Still, what does a WordPress maintenance plan include, and how can it help agencies with balancing profit and rising workloads? Also, why do you need a WordPress maintenance plan in the first place? Simple, you don’t want to see your clients vanish into thin air once you’re done designing their website. First, you want to see how your design and development will help them generate their profit. Second, you’ll also want to help them keep that website running as optimally as possible, and this monthly WordPress maintenance plan can be invaluable to help your clients and meet your business goals.
We live in a time where project-based companies can no longer have the luxury of “sitting around” and waiting for other companies to come to them. Nowadays, project-based work means running after new projects and following clients, which can take up a lot of time and resources.
Agencies and other service providers have realized that keeping existing clients can be a much more rewarding (not to mention less expensive) option than continuously hustling to lure in new prospects. And as a result, some development and design agencies have added WordPress website maintenance plan services alongside their custom WordPress development services.
Needless to say, in this article, we’ll address why you need a WordPress maintenance plan for your clients and how these plans can help you scale your business.
Table of Contents
Why Are WordPress Maintenance Plans Essential?
Nowadays, every self-respecting development agency offers at least some degree of WordPress maintenance services. Why? For starters, these plans are excellent for generating another agency revenue stream.
And what is a monthly WordPress maintenance plan? It’s basically a strategy for monitoring and maintaining your clients’ sites to ensure they operate smoothly, optimally, updated, and improved.
The Benefits of Monthly WordPress Maintenance Plans
First of all, the popularity of this content management system doesn’t seem to show any signs of slowing, which means that there will always be new prospects for those agencies that offer excellent development and design services. Still, these same companies will also feel the strain stemming from the continuous client hunt, the increased demands, and the ever-growing workload. As such, offering a WP maintenance plan as a service can help with the following:
- Ensuring another recurring revenue line: Monthly WordPress maintenance plans can be an excellent ongoing service option for any client, even during off-seasons when booking new clients is difficult. Also, this can make your agency pickier regarding the clientele it works with, as you won’t feel pressured to do business with every prospect who knocks at your door.
- Ease of use: Many maintenance tasks can be automated or outsourced, meaning that they won’t be overly resource- or time-consuming.
- Improved client relationships: A stellar website maintenance plan can help build trust and credibility between you and existing and potential clients.
- Lowered acquisition costs: as mentioned above, retaining existing customers is always easier and less expensive than getting new ones. The monetization of old clientele also means that agencies can lower acquisition costs considerably.
What Does a WordPress Maintenance Plan Include?
How to create an effective WordPress maintenance plan? In essence, the actual strategy the plan will include will highly depend on your clients’ needs. Additionally, you can also create specific arrangements that cater to your strengths as an agency.
As such, your WordPress maintenance plan can always include the following:
WordPress Plugins, Themes, and Core Updates
Regular updates to all of the platform’s components are essential for maintaining optimal website performance and security. This can be a daunting and tedious process for the client, making it an important feature in any service plan offer.
These packages should include regularly updating the themes, the plugins, and the WP core, with creating regular backups.
To help your job, you may even automate these WP updates, saving much time and money. Still, this also carries some risks, so opt for only high-quality automation tools that won’t sacrifice client website security.
WordPress Site Security
Even though some might say otherwise, WordPress is quite a secure platform. Still, because it’s immensely popular, it will certainly draw the attention of hackers. Add the fact that most WP site owners aren’t tech-savvy enough to comply with the latest web security practices properly, and you pretty much have a recipe for potential disaster.
Comprehensive security services can be essential pillars of any monthly WordPress maintenance plan. You can offer firewall implementation, WP security plugins, regular security notifications, warnings, emails, SSL certification, and more.
Active security monitoring, like regular login attempt audits and malware scans, can also be included as a part of a standard or a premium plan, with problem resolution usually falling under advanced monthly arrangements.
Website Backups
Another standard element of any solid WP maintenance plan is regular backup creation to mitigate damages to broken sites allowing clients to restore their site info even after digital disasters.
Hosting
Some agencies might not want to hassle with hosting, but some clients will often prefer their agencies to handle their hosting issues instead of them, especially if they lack the skills. And even if they do know how to manage servers, they might find the related tasks too distracting, preventing them from fully concentrating on their business operations.
Finding a solid and reputable hosting provider is actually enough for any agency to offer this in a plan, i.e., resell the providers hosting services.
Troubleshooting and Tech Support
Even though there’s an avid WP community of developers and site owners out there who can answer any question, less tech-savvy site owners will often turn to their agencies to find solutions for any technical issue.
And if that’s already the case, why not offer it as a feature in your monthly WordPress maintenance plan? You can opt from several options, ranging from live chat to call and chatbot options — just ensure that your clients get quick and helpful answers.
Going One Step Further: Advanced WP Maintenance Plans
To create several service options, you can always divide your maintenance plans into basic and premium packages. If you opt to offer both, the latter can always include the following features.
Monitoring Performance and Uptime
The quicker the client’s website, the better the user experience. This is also true for SEO rankings and conversion rates. Henceforth, optimizing a site for performance can be an attractive addition to any monthly, u premium WordPress maintenance plan.
You can conduct speed tests with several tools like Google PageSpeed that will also allow you to pinpoint specific performance issues like poor uptime or slow loading speeds. Additionally, you will also get suggestions on improving these metrics.
Maintaining Databases
WP databases tend to get pretty clunky rather fast, as old revisions can pile up, and outdated themes and images can even hinder performance further, which slows down everything and frustrates customers.
As such, solid database maintenance can be a significant premium WP maintenance feature, cleaning out outdated plugin versions and more.
Content Management
If you have the resources and the time, you may also offer web content management. This can include regular blog post updates, writing new product descriptions, or adding coupon codes in the case of eCommerce websites. This service may also include conducting regular audits to make website usability and optimization adjustments, along with fixing broken links.
Malware Removal
As mentioned above, most monthly WP maintenance plans offer malware removal primarily as a premium option. And those who understand the risks associated with cyber-attacks will most certainly want to keep their security up to par in every aspect. Still, cyber security features like malware removal should be only offered if you have the time and the expertise. It’s a highly responsible task that can do more harm than good if you’re not well-versed.
Pitching The Idea of WordPress Maintenance to Clients
While these plans have several benefits, some clients might want to opt out of them or don’t even want to hear about them when pitching the idea. How to get your clients to take advantage of your monthly plans? The tips below might be of help.
- Don’t wait with it: Don’t push the topic of maintenance, but ensure to discuss the topic early on and emphasize its importance. When clients understand the necessity of it, chances are, they won’t be bothered by the associated fee.
- Set boundaries: Prevent becoming overburdened by different demands for client support. Make the features you offer clear, what’s included in them, and ultimately, where you will draw the line. This can help you maintain a healthy business relationship with your clients and will save you from unnecessary headaches.
- Be careful with support and security services: while these two features are impressive additions to any maintenance plan, they can easily backfire if you don’t meet client expectations. So, instead of opting for mediocrity, scrub these offers if they aren’t high-quality.
Plan Ahead for Your Maintenance Plan
Before launching this new service, conduct the necessary research. Take a thorough look at your clients and their needs. Look into what resources you can allocate and what you can provide. This way, you can ensure to create a maintenance plan that will truly bring value to your clientele.