Back in the ‘80s, Reese’s ran a campaign for their Peanut Butter Cups that featured hapless peanut butter and chocolate aficionados bumping into each other on the street, unintentionally jamming their two favorite foods together. “Hey, you got peanut butter on my chocolate!” one complained. The other fired back, “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” Then they tried the combination and loved it. The narrator closed with “Two great tastes that taste great together.” In the world between marketing and IT, where website management happens, webops managed services is the peanut butter cup. And like the venerable treat, you’re going to love it (unless you’re allergic to peanuts.)

Companies frequently hire IT managed service providers to handle their internal network services, devices, and users. Among other things, these IT professionals configure computer systems, maintain email services, monitor security issues, update software, and offer helpdesk support. They’re eggheads, and they’re proud of it.

By contrast, marketers are kombucha-quaffing creative types. They spend their days crafting ideas for marketing campaigns, photo ops, compelling page layouts, witty product descriptions, and fancy color palettes. They create beautiful marketing collateral and website design ideas. However, they don’t necessarily build, secure, or maintain them.

Then the Tradeshows Stopped

Suddenly ALL marketers are expected to be digital marketers. Marketing departments (aka you and that other person) are scrambling to rethink, and reschedule all of your marketing events for the whole year.

Simultaneously, you’re saddled with marketing automation platforms, content writing x100000, virtual tradeshow booth designs, email campaigns, countless webinars, video editing, website management, ecommerce, online forms, social media and the like.

However, you lack the internal resources and technical knowhow to do so. When you turn to your IT guy you quickly realize you're on your own. Also, you’re well on your way to burnout city where things quickly start falling apart.

Does that mean IT managed service providers pick up the slack? Interestingly no, they’re concerned with your network, users, and the hardware connected to it. Your website exists outside of that. So what magical being is able to straddle these two worlds?

Welcome WebOps managed services, a unicorn among unicorns, skilled in design, development, and IT management. If you want a website that not only looks good but also performs well and keeps performing optimally for years to come, these are the professionals you want, and Puget Tech is leading the charge. We’ve developed and automated this discipline to bring enterprise-level website management to businesses and government agencies.

How Is WebOps Managed Services Different?

To explain, let’s use an analogy. When you pull out your phone to check text messages, you push a button and the screen comes on. Tap an icon and the application loads. The cause-and-effect relationship seems so simple, but in fact, what’s happening beneath the hood is enormously complex. Millions of lines of code guide electrical signals through intricately crafted computer chips at the speed of light. The graphics you see on screen are only the tip of the iceberg. What we see on our device is a polished app that does it’s job but we don’t see the teams of people managing the server infrastructure or the software development teams working on a constant stream of bugs, security threats, patches, and dependency updates.

The same is true of websites. They seem simple enough. Text and images arranged on screen to communicate information, like a digital brochure. But unlike a piece of print collateral websites are a vastly more valuable asset that can generate leads, sales, and even whole online communities that evangelize your products and services. To forge your website into a more powerful tool requires treating it like a business unto itself. It requires consistently fresh content and experimentation to understand your audience and their interests. The website itself requires careful marketing and strategy to consistently grow traffic.

All of this added complexity also requires installation, configuration, and regular updates. If websites aren’t managed proactively, errors and misconfigurations can creep in. With time, components will fall out of date, links will break, security vulnerabilities will be exploited, contact forms will fail, and eventually the site will accrue a backlog of technical debt that’s difficult to overcome.

In short, it dies.

WebOps website management services exists to help you accomplish all of this. It combines the methodical approach to network maintenance spearheaded by IT managed service providers with a software developers knowledge of complex systems.

What Website Management and Marketing Services Are Involved?

A considerable amount of patience and oversight is needed to maintain and manage even a minimally complex website. There are many more interdependent components than are obvious. Here’s just a sampling of what’s required:

  • Regular website performance benchmark tests to identify early potential issues or improvements with hosting, resources, and website optimization.
  • Updates to framework and plugins and research for potential conflicts.
  • Review access, security, and firewall logs to prevent unauthorized access and potential vulnerabilities.
  • Maintain DNS and SSL certificates.
  • Manage CDN settings and optimize images and video for web viewing.
  • Post and update content including calendars, agendas, meetings, minutes, blog articles, photos, and videos.
  • Build landing pages for events and marketing campaigns.
  • Add and manage contact or lead generation forms, surveys, and questionnaires.
  • Update team and location info and contact information.
  • Synchronize the website and business information with relevant online directory services.
  • Ensure your content is engaging and in harmony with established brand guidelines.
  • Review and update OpenGraph settings and information for social media sharing.
  • Configure and update schema markup to reflect current search requirements.

If that’s just a sampling, imagine how long and boring the full list is! A lot goes into keeping a website performing its best. For large eCommerce sites or government agencies, maintenance costs can run into the millions of dollars per year. Most small businesses need these services, too, but they can’t afford the investment.

That’s why Puget Tech created web ops managed services. We’ve automated many of the most critical website management functions to provide rigorous care more efficiently, dramatically lowering costs. For example, monitoring a website’s security is normally a full-time job, keeping tabs on access privileges, log-ins, etc. We use software to automatically scan for irregular actions that might indicate security issues. Then our people only have to follow up on those hits, instead of spending hours looking for them.

Doing It Yourself Costs Time and Money

Here’s the rub. Most companies that decide to maintain their websites in-house don’t actually do it. They don’t have the requisite software, personnel, or knowledge. Acquiring those things costs money. And performing all of the needed tasks takes time, time that’s better spent keeping their people productive.

More often than not, though, people don’t realize how much maintenance and management is necessary. In either case, their websites slowly break down, hackers gain access, and the whole party comes to a flaming end.

That might be a bit of an overstatement, but without proper maintenance, your website will slowly lose value. And that’s not something you can afford.

At Puget Tech, we’ve designed a monthly subscription service that takes out all of the guesswork. Instead of paying for services as you need them, our subscriptions make certain everything happens on time, without fail. Have an issue? Give us a call. We’ll take care of it, usually within 24 hours (faster for emergency services.)

We’ll design your website, optimize it, and then keep it running flawlessly, and you won’t have to give it a second thought. It’s money well spent, that saves you money in the long run. Give us a call to learn more about our web ops managed services subscription packages today!