Pitching Backend Website Development

Reasons and incentives for clients to develop a backend

[neophyte]

I always pitch a backend development package to those clients who I think will benefit from doing their own updates because:

a) I can get more cash for the intial development as I've got to code a backend, and

b) It's usually a pain for me to update a few lines (or pages) of content (even at an hourly rate), especially when I'm deep into another project.

Another issue with this is I don't have anyone to help me do simple updates as I'm a one-person band.

If I've got nothing to do (which is never) doing updates wouldn't be a problem because it's an additional income stream. But, could it be lucrative, enough to justify the effort, or just a time drain?

Neophyte

[stuntdubl]

One option may be to offer them some type of "maintainence plan" for updates to make the initial development look more attractive. This way you are covered either way depending on how you set up the plan.

[zollerwagner]

What have you used for a backend? Do you use something off the shelf or have you written your own?

I'm tempted by this, too. Some clients just want me to set it up and then they'd like to update the site themselves. Without the backend, for most of them that would be risky.

[neophyte]

zollerwagner -

I use a backend control panel I coded myself in PHP. I've heard of "off-the-shelf" backends that you can buy - I think that PHP Nuke is one - but I've been learning PHP so I thought it would be a good exercise to do it myself which enabled me to learn a lot about the language and how it can interact with HTML markup.

Neophyte

[zollerwagner]

It sounds like a big job. Was it?

Would it be possible for me to see what you've done? I'm wondering how to go about it and how much sophistication it would need (features) for it to be worthwhile for the client.

[henry0]

It could be a new approach to prospect new clients, knowing than the SEO market will be soon as saturated as new web creation market is.
I have done my own too.

However it is a fathomable task to make it working for sites that you created

It will be harder to adapt it to new sites

It will involve changing the site structure to make it PHP OOP based or redesigning a complete new tool that is a full editor and not a page or snippets editor

But again it could be a market to tap in

Regards

[rocknbil]

I encounter this one all the time.

It's a delicate balance between the customer's available budget and the frequency and extent of the changes.

My general rule of thumb is if someone wants to change less than 5 pages 5 times a month, I recommend I do the updates and go with static html. More than that, I ask if they have the budget for a user-based administration.

For me, these are almost ALWAYS customized because canned solutions often seem to take more time to install and tweak than if I'd just written one to fit. :D

[raywood]

neophyte, I've done lots of custom backends. Some I turn over to the client, and others I just use myself to make updates easier.

I built what I thought was a very intuitive, user friendly, easy to use back-end for one of my first paying clients. They were clueless. I couldn't even get them to log on to the admin pages. So, as it turned out, they faxed me the changes, and I used my back-end to do the changes and charged them for it.

That lesson taught me that a backend can pay off whether it's for the client or for me.

[vabtz]

I have always had a hard time pitching the backend to clients. Most of them just don't understand it and don't want to.