2021 was a unique year for everyone, but it was incredibly rich in learning and expertise for our team. In fact, it allowed us to become experts in how to take over and manage an existing website.
In this article, we will explain our methodology through the management of four different clients in completely disparate fields: a medical clinic, a corporate group in the building and construction sector, a gift and interior design company, and a children’s toy and childcare products company.
What did all these websites have in common?
Strangely enough, all four websites taken over by the agency had the following things in common:
- All four websites were built on WordPress. While we do specialize in this type of CMS, this was purely coincidental.
- The four websites were set up by four different agencies.
- The four websites used different WP themes.
- All four were installed as a “child theme,” and the main theme was unlicensed.
- Two of the websites used Woocommerce, while the other two were showcase sites.
- All four had significant technical update issues.
- All four had huge problems with content management, both in quantity and quality.
Below, we will explain our methodology for taking over an existing website with the issues mentioned above.
Website Technical Maintenance
Our first step was to get back to basics by updating the site themes. We purchased licenses for almost all the sites and launched an extensive technical update operation:
- WP Core updates
- Theme updates
- Freemium plugin updates
- Premium plugin updates related to the theme
For all websites, we also implemented two backup methods:
- One through our international maintenance platform, with a cloud backup
- One via a plugin that ensures a backup on the client’s FTP and a copy on our Dropbox server
This allowed us to stabilize the current versions and continue our mission, moving into case-by-case management.
Case Study: Website for a Building Materials and Solutions Company
This project is one of the agency’s most important. We took over the website with the following configuration:
- 6 visible pages directly attached to the menu
- 3 articles
- 12 pages connected with an internal link
- Total word count on the site: 2,340
Our agency undertook the project in 3 phases, where we addressed the site’s structure, the graphic design and layout of each page, and a mission of SEO-oriented content creation (quantitative and qualitative content creation).
The site currently online has the following characteristics:
- 65 visible pages directly attached to the main menu
- Creation of 15 blog articles (company life + technical articles)
- The total word count now exceeds 25,000 words
For this client, our mission also includes natural referencing (SEO). Our teams implemented the following actions:
- Installed Yoast SEO
- Tagged all old and new pages
- Implemented internal linking
- Implemented external links
- Optimized media files
How to take over an existing children’s toy website?
This was the worst experience we’ve had with any of our clients. The client was very confused, wondering why he wasn’t generating enough revenue from his website, while our mission was limited to technical maintenance only! It’s strange, right? Well, no… we held four work sessions explaining that our mission had no influence on his revenue and that to have an SEO service, we would need to set up a new contract, but it was all in vain!
We even presented a complete study on the site’s KPIs from an SEO perspective, a competitor analysis (traffic, indexed SERPs, volume by keywords, etc.) (and to think this client got all of that for free, sigh), but he preferred to end his contract and a portion of our invoices with it 😉
All this is to say that we also know how to manage impossible situations with all the professionalism our noble mission requires.
Conclusion on the question of How to take over an existing website?
Our team and agency have extensive experience in redesigning and managing web projects that may be facing certain issues.
With us, it’s all about the numbers. If you want to make money with your website, Digital Syndrom is THE solution!
