Comments on: CMS Fridays: More About Them, What The Sales Person Won’t Tell The Client, And Vice Versa http://www.usabilitycounts.com/2008/12/05/cms-fridays-more-about-them-what-the-sales-person-wont-tell-the-client-and-vice-versa/ Usability, User Experience, Social Media, and Content Management Tue, 07 Sep 2010 00:56:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: htmljenn http://www.usabilitycounts.com/2008/12/05/cms-fridays-more-about-them-what-the-sales-person-wont-tell-the-client-and-vice-versa/comment-page-1/#comment-124 htmljenn Sun, 07 Dec 2008 00:40:27 +0000 http://www.usabilitycounts.com/?p=860#comment-124 You are not kidding! I've set up over 100 blogs and CMS websites, and on all of them the struggle was less with getting the templates set up to the customer's satisfaction than with getting the customer to use the tool. My biggest problem has been with clients who just don't understand computers or the Internet. That's why they hired me. So even if I set up a tool that has only 2 fields for them to fill out, they're too afraid they'll break something to even try. For example, I set up a very simple photo blog for a client a month ago. I then spent 3 days working with her, to teach her how to add images to the site. It was a matter of logging in, browsing to the image, and giving it a title (or not). At the end of the 3 days, she said she felt like she could do it, and would start loading photos that weekend. 5 weeks later, the only photos on the site are the ones we added during those 3 days. I have also worked on several installations of TeamSite. The last one included a 2-week training class for all the content owners. And I still ended up adding tons of content for the site to be ready to go live (under contract and well compensated for the work, but not fun...). These days, I set up CMS's for myself. And most of the projects I take on include my doing the content for the company for at least 6 months to a year post launch. Having the CMS makes it easy for me, and I don't worry about, as you put it, "letting my mother open up Joomla". :-) You are not kidding! I’ve set up over 100 blogs and CMS websites, and on all of them the struggle was less with getting the templates set up to the customer’s satisfaction than with getting the customer to use the tool.

My biggest problem has been with clients who just don’t understand computers or the Internet. That’s why they hired me. So even if I set up a tool that has only 2 fields for them to fill out, they’re too afraid they’ll break something to even try.

For example, I set up a very simple photo blog for a client a month ago. I then spent 3 days working with her, to teach her how to add images to the site. It was a matter of logging in, browsing to the image, and giving it a title (or not). At the end of the 3 days, she said she felt like she could do it, and would start loading photos that weekend. 5 weeks later, the only photos on the site are the ones we added during those 3 days.

I have also worked on several installations of TeamSite. The last one included a 2-week training class for all the content owners. And I still ended up adding tons of content for the site to be ready to go live (under contract and well compensated for the work, but not fun…).

These days, I set up CMS’s for myself. And most of the projects I take on include my doing the content for the company for at least 6 months to a year post launch. Having the CMS makes it easy for me, and I don’t worry about, as you put it, “letting my mother open up Joomla”. :-)

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