SiteCrafting Blah Blah Blog
Nov. 2, 2006 at 1:45pm
Easy to Use Web Tools
Teach them to fish.
Give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime. - Chinese Proverb
As a flyfisherman, I can say this proverb does not mean a lot to me. I've been taught, but rarely catch fish, and those I do catch, I release. However, this entry is not so much about fishing or learning to fish, it is about sharing knowledge and giving customers tools for success.
When we first started SiteCrafting, our plan was to create websites for customers, establish a maintenance contract whereby all their website changes needed to flow through us, and then bill them. The goal was: Build Website, Provide Maintenance, Invoice, Repeat.
Keeping the Web mysterious in this way did not serve us or our customers well, not to mention we could never go on vacation. In fact, we found that a customer's website budget often went toward tedious updates, for which very little value was added to their website.
Charging an hourly rate to change a photo, add some body copy, update a Flash movie, served only to insure dependence upon us, but it was fake. We were the keepers of knowledge and we kept their website a secret from them, nothing could get onto their site without it first being converted from a Word document to HTML. A task only we, the experts, could perform.
What a crock! What's sad is there are still TONS of people with this business model, and there are customers willing to pay for it. We made a conscious decision to move away from this model several years ago, however it did require a leap of faith and confidence in our customers. After all, if I give my client a tool they might just use it without me. What was funny though was the number of people who loved our tools so much they asked for more, and more and more.
The Moral: Give a man (or woman) powerful, easy-to-use tools to manage their website and they will create a vibrant, usable site for their business. Furthermore, they will ask you for more tools AND tell their friends all about you.
As a disclaimer, I should mention that SiteCrafting does continue maintenance services for a select group of customers who prefer it this way. If you're one of those folks and are now ready to take the plunge into easy-to-use tools, let us know.
Posted in Deep Thoughts by Brian Forth
Comments (1)
The best websites are living organisms. Tools like Content Management Systems (CMS) help your organic website grow and stay animated with life. Remember: A Fish Without Eyes is called FSH; and I find that attractive. Peace.
1 | Left by RR Anderson | Nov. 3, 2006 at 10:27am