Website Maintenance Agreements

Web designers love to build websites and often effort to find new customers to make for. Today, there are increasingly more and more web designers of all skill level available for potential customers to decide. This builds client retention even more important than it was even a few years ago. There are various things that a web designer can do to keep customers longer, such as providing great customer service. However, let's talk about something that will help you retain those customers longer and at the same time improve your bottom line.



Let's face it, today there are more people who are willing and raise for the ability to maintain their own content. This has led to the increase in the use of Content managing Systems (CMS) such as Word press, Joomla! And Drupal. These systems are useful to the designer because they can be implement quicker and control easier. Customers also advantage because they can maintain the content of their site with little involvement by the web designer. Well that is the idea, "however" my experience is that while there are some customers who will dabble in CMS, the majority want nothing to do with maintaining anything on their site because they either have no time for it or are undecided because of their lack of knowledge and feel they will "break" it.

In fact, most customers do not even care that their site is making on a CMS policy such as Joomla!. All they want to know is that it works, looks good and does what they expect. Let's face it, that is why they hired YOU! This leads us to the question of what to do about site updates when you have done the design and have "turned the keys over to the customer". What's next when they want to update their product page, or change information on their contact page? This is where the "Website Maintenance Agreement" comes into cooperate.

Waiting to discuss this until after the site is build is the incorrect way to approach this topic with your customer. This should be part of your initial discussion with them, explanation what the design rate will cover and for how long. You then ask query about what content will need to be updated and how often. prepared with this knowledge you can then give them two options. The first one being paying you hourly for updates that need to be done, when they need to be and explaintaition that this could be costly due to the fact that it may take 15mins, 3 hours or even longer based on what the renew is. The second choice is for your client to pay you a flat fee to maintain the site and everything that goes along with it. This can be negotiated however you want, yearly, quarterly or monthly.

By offering your customer a maintenance agreement, you are offering them peace of mind knowing that their site will be taken care for a fixed cost that they can fit into their plan. This is a big benefit to your customer also to your web business. You are building automatic income from a customer who you will retain for lots of years to come.