We do a lot of maintenance work for our clients at MB/I. Maintenance is key in keeping a site fresh and up-to-date. Depending on the site and the client, maintenance costs can become substantial. Here are a few tips for keeping these costs down:

• Group your requests so you’re not sending several separate emails during the same day or even week. Each time your web developer gets one email from you, he has to locate your project, open the right file, make the edits, upload the revised file to the server, test his work, and move on to his next task. If he does this at different times during the day, he will not be as efficient as if he could just simply work on your project all at the same time; he will take longer; and he will bill you more time.
• Review your requests so you don’t start a never-ending email conversation. Make sure your instructions make sense, that the links you are sending work, and that any files needed are indeed attached.
• Be specific with your requests. The reality is that your web developer has several sites to maintain. As much as he cares about your site, he won’t know what to do with a request like “change Peter’s phone number to xxx-xxx-xxxx”… what page is this information on?… which “Peter” are you referring to? Always provide the URL of the page you need edited and step by step instructions.
• Have one point person assigned to sending the requests. When more than one person sends requests, these requests can conflict with each other. The developer will then spend time going back and forth trying to figure out who to listen to.
• Be clear about when you needs things done by. Your web developer may have different, yet still acceptable, response times depending on when the request is received and what it entails. Don’t get charged rush rates when you don’t need such speed.
• Be clear about your budget. If you need to stick to a specific budget each month or each year, let your web developer know. He can then keep your requests on track.

The more you communicate with your web developer, the more efficient he can be, and in turn, the more cost-effective maintenance will be for you.