You and your design team don’t need to wear all the hats when designing your website.
We know it can be hard to keep it together when a crisis hits. We’ve all been there – visitor traffic is decreasing, you’ve discovered malware, your plugin is out of date, the new WordPress update deleted your blog post images, and your homepage is displaying a 404 error.
Establishing a strong support team of specialists may ultimately make it or break it for you and the continued success of your website. Let’s take a look at some useful and necessary support resources every designer needs.
1. SEO Support
We all know how important it is to ensure your website is ranking in searches and driving traffic to your site. Finding an SEO Support Specialist can help you save a tremendous amount of time and energy. Make sure you do your research on the company or individual to ensure they utilize best practices.
Be sure to read our article, WordPress Basic SEO Practices to Boost Your Rankings, for help with WordPress SEO Basics or to share it with your SEO Support Team. Don’t have a WordPress site? We wrote an article for you, too, SEO Basics for Small Business Owners.
2. Site Security and Backups
Anytime you publish information on the web you open yourself up to a potential security attack. A hacker could use your site to distribute malware or could access your secure customer information.
There is usually a security feature or product available from your website hosting service, as well as free and premium WordPress plugins for your use to help protect you from security attacks. Regardless of which security function you choose to pursue, it is without doubt that having a Security Specialist on your team (a person or a plugin!) will help ease the stress associated with potential attacks.
For more information about protecting your site, you can read our articles, How to Protect Your WordPress Website from Hackers and Simple WordPress Security Tips.
Backing up your website is perhaps one of the most important steps to take when publishing a website. Many designers overlook this step until it’s too late. Contact your website hosting service to see what backup option they can offer you. Or, you can install one of the many backup plugins available on WordPress that will regularly schedule automatic backups, so you don’t have to manually do it yourself.
3. Theme and Plugin Support
Every so often, you may run into issues with your theme or plugin options if you use third party developers. Most developers are available for you to contact with any questions you may have – ‘How do I make my image full-width?’ or ‘How do I change the color of the menu background?’ for example. If you’ve already made any custom changes, it is a good idea to inform the developer of that if you contact them.
Sometimes you may require the assistance of a dedicated team. When searching for a company, just ensure they offer theme and plugin support.
Bonus: Check Out 10 Top Notch Blank WordPress Themes
4. WordPress Updates and Tech Support
If you use a WordPress site, then you are probably aware of the time it takes to ensure the theme and plugins are always up to date, necessary tweaks are consistently made, and crises are resolved as soon as possible. As a designer, these things may be the last on your list to do everyday. Having some sort of automatic website maintenance service will tackle these things for you, so you can focus on your designing.
A simple WordPress plugin search for Automatic Updates yields a plethora of plugins available for you.
5. Web Hosting Support
As a web designer, you are going to need a solid web hosting support team. Usually, they are the first to be contacted when anything goes awry with your website. They are usually available 24/7 and free to use.
The top web hosting services usually offer most of the needed support services on our list – SEO Support, Site Security and Backups, Theme and Plugin Support, and WordPress Updates and Tech Support. So, when searching for a web host, make sure to look for the services you need the most. Usually those services are the ones that will help you focus on what it is you really want to be doing – designing. Do your homework on this one – look at reviews and services offered.
You can do this.
Having a team of support specialists available in a crisis or simply to oversee the daily tasks of managing a website (or multiple websites) is imperative to ensuring you can keep focusing on designing. There are many companies out there, including ours, who can assist you in a time of need.
Bonus: Looking to Start a WordPress Web Design Business – 7 Things you should do