Web Developer, Let Me Go!

I was in a local business roundtable meeting last night and I had a member bring something up that I hadn’t thought of. They advised that I should think about letting those that are interested in my web developer services be told that my services wouldn’t necessarily be needed forever. I thought to myself, of course they wouldn’t need me forever. That seemed pretty obvious. Looking around at the other business owners nodding, however, I quickly realized I was wrong.

Web Developer vs The DIY Appeal

Thinking about this more it actually answered a question I’ve had for sometime. Why would any business owner go to the trouble of building a DIY (do-it-yourself) website when they typically never really have time to do that? Other than obvious upfront costs… could it be that they didn’t see an end to these costs with a web developer? It seems so.

The DIY Problem

Many times businesses come to me after they have tried the DIY program. They get their domain name and with a click of a button they have a company website. Basic, easy and pretty inexpensive other than their time. After a logo, contact form and content (a couple of pages) are added they now have an online website or what I like to call an online business card. After some time passes the do it yourselfer realizes nothing is happening with this endeavor. No one is clicking, calling or emailing them from the site. To make it worse they really have no idea on how they can attract traffic that converts to leads or sales for their efforts. They stop believing in the whole company website venture in total. What to do?

“I believe that it should always be the goal of a developer to design and contract with a client to give them a hand-off option.”

Web Developer – Built to Be Handed Over

Having a reputable freelance developer build your site that’s designed to attract traffic with conversion pages is a great start. It is not as expensive as you might think either. With the new tools available to developers they can do so much more in less time than ever before. They will guide you on how to write content that will attract local and organic traffic. A basic site will also include spam and security measures as well as giving you analytics to see how things are percolating. All these items and much more come from years of experience, trial and error.

Even so, I believe that it should always be the goal of a developer to design and contract with a client to give them a hand-off option. Offer training to maintain the site themselves. With my clients I find there are two camps, however. Those that want to take over and those that want nothing to do with the maintenance of their company website. Some of it is because of budget and some technical prowess. Regardless, I build a site for them to take over if they want.

Taking Over and What’s Involved

I think the best way to answer this is by showing you what I offer in a maintenance agreement:

Weekly:

Monthly:

Quarterly Report and Review:

Includes Reports on Updates, Backups, Optimization, Uptime, Analytics, Security, Performance, SEO.

So you can see there is plenty to do. Typically I offer this pretty reasonably as well. With that said… a developer should have the tools available within the client’s site to do most of this as well. I do.

Going forward I will do my best to make sure any potential customer understands that my web developer services wouldn’t necessarily be needed forever. Nothing like solid business communications to make for a lasting partnership.

Web Developer vs The DIY Appeal

The DIY Problem

Web Developer – Built to Be Handed Over

Taking Over and What’s Involved

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