You’ve made the decision to re-design or overhaul your website. You have some ideas as to how you want the design to look, and the overall “feel” that you want to convey, and while design considerations are important, there are a number of fundamental questions you should be asking before selecting a design or web development agency to build or redesign your website.

In this short form blog series we will explore a new question each week so be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to ensure you don’t miss out. This week we’re covering a crucial, yet often overlooked aspect of owning a website: maintenance.

Q. Do you offer on-going maintenance after my site goes live?

A new website is like a new car. Sure, once it’s yours you can take the key and drive without anyone’s help. A car would be pretty useful if you needed help driving it. However, it would pretty foolish to do so without insurance or without performing regular maintenance. For Websites, just as for cars, the cost of maintenance is far less than the cost of repairs. Ideally, you’d want the same people who created the site to perform the maintenance. The reason for this is that they know the website inside and out, meaning they can reliably handle any and all issues more quickly and efficiently than a third party. Additionally, many companies or freelancers will only offer maintenance for websites they’ve created or will charge a premium to do so.

My advice, inquire about maintenance up front. Regular backups, installation of security updates, and uptime monitoring are the cornerstones of a good website maintenance plan just as oil changes, tire rotation, and replacing the brakes are for cars. A well-established agency should have access to these tools and be able to provide them as part of their maintenance plan.