After you've built a web site, how do you handle bugs the client reports after say 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or a year? Do you offer a limited warranty period or do you just fix bugs indefinitely? If you offer a warranty what do you do when that expires? Charge the client, or maybe offer them an extended warranty or maintenance agreement?

Hi Malcolm,

Or you could take a standard software approach which offers support at around 20% of the original cost as an annual fee. I would expect that to include:

• Bug fixing (not developments)
• Software upgrades (security / patches etc let say on a cms system or similar as long as that's not covered by the hosting arrangement)

You need to be careful to separate bugs / security from developments

• Development would include adding new features, making changes for brand new browsers (thanks Google!)
• Bugs would include making changes that should have been covered by the original spec - for example fixing browser issues that pre-existed the site launch, but weren't spotted in testing.

The tough thing is persuading the client that a bug fix is actually a development request.. Good luck with that..

Matt

MrZen Ltd

Web Development for the Travel Industry

This is an area which we are struggling with as well although it is more in relation to the support side of things.

We haev a number of clients who ring on a daily basis looking for site updates and fixes but expect them to be done within 24 hours. However we are often busy with other projects and the clients seem to be unwilling to sign a support agreement - which would involve a monthly fee...

How do I make support contracts more palatable for clients? I was thinking of offering a reduced hourly rate for customers who pay us a monthly fee. Those that didnt want to pay the monthly fee would pay a premium hourly rate (25%/30% more) if they wanted support work carried out.

Would be interested to know people's thoughts on this one and if anyone has a good example of how to deal with these types of contracts I am all ears!
 

Thanks

Daniel

Sounds like a good idea. What are the general thoughts for what customers would/should pay for a "support" contract?

We typically base any support contract on a fixed number of hours per month. However the key really is to incentivise clients that they need to sign up for this contract rather than just ringing up and making ad hoc requests.

My gut feeling tells me that if you could get a client to pay a nominal fee on a monthly basis in order to avail of lower rates and faster turnarounds for maintenance work that this would be a resonable model. I am interested to hear other people's experience in this regard.

Tom