In a previous journal post, we talked about Going live and what that actually means. This time, we’re talking about the ‘post live’ process. You can celebrate the win of a fancy new website going live, but it’s important to recognise that this is the start of a new cycle for your organisations digital strategy.
Think of your website like a car, you get it all new and shiny, but you have to maintain it, look after it, and go for MOT’s. The same should be said for your website.
There are 4 ways we help support you through this transition:
- Training
- Maintenance
- Support
- Web audit and future developments
Training
Now that your site is live, it important you understand how to use it, if you choose too. We believe organisations should have access to their own site, and as an agency we are more than happy to educate and support our clients on how they use their site competently and easily.
We offer a training session for clients, which is a 2-3 hours reserved time block to walk you through the website, from the basics to any niche functionality. We’ll take you through any day to day tasks you want to know, how to use the page editor, and any nuances or plugins.
Maintenance
When your site is live, it’s important it stays live. Maintenance might see like a small thing, but it is key to keeping your website functioning, secure and stable. Sometimes WordPress releases updates that then has an affect on plugins, which means these have to be kept updated as-well.
Support
After training and maintenance, you hopefully have as much information as you need to manage your new site day to day. This includes editing your pages, posts, and any relevant plugins you might need to handle e.g. Map population, or any forms from the site.
Incase you have an issue, we offer our ‘Training Hub’. A dedicated webpage for your organisation, which will house any support.
- The training video – We edit the training session into bitesize pieces, so you can rewatch certain sections if you become unsure of what was said during the call.
- Scribes – Scribe is an amazing platform, that allows us to create step by step sharable guides with clients. Each scribe will break down the steps for a specific action e.g. Add a team member to the ‘Meet the team’ page. It captures screenshots and we’ll add our own comments. Overtime, this means you will have a bank of resources for your organisation, which helps with onboarding new staff or just having a refresher.
- Contact form and information – For clients, you can get in touch with us in many ways, but one we offer clients to help signpost, is our Website reporting form. This can be especially helpful if there is an issue on a specific page, or you need something added
Web audit and future developments
Website should never be a ‘One size fits forever’. They should grow and develop with you as an organisation. From 6 months to a year, we recommend review the sites performance so far. This can be by reviewing analytics, sending out surveys, and talking to user about the new site.
Our stack uses WordPress which is used by over 60,000 free plugins. This helps to future proof your site, as if you down the road want new functionality, then there’s usually scope for an existing plugin to make sure your developments are considered and works.
