WebOps: The Most Important Business Relationship You’re (Probably) Not Thinking Enough About
Like the electricity and fossil fuels that power and underpin virtually every aspect of modern life, most website owners probably take their site’s web operations for granted—until something goes wrong.
From dealing with potentially cataclysmic problems like a denial of service attack (DoS) to ensuring that the day-to-day operations of your website are humming along smoothly, efficiently and without interruption, knowing that your websites are in the hands of a capable and trustworthy WebOps partner should be at the top of your list.
Keep the Engine Running: Core Responsibilities of a Trusty WebOps Platform
Regardless of your industry or the type of products or services you offer, a fast, secure and stable website is an absolute must for businesses of any size and scope. But many site owners don’t realize how much work it takes to keep everything running smoothly behind the scenes, day to day, and down to the second.
Here are some examples of how choosing the wrong WebOps platform for your website can hurt your business and your profits:
Security
Hackers are constantly looking for new ways to access and expose valuable consumer data and financial information. Your hosting company is not only the gatekeeper for your company and customer information but can also be your built-in IT department. Protecting your site from malicious attacks and activities is one thing. Still, a valued hosting partner must also have the tools, resources, and experience to get you back online quickly and securely if and when something goes wrong.
In addition to security concerns like hacking and link poisoning, your site is also vulnerable to software glitches and malfunctions that must be handled immediately to prevent potentially crippling service interruptions. Your website doesn’t operate on a Monday-Friday, 9-5 schedule, so neither should your WebOps platform.
Scaling for Traffic Spikes and Surges
Maintaining a steady flow of traffic is one thing, but when choosing the right WebOps platform, it’s important to know that it can handle your current and future needs, especially where traffic is concerned. Anticipating your website’s future bandwidth needs can be hard, especially in the beginning.
But the last thing a company wants to do is spend time and resources on a sales or marketing campaign or product launch, only to be left with a mob of angry and disappointed customers who couldn’t access the product because your site crashed, took too long to respond or delivered a poor user experience. One bad encounter with your brand is all it can take to send new and current customers running to your competitors (for good).
Prioritizing WebOps
WebOps goes beyond hosting services to encompass all of the cross-functional web teams. WebOps facilitates collaboration and automates processes to improve the productivity of the whole web team, from developers and designers to content editors, stakeholders, and more, while managing a successful website in real-time, from content production to site maintenance and beyond.
The core areas of WebOps include:
- Site design
- Site deployment
- Site testing
- Site updates
- Measuring results
- Content editors
- Site maintenance
- Tuning
- Site repair
- Site hosting
As web applications have evolved and become more interactive and sophisticated, the old web development model of “launch and let go” is no longer effective and can hurt your site’s performance (and your profits). WebOps teams fill the void and do the heavy lifting between launch and relaunch, focusing on the day-to-day site operations that span multiple departments across most organizations.
Your WebOps team places ongoing focus on the nuts and bolts of the machinery that keeps your website running at all times including:
- Successfully deploy the web applications that keep your site functioning on an ongoing basis
- Site maintenance – monitoring for errors, isolation, escalation, fixing the problems
- Site administration – performance monitoring, management, and reporting
- Ongoing site configuration and maintenance – keep CMS (content management systems) and the entire network at optimal performance 24/7
- Site surveillance – measure how ongoing updates and changes to content, web applications and network infrastructure affect everything from site speed to the overall performance
- Cross-functional team collaboration allows your team to make and deploy changes quickly
In short, if your website functions and serves your customers and users the way you need it to, your WebOps team is on it!
Partnering with a WebOps Agency
Choosing the right web platform and knowing what to look for can be an understandably daunting and sometimes overwhelming process. From finding a service provider that fits within your budget to knowing what (and how much) service, you need to optimize your site’s performance, consider your web agency your ace in the hole for getting it right.
One of the biggest advantages of working with an agency is peace of mind. Trying to go it alone can be a recipe for disaster, especially as your business scales and grows. With so many moving parts, it takes one mistake to bring your website crashing down—literally and figuratively.
Web development services are part of a package deal, so you don’t have to worry about whether you missed something when choosing a platform for your site or the daily ins and outs that can make or break your website’s performance.
Don’t speak “tech?” No problem! Through our partnership with Pantheon, we can offer our clients enterprise-level services that check all the boxes, including:
- High performance caching
- Global POPs
- Secure HTTPS included
- Platform and site migration
- Git repository
- Dedicated, round-the-clock tech support
When it comes to the nuts and bolts that go into keeping an intuitive, functional website running smoothly and securely, your agency takes the lead in keeping it all together so that you can rest easy and focus your energy and resources on running and growing your business.
How Web Hosting and Support Partners Make Life Easier
Provide Support to Your Tired Technology Stack
Are faster websites always better? Yes. That outdated website you’ve meant to update is likely lacking in the speed department. After Google’s Page Experience Update, that’s one area that needs some focus. Faster websites will not only gain more traffic from search engines like Google, but they’ll also be more efficient at converting website visitors into leads.
Speed aside, the more successful your website and business, the more likely bad actors will target you. An up-to-date and properly maintained website is also more secure and less likely to be vulnerable to cyber-attacks. As technology improves, so do hackers’ tools, so keep your tools as up-to-date as possible. Secure the foundation of your online business ecosystem.
Give Your Stressed-Out Teams Some Help
Those pesky website issues often pile up when there’s not enough time for internal teams to get to them. And unless your teams are well versed in web development tools or web design best practices, they may be making decisions that are harming the performance of your website.
Ease the tension by adding an external team of experts in web hosting and support so your teams can focus on expanding your business. The value of help is only a quick email, or phone call away can not be overstated. Issues can be fixed quickly, and experts can be consulted before making larger decisions that might impact site performance.
Optimize Your Entire Digital Experience Platform
The fact is, your website development and marketing teams can no longer work in separate silos. Some changes you make to support your website or fix a problem may also impact the traffic to your website. With a team of outside support and hosting experts, you can better monitor your entire digital experience platform into one cohesive tool.
It’s also useful to keep your website on a constantly evolving website redesign schedule. That way, you reduce those long periods of dust gathering and instead turn your digital experience platform into an experiment that gets better with time. External teams may better keep track of new changes and tests, so your teams can focus on day-to-day business priorities.
Web Hosting and Support Experts Build for Everyone
Most businesses aren’t thinking about website accessibility, but expert web support and hosting teams always double-check that new changes are compatible with current web standards.
Some websites have recently found themselves the targets of civil suits for not following accessibility standards. That means not only are you losing out on potential traffic from those with disabilities, but you’re also putting your business at risk for an accessibility lawsuit. A team well-versed in accessibility can provide a website accessibility audit to get you started.
Add Another Team That Supports Your Business
Who doesn’t need more help? There’s never enough time to cross off everything on your to-do list, and the last priority is often your website. The essential tool to connect your business to customers online could use some more support.
Rather than letting your website gather dust, and waiting for months or years between redesigns, a web hosting and support team can keep your website running smoothly all year long. Protect your online business ecosystem with the proper infrastructure for a smoother digital experience.
Find a WebOps Partner to Strengthen Your Site Today
WebOps is one of the most important relationships to keep your business running smoothly on the internet. Unfortunately, many businesses also overlook it. Take the next step to protect your site by reaching out to our team today.