I’m Andy, a freelance web designer with a passion for sustainability and circularity. My sites are clean, quick, impactful and built for conversions and happy users. They are also built to be low carbon and hosted on servers powered by renewables.
I started Sitegeist Web Services in April 2019 and now manage the WordPress websites for companies across Europe.
How do you sell website maintenance plans?
You might be selling a tech solution but you are selling it to people!
Make sure you are using language that is easy to understand and jargon free.
If you have to use jargon, make sure you explain it.
Sell the benefits not the tech.
What advice could you share on retaining maintenance clients for longer?
When offering regular support remember to be friendly and approachable.
Most of my clients want to have a person looking after their sites and not a support desk.
Outside of the day to day support you are most visible when something goes wrong.
When that happens, put yourself in your client’s shoes and treat them empathetically.
A site going down or not working isn’t a tech problem it’s a human problem.
It’s stressful and frustrating.
Top tips:
- Use your soft skills to manage your client’s expectations
- Be calm and reassuring and keep clients updated
- Be sympathetic and apologetic
How do you ensure the most efficient delivery of your website maintenance service?
I think one underrated skill for offering support and maintenance is knowing when to get support yourself.
The WordPress infrastructure is complicated and plugins, themes and WordPress core don’t always play nicely.
Leveraging support on paid themes (if you use them) and plugins saves you time and helps you fix issues more quickly.
Why do you use Glow to help with managing your clients' websites?
The biggest thing Glow does is help me be organised.
It’s a constantly updating “to do” list but I can tick off the tasks in one place and that saves me a lot of time.
