What Website Reliability Means for EDCs
What does website reliability mean for EDCs? Economic Development Corporations are trying to make sure their community, businesses, and local governments come together with the tools they need to grow and thrive. When this works well, the community becomes prosperous. Whether we are talking about small business loans, leadership training, or resources, the website provides critical information that community members rely on. Website reliability for economic development organizations speaks to whether the website is available and accessible when your community needs it most.
Layout, front-end interaction, back-end code, and hosting are all areas of the website that need to be monitored for breaking changes. Websites should receive regular updates to make sure they are secure. These updates are especially critical for Economic Development Corporations given the role they serve in the community. Breaking changes happen when the website is disrupted after one of these updates.
Website reliability shouldn’t be something your team has to worry about. When the website is built right and supported by a team of website professionals, things run smoothly. However, if you’re experiencing website reliability problems for your Economic Development Corporation, it might be time to start thinking about making a change.
The Role of Hosting Uptime and Monitoring
One critical part of your website is the hosting provider. If your website is unreliable, take a closer look at your hosting provider. What plan are you on? Do you have shared or dedicated hosting? Shared hosting is where you are on a server with other websites. Dedicated hosting means your EDCs website is on its own server. Shared hosting can be highly advantageous, especially for keeping costs lower as dedicated hosting can cost thousands of dollars per year. However, with big name hosting providers, you can be on a server with hundreds of other websites and no guarantee that they have been recently updated.
At CH Web Agency we approach hosting a little differently. If you’re having to think about hosting, it means something isn’t working. We make sure your hosting setup is designed for your site, that means that the website won’t experience hiccups as a result of inadequate resources or other websites on the same server causing performance drains. We also monitor websites 24/7 for downtime. Downtime is extraordinarily rare and our website hosting service provider offers up to 99% uptime.
Why Dedicated Support Teams Matter
A dedicated and competent website support team makes managing a website a breeze. Our expert website development team builds and supports robust websites for Economic Development Corporations. Our development process is designed to mitigate the chances of encountering performance issues like those discussed above. If you’re experiencing constant website bugs and an unresponsive web development team, contact one of our website experts today. We offer website audits and fixes for EDC teams with existing websites who may not be ready for a full rebuild just yet. Our team is just a chat, Zoom call, or in-person consultation away.
Planned Updates vs Emergency Fixes
One of the reasons our team doesn’t encounter as many performance issues as our competitors is that we plan website updates. Every month we perform routine updates to the website, including security patches. Each update is scheduled and we conduct a series of compatibility checks to ensure that performance and layout remain unaffected. Emergency fixes are when an unexpected error appears on the website and needs to be resolved quickly. Emergency fixes are where the cause of the error may not be immediately apparent. Because of our systematic approach to updates, emergency fixes are rare. For routine updates and questions, our team is easy to reach, with after-hours support available for emergencies. We deliver the responsiveness and hands-on support of an in-house team. If the error is the result of a compatibility issue from a code or plugin update, we rollback the update, make the patch, and publish the changes.
Building Trust Through Website Reliability for EDCs
Economic Development Corporations need a reliable website partner that they can trust to make critical updates and keep their website running smoothly. You can trust that CH Web Agency will be there when you need us. For websites that we build and support, the types of errors we discussed in this article, while not impossible, are rare. We also provide support for websites that were built by different developers. In these cases, reliability depends on how the website was built, however, during our initial audit and takeover, we will make recommendations to enhance the long-term reliability of your website. Our goal is that worrying about website reliability is a thing of the past once you partner with our team.
