The five things a plan should cover
When a company offers a website for a monthly price, you want to know what you are getting each month and what is a separate bill. Here is what a small business should expect to see.
- The site. Design, words and the build, not just a template with your name on it.
- Hosting. The place your site lives, so you are not paying a second company.
- Updates and fixes. Security updates, and repairs when something breaks.
- A regular check. Someone looks at the site every month, so you hear about a broken form from us and not from a customer.
- Changes. A number of small edits you can ask for, like a new photo or a changed price.
What the monthly check means
Sites break quietly. A contact form stops sending, a link goes to a page that no longer exists, a photo stops loading on phones. Nobody notices until a customer says something. A monthly check means a person opens your site the way a customer would and tests the pages, forms and links.
For a restaurant, that might catch a menu link that opens a blank page. For a plumber, it might catch a quote form that has been sending messages nowhere for a week.
What a small change is
Small changes are quick edits to what is already on your site: a new photo, a holiday hours notice, a dish added to the menu, a corrected price. They are the most common request a small business has, which is why a plan includes a number of them every month. A new page or a new feature is bigger, and a plan should tell you how those are handled.
A month in the life of a plan
Here is how it tends to look. A restaurant owner sends a new lunch special and a holiday closing, and both are on the site that week. A salon adds a new stylist, with a photo and a booking link. A trades company finds out, from the monthly check and not from a customer, that its quote form needed fixing.
Most months nothing dramatic happens, and that is the point. The site is simply right when someone looks at it.
What is often left out
Read the fine print for the things that tend to be sold separately: writing the words, the photos, a second language, an online store, and anything that is not on the original list. None of these is wrong to charge for. The problem is finding out later.
What the bigger plans add
Plans above the base one usually add content and help getting found: more pages, new blog posts, a regular look at how the site reads to Google, and a short report on how the site is doing. Those are worth it if growing your customer base through the site is a goal, and not worth it if you just need a reliable site that is there when people look.
Questions to ask any company
- What is in the monthly price, line by line?
- What happens when something breaks, and who fixes it?
- How many changes can I ask for each month, and how fast are they done?
- Are the words written for me, or do I supply them?
- What is not included, and what would it cost?