Ongoing Development, Maintenance and Support

Now that your new project is up and run­ning, it’s impor­tant for us to define our work­ing rela­tion­ship going forward.

For bet­ter or worse, web­sites are nev­er ​“done.” There are always new fea­tures, updates and changes that need to be made — the list is end­less. To han­dle that, we want to give you an out­line of how we can best accom­mo­date this for you.

There are three broad approach­es for struc­tur­ing ongo­ing work:

1. Stand-alone Work Contracts
   
2. Ad-Hoc Sup­port Contract 
3. Ongo­ing Sup­port Contract

Stand-Alone Work Contracts

For any ​“big” fea­tures or ideas you have for your project, the best option is for us to come up with anoth­er stand-alone state­ment of work. This is very sim­i­lar to our ini­tial agree­ment where we’ll dis­cuss the idea and come up with a set of require­ments for the new phase of work along with a scope, dead­line, and cost.

This suits larg­er pieces of work that fall out­side of a reg­u­lar sup­port con­tract. Some exam­ples might be:

• Imple­ment­ing a new blog on your site
• Redesign­ing the land­ing page 
  
• Cre­at­ing a newsletter
• Migrat­ing your host­ing provider
• Anoth­er project altogether …

Ad-Hoc Sup­port Contract

For gen­er­al day-to-day sup­port, the most basic solu­tion is for us to agree to an ad-hoc sup­port rela­tion­ship. This is a pay-as-you-go approach where you con­tact us when (or if) you need help and we’ll work on an hourly basis that is billed at the end of the month.

This more casu­al approach will ben­e­fit you if you fore­see your­self only need­ing the occa­sion­al help­ing hand every cou­ple of months. The down­side here is that our avail­abil­i­ty will be more lim­it­ed and we won’t be doing any proac­tive main­te­nance or sup­port of your projects.

When dis­cussing this approach, we’ll give you an idea of the band­width we have per month, the scope of work we will han­dle as well as the cost and expect­ed response times. Once set up, you get in touch when you need help and we’ll take it from there.

Read more about ad-hoc support 

Ongo­ing Sup­port Contract

For a more ​“hands-on” sup­port­ing role, hav­ing an ongo­ing retain­er con­tract is rec­om­mend­ed. With this approach, we agree on a month­ly com­mit­ment of hours that we guar­an­tee are avail­able to you. We’ll be able to respond to you more quick­ly and we’ll also be active­ly mon­i­tor­ing your projects, per­form­ing any updates or fix­es as they are required.

Like the ad-hoc approach, we’ll cre­ate an agree­ment that will out­line exact­ly what is cov­ered, how it’s billed, what response times can be expect­ed, etc. 

Unlike the ad-hoc approach, we’ll be tight­ly inte­grat­ed with your inter­nal teams, direct­ly avail­able as need­ed to han­dle work as it aris­es. It will also be cheap­er on a per-hour basis than the ad-hoc approach.

Read more about ongo­ing support

Choos­ing an Approach

In our expe­ri­ence, clients near­ly uni­ver­sal­ly under­es­ti­mate the vol­ume of work they will need in the sub­se­quent months (and years) after an ini­tial project is com­plet­ed. This is nat­ur­al. How­ev­er, we do rec­om­mend being real­is­tic about your inter­nal capa­bil­i­ties and the chang­ing nature of your business. 

If you are an orga­ni­za­tion that likes to move quick­ly and iter­ate, hav­ing us on speed dial through a retain­er has its advan­tages. If, on the oth­er hand, your needs are spo­radic or you have capa­ble inter­nal design and devel­op­ment teams, you may be able to accom­mo­date the longer response times and high­er hourly rates inher­ent in an ad-hoc contract.