Late last year I visited my dentist for a quick appointment and got talking about what I do for a living. Graphic Design and Web Design seemed to pique his interest, as a few weeks later at my follow-up appointment, he asked me “What do you guys charge for website maintenance plans?”
Nothing, I said. The platform we use (Wix) doesn’t require routine maintenance because it just… works. With no updates to plugins or any other nonsense, we don’t have to charge our clients an exorbitant monthly fee. Wix is so easy to use, that we even offer our clients free training, so they can make changes to their website themselves. Eventually, they become self-sufficient and do all the maintenance themselves and don’t need us. If they do need some help along the way though, we are more than happy to offer them a helping hand.
“So, why do you ask?”
It turns out that my dentist’s practice was planning on spending $8,000 a year on a website maintenance plan from another agency - that’s almost $700 per month! I was of course shocked. How can you justify spending that much money a month, when all the agency will probably do, is absolutely nothing. I told my now concerned dentist that I will see what I can do for him, and at a much more reasonable rate too.
My Dental Clinic’s Website Situation
My dental clinic’s website is pretty much what you would expect from such a practice. It has a straightforward, clean and simple design with HealthEngine integrated right in for easy booking. The website doesn’t include any ‘bells and whistles’ plugins to maintain and its design doesn’t have anything that would warrant such an exorbitant monthly maintenance expense.
How We Helped Them
I gave my dentist two options. Firstly, a more reasonable monthly maintenance plan if they didn’t want to switch their website from WordPress to Wix or a full rebuild of their website on the Wix platform - with no maintenance fees!
In this case, my dentist took option one. A more reasonable maintenance plan of $100 per month, which would save them a total of $6,800 each year! Redesigning their website at a later date wasn’t out of the picture though. At a later date, they will come back to us for a rebuild of their website on Wix. If they took this option, we would have rebuilt their website for only $3,500, plus $18 - $20 per month for hosting - a substantially more cost-effective solution, that doesn’t incur ongoing maintenance fees.
Sometimes, just asking a simple question can result in solving a complex or expensive problem that you didn’t even know existed.