Publishing your web site is actually just the beginning. Regular updates and maintenance are also necessary.  Fresh content (i.e. a What’s New page) keep customers returning regularly. Changes in your product line or business will need to be reflected in your site as well. Web sites go down at times and, as more and more of your business starts to involve your web site, these outages get particularly painful.  This is where Web Fin can help, assuring your site keeps running, deploying an alternate location for your site that can be activated in the event of an outage, and performing the routine tasks as well as the upgrades and updates to help your and your web site to evolve and prosper.
 

Site Updates

Updating involves programming and uploading changes to your site that better reflect your company’s current situation, pricing, and product line. Updates may include:

• New content to attract repeat visitors
• Updating press releases and downloadable brochures
• New information on existing pages
• Adding new pages and modifying site structure and navigation to accommodate.
• Installing a new style for a fresh look and feel. Web Fin uses techniques that allow a major style redesign to be created and implemented quickly and inexpensively.
• Daily/Weekly changes in dated content pages such as newsletters
   

Troubleshooting and Repair Assistance

One of the few constants about the internet is that, at some point in time, your site will fail. The current increase in worms and denial of service attacks makes site failure even more probable. It is at these times that a good site manager is worth their weight in gold. Being able to repair and get a site up and ruuning quickly is a key aspect of site maintenance. Included in this aspect are:

• Creating and maintaining a backup site to be used if the main site goes down for an extended period of tome.
• Fixing programming or html errors when they appear.
• Implementing security procedures and safegards on the site.
• First contact point and troubleshooter when site goes down.
   

Transaction Processing

Another important aspect of site maintenance is processing the orders and transactions that the ecommerce site was designed to produce. Maintenance tasks involved with transaction processing include:

• Receipt and confirmation of orders
• Processing of orders
• Order data entry into accounting system
• Entry of customer, visitor information into contact tracking systems
• Submission of credit card data for approval and payment
• Shipping arrangements and notification
• Follow-up with customers:
• Satisfaction Rating
• Online Customer Service
   

Cultivating Customer Relationships

You’ll find that attracting new customers is expensive, time-consuming, and very difficult. Keeping them is a simple matter of treating them right and showing your gratitude and appreciation. Loyal repeat customers are what will make your site successful. Thus, keeping your customers happy is probably the most important site maintenance task you’ll have. Some of the things you can do to encourage customers to return include:

• Adding fresh new content that is of value to your customers
• Providing instruction (Acrobat manuals or multimedia presentations) on product use (both yours and related products) as well as info about your industry that they might find useful.
• Provide specials available to customers only. This is a convenient way to clear out old inventory and make your customers happy at the same time
• Provide a customers or members only section with the latest news on new products, news, or featuring successful customers
   

Building a Net Community

One not so obvious goal of web site maintenance is to build a loyal net community. Providing ways your customers can interact with each other, share experiences or advice is how you build a net community. Here are some suggestions:

• Install a Chat room or Message Board that enables your customers to exchange messages with each other
• Create a classified ads section that customers can use to sell products that are related to or supportive of your product line
• Provide discounts to logb term customers
• Create an Opt-In Email Newsletter service for your customers that contains the latest industry news and your slant on how that may effect them.
• Create a weekly or monthly specials section to give visitors a reason to return
   

Deciding Who Should Maintain Your Site

Selecting someone to maintain your site is an important decision. The success of your site, and possibly even your business relies on your making the right decision. This is something you can do yourself, assign to an employee, or farm out to an outside company. Most likely, you should strongly consider all these options and split up the maintenance tasks delineated above to the most qualified entity. Let’s look closer at your options:

• Maintaining the Site Yourself
• You’ll need to obtain an ftp program for your computer and have a high speed connection to the internet. Web Fin can help you set this up.
• Advantages - Less costly, availability, privacy
• Disadvantages - Time consuming, Lack of expertise, Problems when major structural site changes are needed
• Having an outside company maintain your site
• An outside company can be hired to perform all, or just some of the maintenance tasks for your site. Web Fin offers these services.
• Advantages - Expertise, time savings, major changes in site structure more easily be implemented
• Disadvantages - Costs, availability, trust