Do we do website maintenance at TLD?
Yes we offer website maintenance services! We help people keep their websites up to date, with monthly, annual, or project based plans, and even can take over the website maintenance of a pre-done website.
While our specialty is bespoke designed WordPress sites, we have experience with theme sites, Shopify, Squarespce and WIx.
but we are great with design and HTML as bespoke design is our specialty. We often do a website audit with a list of suggestions for improvements and provide training if you want to learn to make some simpler changes yourself and have a WordPress website.
What happens when a website is launched, is it deemed “finished”?
Of course not. If we have been working on your website, and are prepping the masterpiece for launch, we do a lot of due diligence. Once we have checked and matched it against checklists and cast our eyes again over it, done a sanity check, looked at it a bit more, read it through, and given it the once over, and you have done the same, we may be ready to launch, but that doesn’t mean it’s done!
Website maintenance services
That’s where website maintenance comes in. In fact, in the last few years, when we have measured it, we have seen that 50% of our work is on website maintenance services.
We support you with:
- Websites and brands we have created for our clients
- Websites and brands we have taken over – where our clients worked with someone else previously and need someone they can trust to take over.
Website maintenance services time can be used for:
- WordPress security updates
- Additional pages added to your website
- Mockups and designs
- Social media design
- Canva training
- Copywriting for website pages and captions
- Remarketing Banners
- Social media banner design
- Brochures and Flyers
- Stationery
- SEO work
What does website maintenance cost?
We’re flexible. You can ask us for:
- A fixed price quote for a finite list of changes
- An ongoing support service
- Time based blocks of time.
Prices start at £125+VAT for quick wins and fixes.
A website done by someone else
When it comes to taking over another website, we usually need a bit of extra time initially to get the website downloaded and backed up, try out the login details, login, and have a look “under the hood”, and help you to decide what the priority website changes would be.
We encourage you to make a list, and divide it into priorities.
This way, when we are getting to know your website, we can also start on some of the simpler more straightforward website maintenance changes right away.
Case studies: stories about clients who we do website maintenance
Montagu Financial Management
Montagu Financial Management have been a client of ours since the early 2000s. We started off working on their website, and funny enough, the client never asked us to redesign it. So, while the design was always a good one, over time we felt that there were opportunities to modernise it which we never did before they were acquired.
Over the years Montagu bought over 180 hours of maintenance time or “pre-paid blocks of time” – which was mostly used on their mailers.
As you know when it comes to investing there are people who are cautious all the way up to adventurous. And for this reason they needed a lot of maintenance time in order to update a whole range of investment client groups with their own set of information. It had to be done by someone who was able to understand the intricacies and complexities of this. We have worked with a lot of IFAs so this really helped. Amy was their main point of contact over the many years, and when they were acquired they were so happy with the service, that they have since become a maintenance client of ours too!
Dr Richard
Our first project for Dr Richard (who is a celebrity dentist) was for his logo for Wimpole Street Dental and the website for the practice at the domain wimpolestreetdental.com.
Following this, we created several other websites, including harleystreetveneers.com, wimpolestreetveneers.com, emergencylondondentist.co.uk, devonshireplacedental.com and his main website doctorrichardlondon.co.uk.
Some of these projects were “fixed price”, but then their upkeep was all done with pre-paid blocks of time. Dr Richard could buy a batch of time, and any work we did across any of these websites could be taken off the amount he would buy.
This time was often used for SEO enhancements including additional keyword rich text, new landing pages, interlinking between pages, optimising images, and adding blog articles.
Over the years, Dr Richard did a lot of other marketing, and we created a lot of other material, including gift vouchers, flyers and brochures. All of this was done with our pre-paid blocks of time.
This activity created many new enquiries for his many dental services, and Dr Richard went from strength to strength. In fact, he became so successful that he actually was able to sell his practice to another dentist.
