Last year, there was a huge shift in the number of businesses either improving or building an online presence. The ongoing situation has also allowed website owners to analyse and review their websites in detail along with the hosting and website maintenance package that’s in place in most cases.

Your website is the online face of your business, so it’s important to ensure you are in the best hands when it comes to looking after it.

What is Website Maintenance?

Essentially, website maintenance is a fully managed service involving the following:

• Hosting
• Support
• Security
• Updates

Taking care of the above not only guarantees website uptime but keeps your site secure from hacks and security breaches. Just a small amount of downtime could have a negative effect on your overall business so ensuring stability is absolutely essential.

You can read more on 2Cubed’s website maintenance offerings here – https://2cubed.ie/services/website-maintenance/ and here https://2cubed.ie/services/website-management-maintenance/

How much does Website Maintenance cost in Ireland?

This is a question we are asked quite frequently! Every site is different and has different requirements and functionality. Given this, it’s tough to give a set cost for maintenance. Assessing a website individually and uniquely allows us to present you with the most affordable and effective package for your business. You may find that tiered packages are to your suiting but more often than not we have found that they don’t necessarily work. Some other considerations to get an accurate price are:

• The overall size of your website and the expected resources to host it comfortably
• Custom functionality built in on the website
• API connections
• eCommerce functionality
• Expected traffic levels; especially during promotional periods such as Black Friday / Cyber Monday etc

2Cubed Website Maintenance services

Just some of the services we offer our clients are as follows:

• Support 7 days a week
• Priority 1 Incident Support 24×7
• SSL Renewal and redirects
• Hosting Monitoring and Uptime checks
• Daily Back up on AWS
• Patching and Security Updates
• Virus Scans
• Provision and maintenance of CMS and plugins
• Content changes and amendments to pages
• 24/7 monitoring on Manage WP

Shop around for quotes but ensure that you are given an accurate cost based on your needs including the amount of hours of development each month needed to keep your website up to a satisfactory level. 2Cubed would be delighted to assist you in this process. We guarantee to give you the most accurate pricing possible.

Our team is on hand to assist with any questions you may have regarding website maintenance. Check out a full list of services and our website process here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

You can use our dedicated quotation form below or contact us with any questions you may have here.

Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

Lat year, we wrote a blog post covering the new requirements for Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). This post can be found here.

Initially, the deadline for compliance was September 2019 but given the difficulties this caused, many central banks had agreed to an extension to allow providers extra time. The updated deadline in Europe is now December 31st 2020.

What is SCA?

Strong Customer Authentication is a system to increase security standards for online payments and reduce fraud. If you’ve ever made an online payment, you may have had to verify this payment via a verification code or other method. SCA2 is an enhanced version which also covers subscription payments. The central bank in Ireland issued their guidance for these payments here – https://www.centralbank.ie/regulation/psd2-overview

What do I need to do?

As a website owner, you will need to ensure that the payment systems in place on your site are fully up to date.

If you own a WordPress site and take payments, you’ll most likely use Stripe or Paypal for accepting payments. The responsibility to make sure the systems are up to date lies with these payment providers. Generally, they will release an update for the payment plugin in use on the website and if you are a maintenance customer of ours, we will ensure these updates are applied during maintenance time. This is as much control that we, as a website service provider have in this case.

Woocommerce have released some guidance on this topic also – https://woocommerce.com/posts/introducing-strong-customer-authentication-sca/

At 2Cubed Web Design & Development, we are on hand to assist you. We also offer a number of services to help you grow your online presence. Check out our list of services – https://2cubed.ie/services/

Contact us today for more information on the services we provide – Contact Us

Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

The date for the grace period has now passed. From October 5th, the Data Protection Commission can issue fines for non compliant use of cookie technology on websites. Following on from our previous blog post on this topic, we explained the ins and outs of the compliance measures required. You can view that post here – https://2cubed.ie/2020/09/cookie-compliance-gdpr/

2Cubed have been working with a trusted partner called OneTrust to help customers ensure compliance is met. The cookie compliance tool on offer is a ready made solution to ensure compliance.

