Launching is the start, not the finish

A website is not a thing you buy once. Here is what actually happens in the months after it goes live, and what it costs to keep it honest.

Launch day feels like the end of the project. It is genuinely worth enjoying. But the site you launch is the least accurate version of your business it will ever be, because from that day forward your business keeps moving and the site does not.

How sites go stale

Pricing changes and the page still shows last year’s number. You stop offering a service, or start offering a new one, and neither is reflected. The team photo has two people who have left. A form quietly breaks and nobody notices until a client mentions they tried to get in touch weeks ago.

None of these are dramatic on their own. Together they tell a visitor you are not paying attention, which is rarely true and always expensive.

The first thirty days

Every project I do includes a thirty day support window after launch for fixes, and I check in at around the two week mark. That period catches the things you only notice once real people are using the site.

You also get CMS training before handover, run live and recorded so you can go back to it. The site is built so you can change your own copy, swap images and add pages without needing me.

When to hand it over, and when not to

Plenty of business owners genuinely will keep their site current, and for them the training is enough. If that is you, take it and run.

The honest test is whether you will actually do it. Updating a website is the kind of task that sits on a list for six months without ever being urgent. If that sounds familiar, a care plan is the cheaper option, because the alternative is not a self-updated site. It is a site that slowly drifts out of date.

What ongoing care covers

Care plans start at $180 a month and cover regular checks to catch problems early, plus keeping your pages, copy and images current as the business changes. Larger plans add design refinements, SEO housekeeping and priority turnaround.

The point of all of it is the same: the site you paid for keeps working, instead of quietly becoming the reason someone chose a competitor.

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Recognise any of this in your own site?

Let’s talk about what it should be doing.

Ron Tarin
Web Design

Ron Tarin creates quality websites for businesses who wants to attract the right clients. He is supported by with his lovely wife, his church community and his dog, Bagel the Beagle. On the side he enjoys doing photography, videography, reading books and learning calligraphy.