Support
Once your site is built and ready to edit, this is start of a new journey in small business marketing. A lot of things can go wrong and a lot of things can go right depending on how you are being looked after. I am proud to say that my service will not leave you in the lurch and I am always interested in helping clients to develop their website further based on feedback, enquiries and their measurable results.
Being supported is essential to avoid minor disasters. I am always there to help if anything urgent comes up. One of the key benefits I offer is a tested, daily back-up solution. If anything goes wrong you don't have to worry about your content disappearing and all that hard work going to waste. It is amazing how many companies claim to provide this but then fail to be able to recover the data once the real emergency hits. The reason for this is usually that they have made some kind of "general back up" without fully testing if the data can be recovered. The only way to test it properly is to try it out - and this is exactly what you get with my service. And there is no additional charge for restoring your data.
Another key support area is my approach to any additional work that needs to be done. A lot of designers like to take advantage of their clients by charging them through the nose for additional work once the initial setup has been completed. They look at it as a financial opportunity since only they understand the site requirements best. I am really keen not to pursue that approach as my aim is to reward people for going with me.
Some of my clients never need any additional work because I try to give them whatever they want during the setup and then they can easily edit it themselves. Where clients do require further changes, I take quite a laidback approach to the charges involved. Obvoiusly I have to be paid for my time but I offer a discounted rate of £30 per hour and the best part this this: I only issue invoices once the work builds up to over 3 hours during any year. In other words, if a client sends me up to 12 fifteen-minute-jobs during the course of a year then I am happy to wipe the slate clean and start again for the following year. So as long as the total work does not add up to over 3 hours then it is included.
Another benefit of this "worklog system" is that I am always happy to wipe three hours of work for any successful referral. Most clients are really happy to recommend me - and they certainly do not do so because of the free work I can give them - but I believe that it is nice to reward people for taking the step of telling others about the service and what better way then to carry out some free work.