One-Off Assistance vs Ongoing Support for Magento

So, you’ve finally migrated and become a Magento merchant – congratulations! You’ll now enjoy versatile content management tools, advanced SEO (search engine optimisation) capabilities and easy third-party integrations. Your customers will love you. Thanks to the clean front-end design, intuitive navigation and quick loading times, it’s never been easier to make a purchase.

However, and we hate to rain on your parade, your work’s not done. As with any ecommerce platform, it’ll never be done. Switching platforms is just the beginning. Once you’re set-up, you’ll require support to keep your brand buoyant in the ever-changing landscape of Magento.

Keep reading as we explain the different types of support available and what’s most-effective for your business.

One-off assistance vs ongoing support

This is pretty self-explanatory. With one-off assistance, you pay for a solution to an immediate problem, and there’s no follow-up afterwards. In contrast, ongoing support monitors and optimises Magento throughout the month.

Support agencies offer options for all business sizes and budgets. At Bing Digital, packages include:

• Silver – 10 hours per month
• Gold – 20 hours per month
• Platinum – 30 hours per month
• Custom – Tailored to your exact requirements

Is one-off assistance enough?

One-off assistance isn’t necessarily a bad option. As mentioned, it offers solutions to immediate problems, provided you notice them. Of course, it’s better than leaving Magento unloved and unrepaired.

However, contrary to popular belief, it’s not a cheaper option. While initial costs may seem lower, you could be hit with additional fees as developers uncover more and more issues (it’s a bit like getting your car serviced). Then, one-off support agencies are usually generalists. They don’t always have expertise working with a specific platform.

Without pushing an agenda, ongoing support is an investment. It allows you to run your business without constantly worrying about technical hiccups that cripple conversions.

5 benefits of ongoing support for Magento

If you’re still not convinced, here are five reasons why you need ongoing support for Magento.

Benefits include:

• 24/7 incident support
• Direct communication with developers
• Issue prevention
• Ongoing optimisation
• Real-time performance statistics

24/7 incident support

You’re far too busy to spend hours trying to fix what feels like an unfixable problem. Who’s monitoring Magento while you sleep? You might not even realise your website’s down or customers can’t complete their purchase. What happens if there’s a security breach? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

In these cases, incident support is vital. Good plans monitor your platform to make sure it’s always up and running. Excellent packages will quickly remedy the situation at no additional cost.

There’s plenty of ways to raise the alarm in mission-critical events. Most agencies have a 24/7 help desk or web chat service for your convenience. Alternatively, you can submit a support ticket any time, day or night.

The cherry on top? With ongoing support, you’ll receive a daily issue report which keeps you in the loop regarding outages, downtime and hacking attempts. Should any serious issues arise, you’ll be part of the decision-making progress.

Direct communication with developers

Ongoing support cuts out the middleman (we all know how he wastes time). You’ll have a dedicated account manager and several developers working on your website, who you can communicate with directly.

Building long-lasting and collaborative relationships with your support team makes everything more straightforward. They’ll get to know your business model, marketing strategy and platform inside out. Consequently, it takes less time to pinpoint and patch up glitches.

Issue prevention

The saying ‘prevention is better than cure’ is just as applicable to ecommerce as healthcare. In a sense, ongoing support is a kind of technological check-up, screening for performance and underlying code defects that could explode into something gargantuan. One-off assistance cannot compete – it only cleans up the mess once the damage is done.

Ongoing support teams keep Magento sites in good health by using advanced site-auditing software. They implement preventative measures to limit the risk of further issues, which saves you huge expenses down the line.

Ongoing optimisation

Much like issue prevention, ongoing optimisation helps everything run smoothly. Websites become obsolete unless they keep up with Google’s ever-changing algorithm. Outdated plugins and mobile-unfriendly designs ruin a user’s experience. Platforms riddled with clunky code that doesn’t consider future updates will inevitably crash and burn.

Customisable and continuous optimisation helps your Magento website to meet its business goals. It guarantees fast loading times on any device, easy on the eye design and simple navigation. Put simply, your business is only as strong as the ecommerce platform underneath it – ongoing optimisation reinforces your foundations.

Real-time performance statistics

Real-time statistics provide insight into how your website is performing. You’ll find out how many people visit your corner of the internet, where they’re from and through which medium they arrived. Understanding your site’s performance should inform your online marketing strategy. Without this data, you’re effectively stabbing in the dark for sales.

When choosing a support package, make sure it includes user tracking. Monitoring the customer journey highlights what pages are popular and areas that need more TLC. Additionally, it pinpoints breaks in the sales funnel to show where you might be losing customers.

While developers can guide you through these insights and give you professional advice based on metrics, we suggest complementing real-time performance statics with a thorough CRO (conversion rate optimisation) audit.

Finding ongoing support packages to meet your business goals

We understand that Magento merchants require 24/7 support, direct communication and continuous optimisation. One-off assistance doesn’t provide nearly enough to help your business succeed online.

Thankfully, our managed Magento services help you when you need it most. We’ve supported many businesses, from start-ups to enterprise-level companies, and our team has long-standing commercial experience in Magento ecommerce support.

There’s a variety of packages to choose from to suit your goals and budget. Despite the differences in cost and hours contributed, our service and commitment to your excellence doesn’t change.

Are you ready for more conversions and a totally revolutionised ecommerce platform? Get in touch with our friendly team today. We’ll respond to all your queries as soon as possible.