By Winmark Business Solutions
The cost of your organization's Web site involves more than the cost of your project. You must consider the total cost of owning and maintaining your Internet site. Be prepared to ask related questions: How often will the site be updated? Who will update the site? What is the anticipated return on investment?
It's a good idea to prepare a maintenance plan that identifies ongoing tasks associated with the Web site, who will complete the tasks, and the anticipated costs of site maintenance. A maintenance plan ensures that your site is functioning and up-to-date on a regular basis. It does so by meeting five objectives:
- Define site-related tasks—The maintenance plan identifies daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual tasks associated with maintaining and protecting web-related content.
- Define responsibilities associated with each task—Every site has associated maintenance responsibilities. The maintenance plan identifies maintenance tasks and identifies appropriate levels of responsibility for the client and its vendors.
- Identify ongoing procedures—The maintenance plan identifies ongoing procedures for updating and revising site content and reviewing site visitor information.
- Identify planned additions/enhancements—The maintenance plan provides a tentative schedule and plan for enhancements/additions to be implemented to the site within the next 12- to 18-month period.
- Identify maintenance costs—The maintenance costs associated with a Web site are based on the scope of site. The maintenance plan identifies all ongoing and anticipated costs related to maintaining the Web site and integrated applications.
If your site is developed by a vendor, it may be appropriate to require a maintenance plan within the scope of the project.
About the Author
Winmark Business Solutions (WBS) is a free Web site for small businesses and entrepreneurs containing over 6,000 pages of business-critical information and downloadable tools at www.WBSonline.com. WBS is a division of Winmark Corporation, a multi-brand franchisor with nearly 900 franchise locations in North America. With over 25 years working with small businesses, WBS draws upon years of experience to bring important small business articles, information, tools, forms, checklists, calculators and downloadable forms to the small business owner to help their business grow. WBS contains over 6000 pages of business-critical information all available at www.WBSonline.com.