I recently started a web design company - going slower than planned but going well all things considered. As I have my first clients and they’re happy, I’ve started to offer them some extras. Just looking for some advice on how to expand that.
When you offer a client “support” or “maintenance” what kinds of things do you include? I’m looking to create a value proposition for my clients and I want all of them to sign up for it. I want to get an additional £200-500 monthly revenue per client. I already do monthly SEO and PPC but could potentially “roll it into one” if that’s a smart move?
What do you typically offer clients to get additional revenue?
How do you structure the payment e.g. monthly/annual/on-demand?
Well my wife actually handles all of our clients that need ongoing maintenance, she usually works on an x amount per month with a limit of x amount of hours. She also has clients that only need updates once in a while and for those it’s an hourly rate.
The thing is many clients are now asking me to build them admin panels because they don’t want to pay someone and they don’t know how to code.
It can be a nice additional regular monthly income if you can build up a decent client base, problem is a lot of people just don’t need updates all the time, the ones the wife has are all entertainment related so they are always updating.
We offer social media training and ongoing assessments of their efforts. Additionally, minor updates are part of our hosting fee, so instead of getting an hourly fee every couple of months, they are paying a lower fee over a longer period of time, which works out better for us.
We also do email hosting and support, and once everything is setup then it usually does well though it can be really annoying at times. We also register and pay for the re-registration of domains for our clients, which has at times been a massive PITA but has also been very popular.
Finally, we only take clients who agree to let us host their site, and we only offer a one-price all-inclusive hosting fee, so folks can’t opt out of part of it.
Hosting is definitely on the list of things to offer.
For my first clients I’ve bundled 1 year of hosting as a deal-sweetener. This won’t be offered for many more clients though, just something to help me win my first few. As my server skills are decent but not rock-star I’m thinking of either a reseller account or joining an affiliate scheme until I can afford to sub-contract that work.
One prospect (still a way off signing) says he pays £50/month (us$75) for hosting his pretty basic eCommerce site but that price includes nightly backups (presumably I just set up a CRON job to AWS or similar) Say I charged the same- that’s pretty good! But I’m still way off my target.
What I’m wondering is how can I create a value proposition around “maintenance” that is actually offering real value. At the moment my ideas are nightly backup, X hours of extra dev/content updates, check webpages still HTML-validate, etc. If they don’t use the dev hours, the hours don’t roll-over into the next month. That kinda thing.
Not sure what else I do that is “maintenance/support”?
Thanks for your answer! Yes, I guess when I get to the stage when I can pik and choose my clients I should look out for the type who need long-term, regular updates.
My main line of business is CMS and eCommerce so they already have the admin panel- though I’m astounded that my latest client despite being sold on the ability to update content himself is now asking me to do it for him!!! Not going to turn it away, obviously…
I used to work for a European eCommerce consultancy and the support contracts there were for X hours of e.g. a senior Java dev + PM time per month, no time rolling over. This was cool for the consultancy, but I don’t want to cap my work by # hours, like you mention.
I figure if I have a nice value proposition where my client sees genuine impact on phone calls to him, sales, page views, visits, etc then he’ll pay me whatever I ask. I know lots of web design companies offer maintenance/support but I’m just not sure what it is they offer. Perhaps they offer an hourly amount but outsource it, so they can focus on the higher value stuff. I really don’t know.
The social media training sounds right up my street and something I could definitely do. I offer online strategy consulting as one of my services (used to be a consultant) but so far I’ve been doing it with my small business clients as I go and not explicitly charging for it, as I found they didn’t really “get” why you need it vs. the Fortune 500s who are all over it. The feedback has been consistent- they all love the advice I give. I guess I need to package it up into e.g. training?
How do you present that to your clients, is it as a retainer, a monthly package, ongoing/on-demand services, etc? This sounds really promising.
Incidentally- email I want to steer clear of because as you say it’s a ball ache when it goes wrong. High stress, high pressure, a mess. Found that out a couple of weeks ago. Put me off going there again! Domain reg I do but I read in other forum posts on Sitepoint that it can be a mess if the relationship ever goes sour. Plus I’m charging so little to register a domain, very little profit. Not sure if I get into it or not- one to consider.
If you provide a CMS, then I found the easiest way to generate recuring income is to provide a complete package for the client, which is presented to them at the very beginning of the sales process.
So, you charge a fee for the design and build of the site - and tell them that this includes ‘integration into the CMS’. You then ask how many people will be using the CMS, say 3, so you then visit them and train those three people how to use the CMS (for a fee, charged per person/session).
Then you provide an ongoing fee (monthly or annually) that covers hosting, email, technical support for the CMS, daily backups, and a ‘per user’ licensing.
The cost is based on their hosting needs and the number of people using the CMS. And in the future, if a new member of staff wants to start using it, they must have training and be added to the license. The only people who get support are the people who received training and are listed on the license.
This generates a nice regular fee, plus stops any tom dick or harry from the client’s company ringing up for support. You might also want to offer different support levels, such as email only, or phone.
More regular income can come from SEO, PPC management, email marketing, web stat analysis etc. You could also get them on your newsletter and each month tell them of any new services or offers etc.
