecked in your house, ignoring your website after launch can turn into a much bigger problem further down the line.
A great, ROI generating website requires continuous improvement. While some agencies don’t offer support after launch, we at Kanopi strongly believe in caring for the entire lifecycle of your website. This is why in addition to designing and building websites, we provide holistic website support after launch.
Website support cannot be an afterthought.
The day your site goes live is really the day your project begins. As your virtual storefront, consider your website a living, breathing extension of your business. Your website build should not be a one-off business transaction, but rather a long term investment to help your business grow and meet the needs of your users today and tomorrow.
Would you go on vacation without getting a trusted friend or relative to water your much-loved plants? Website support is more or less the same, although the stakes are much higher. Put money aside for upgrades, security fixes, content reviews, and integration checks to protect your site from needing a potentially major overhaul further down the line. Otherwise you risk having your site wither away, which can be much more costly (a lot more than replacing a neglected house plant.)
Placing support in the ‘nice-to-have’ column is essentially doing only 1% of what needs to happen after launching your website. The web evolves constantly. And more critically, the most important people who use your website — your users — also will have shifting needs and behaviors. Your web presence has to adapt and adjust in real-time if it’s to keep supporting you in achieving your business goals and meeting the needs of your users. This is why support is a critical part of your business success.
Because advancements in website technology emerge daily, it’s our job at Kanopi to stay on top of the latest trends and breakthroughs in web design and user experience. Support post-launch means you won’t miss out on opportunities to keep your site optimized through iterative improvements.
How, what, and when?
That’s entirely up to you! Don’t fret if you feel you don’t have the time or expertise to give your website the attention it deserves. You’re not alone! It can be daunting trying to keep your website up to date and relevant. Designers say only 11% of clients are able to update their sites on their own post-launch.
What should you be keeping an eye on when it comes to supporting your website? Some common areas that benefit from ongoing attention are:
- Security upgrades: making sure your code and software are updated keeps your site and your user’s valuable data safe.
- Software updates: keep your site running smoothly and as fast as possible.
- Regular backups: sites can break, but should not have to be often rebuilt. Give yourself peace of mind with regular code and content backups.
- UX reviews: is your site meeting the needs of your users? Customer behaviors change. Ensure you’re staying nimble enough to adapt to those changes.
- Fresh content: engage your users and turn them into repeat customers with new, relevant information about your product or service.
- Smart content: search engines love fresh content from sites that are speedy and free of errors. Ensure your business is visible online with content that can easily get indexed.
Kanopi is nimble and agile when it comes to maintaining the performance of our client’s websites. We offer different levels of support, which means we can help you find the right amount of assistance to fit your specific needs.
How is website support from Kanopi different?
It can be hard to find website support with creative enhancements included. Like other agencies that offer support, we perform bug fixes, security upgrades, and integration checks. But what makes Kanopi Studios unique is our more comprehensive approach:
- We provide deep dives into feature enhancements for your site;
- We review and help you improve your user experience (UX);
- We prioritize a great customer service experience.
The best websites meet the needs of their users. Do you know who your users are and what their needs are? We recommend researching your users through interviews, creating user personas, and mapping your customer decision journey. And because your users’ needs and behaviors can change, we can test assumptions about your users on a regular basis.
We design beautiful, easy to use websites, but we understand that your website is only as good as its content. We can help you audit, migrate, and publish content on your site. In addition, we can help you develop smart content that gets indexed by search engines, improving the visibility of your business online.
From support with the development and design of Drupal and WordPress sites to training and help to create your content strategy, Kanopi can assist you in keeping your site optimized and up to date. Think of it as insurance to ensure your site is running at it’s very best.
We can help.
We’ve partnered with some great businesses and organizations recently, giving them a helping hand with keeping their website operating at its best. Check out our support case studies to learn more about our holistic approach to continuous website improvement.
Contact us so we can support you in keeping your website optimized, meeting the needs of your users, and helping you achieve your business goals now and for the long-term.