If you’d like to have your website audited for cookie compliance, we can do this for you. Some considerations to keep in mind to ensure compliance is met.

1. Review cookies currently in use on the website
2. Whether or not you are offering users the option to manage their cookie preferences without ambiguity
3. If a user chooses to reject cookie usage, are cookies then blocked for that user?

Get in touch now to discuss your options and to get you on the path to compliance today! You can call us at 051-440425 and ask for Stephen or follow the link below:

Contact 2Cubed Web Design

Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

***Please Note***

The information in this article is not intended to be legal advice or guidance. It is simply to inform you of the upcoming deadline and what you may do to help to achieve compliance on your website. Each and every website is different and therefore requires analysis individually. You should seek legal advice for all matters concerning GDPR or cookie compliance in your area of jurisdiction.

Since the lockdown in March, many companies have had to re-evaluate how they do business. As a huge percentage of business shifted online overnight, action was required to keep many businesses afloat. At the time, we wrote about some measures our customers had taken to ensure business kept flowing – https://2cubed.ie/2020/04/covid-19-taking-advantage-of-your-website/.

The initial rush to get online hasn’t eased up and Enterprise Ireland are offering businesses funding options to help with this such as the Online Retail Scheme and the Trading Online Voucher.

The funding available from these grants is a fantastic incentive for companies to bring their eCommerce into the 21st century. The Times recently wrote an article outlining this and featured one of our clients Thunders Bakery. Thunders Bakery have used the time during lockdown to focus on enhancing the eCommerce side of the business and have secured funding from Enterprise Ireland’s Online Retail Scheme to assist. This will allow them to facilitate an easier and more efficient transactional process for end-users.

You can find your local Enterprise Office by clicking here – https://www.localenterprise.ie/

Why 2Cubed?

2Cubed have designed websites for many businesses across Ireland. Our innovative front end designs are always created with the end user in mind.

At 2Cubed Web Design & Development, we can assist you with enhancing your eCommerce website to its maximum potential. We offer a number of services to help you grow your online presence. Check out our list of services here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

Contact us today for more information on the services we provide – Contact Us

Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

What is UX Design?

This can have many explanations. Simply put, UX (User Experience) Design is the focus placed with the end user at the forefront of the mind when developing a software product. Thinking about how a user will interact with the product and basing thoughts around this is fundamentally how it’s described in Layman’s terms. UX Design is not simply just about visual design but about the overall interaction and experience. Some points to consider below:

Usability & Accessibility

Focusing on how an end user will interact with your product has been proven to be extremely beneficial and has seen the rapid progression of UX over the past few years. When it comes to web development, this can lead to vast improvements with bounce rates and conversions ultimately driving more revenue through your website. Accessibility is also a very important area to take in mind when designing a website. Search Engines are making it easier for users with challenges to access and use the web as best as they can.

Site Architecture

The architecture of a website in this case is of utmost importance when the design journey begins. The entire flow and processes involved in making a product or a website flow eases the burden on the user and means you are more likely to convert your traffic.

Customer Loyalty & Retention

A well planned and implemented UX can have a number of benefits. UX Design focuses on an enjoyment for a person interacting with the service and thus can result in customer loyalty, familiarity, retention and positive experience. All of these points should be considered as hugely beneficial when focusing on how a user interacts with your software.

When it comes to web design, keeping things simple and practical will have a great benefit to your overall approach and strategy and should absolutely be considered.

Why 2Cubed?

2Cubed have designed websites for many businesses across Wexford and Ireland. Our innovative front end designs are always created with the end user in mind.

At 2Cubed Web Design & Development, we can assist you with implementing a positive User Experience during design & development within your website, helping you to build your online presence. We offer a number of services to help you grow your online presence. Check out our list of services here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

Contact us today for more information on the services we provide – Contact Us

Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.