Making WordPress Easier for Your Clients

Do you work as a freelance WordPress developer? If your trade is building WordPress sites for other people, most of your clients probably maintain their site and update content by themselves.

That’s the whole appeal of WordPress to folks outside the web industry – it’s a DIY solution that replaces the need for a webmaster and gives people a more direct form of control over their online presence. Provided, of course, that they understand what they’re doing.

A good WordPress site needs to feel natural for your client

Being able to self-maintain a website loses a lot of its appeal if the process is frustrating and bewildering. Setting your clients up for a smooth WordPress journey requires the right mix of education, forward planning and intuitive design. This is especially true of clients with limited technical knowledge and no prior experience with WordPress as a CMS. Ask yourself a few questions:

• Can the client easily navigate the WordPress user interface?
• Do they understand when, why and how to update WordPress?
• Does the client have realistic expectations about what they can do with their WordPress site?

Things can go south very quickly if you give your client a site that they don’t feel comfortable and confident with. A daily barrage of questions and complaints is a waste of your valuable working time, and defeats the entire purpose of using a self-managed CMS in the first place.

Planning ahead for a successful Client-WordPress relationship

Preparing your client for the exciting world of WordPress is crucial if they’re going to have a positive experience with the site you build.

Jonathan May gave a presentation on this topic at WordCamp Boston a couple of months ago. It’s not one of the most riveting episodes of WordPress TV that we’ve ever seen, but Jonathon does have some insightful commentary on building an intuitive WordPress experience for your client. It’s quite long, but well worth a look if you’ve got a spare 30 minutes.

What do you think?

What are strategies and tools you use to make WordPress easier for clients?