Aspire Leadership
Back in the early days of responsive web design, we created our first responsive website for Aspire Leadership. It was designed by Aric, built by Kevin and a labour of love throughout. Every detail was considered, and of course as it was the first, we were testing on all devices what the site would look like in these different formats.
This was back in 2013! And over the following years, we continued to maintain this site. More than just the ongoing WordPress theme and plugin upgrades, we added new pages as their company grew.
Then Liz and Bronia took us up on a homepage makeover offer. While the site still looked great, new design trends had come into play, most notably about the full width of panels. Using pre-paid blocks of time, we worked on new designs, and once these were signed off, our coders worked on implementing these.
This meant they had a new look homepage, which totally modernised the look of their website.
Not only that, but they had new top navigation and footer and slight changes to the site wide styles. Which meant effectively they had a brand new website but done without the project costs – to be frank, they saved a lot of money.
We don’t mind, honestly, doing our work on pre-paid blocks of time. It’s a win win. Granted, clients like the certainty of fixed price quotes, but Aspire Leadership knows us. They know we don’t “round up”, we track all time accurately, across the board. This includes design time, coding time, and project management. But still I would estimate this project was done with 1/3 of the cost of a new website project.
The other meaningful changes they have benefited from over the years is ongoing SEO work. Our SEO partner, Tom, manages their SEO, which includes their organic search results and their paid for ads.
Liz and Bronia are great businesswomen. They trusted, and they also trust Tom, who is very fair and honest. Their budget 10 years ago was a lot smaller, and over time has grown. With PPC ads, the idea is simple – you have to be earning more from the income you generate through enquiries than you pay on an ongoing basis for monthly ad spend and monthly SEO management. The increase in the amount they spend monthly clearly shows they have been benefiting from the ad spend.
While the first project we did for Bronia and Liz was based on a fixed price project, ever since, they have been working with us on a purely maintenance basis. For them, continuous maintenance blocks – with our pre-paid blocks of time – is exactly what they need and value.
FAQs about maintenance
What if I don’t use all the time I buy?
You don’t have to worry, whatever you don’t use, and is left over, you have up to 12 months to use up on other projects. When we quote or rather – estimate – the amount of time that things may take, we do this based on experience. Many things can affect this – like how much additional communication is needed, if we need to work with third parties, and how many changes are requested. We still stick to our guarantee, never publishing anything without ensuring you are really thrilled with the result. And our experience and talent and the fact we really do listen mean we do get it right early on. This all saves a lot of time!
How do you track time?
We have our own in-house system that we use to track time. We “pre-load” the amount of hours you bought initially, and then for every minute we use, we take that time off. We don’t “round up” like some people do – we’re honest with what time we use, in both the activities and the communications. We also use a tool called Toggl for ultra-accuracy. When one of the team starts to work on a project, they press “record” and then when they stop they press “Stop” – it works brilliantly.
What else can I use my pre-paid blocks of time for?
Website maintenance:
- Design mock-ups
- Image sourcing
- Image optimisation
- Retouching and cleanup of team pictures
- HTML implementation
- WordPress integration
- Content entry
- Coding changes
- WordPress theme upgrades
- Plugin upgrades
Social media
- Training: Ideation, social media strategy, headline and caption writing, technical how to’s
- Setup: Help with setup of new social media channels – including banners, initial posts, writing bios and setting up quick links
- Design: Creating branded templates, designing specific social media posts, creating diagrams, infographics, and comparison tables, resizing and optimising images
- Copywriting: Writing and editing of blog articles, social media captions, and headlines
- Posting and publishing: We can also manage the scheduling and publishing of your social media content.
Design for print
Business cards, flyers, stationery, brochures, signage, banner designs and even car and van livery.
We can liaise with your printer and create correctly supplied artwork.
Branding
Yes, you can use your pre-paid blocks of time for more – beyond website maintenance, we can use this on various branding projects, including brand guidelines, brand values workshops and logo designs.