Five ways to improve your business in 2014 with Perch

We really enjoy hearing your stories about how Perch has helped you to improve your business. As we begin 2014 here are five ways you can give your business a boost with Perch.

1. Cut down on support phone calls after launch

“My clients love working with Perch. For training purposes, all that’s needed is a short demonstration and they quickly get the hang of things. It’s really intuitive and I never have clients ringing up asking how to do this or that.” – Andrew Rossborough

It can be really hard to charge clients for all those little calls and emails post launch, asking how to make changes on their new site. We hear time and time again how clients find Perch very simple to use. As the designer you can make it even easier for your clients by adding good help information as you create your templates.

2. Develop your own admin theme

You can white-label and brand the admin right from within the Control Panel, uploading a logo, changing the colour scheme and hiding any mention of Perch. However it is possible to go a step further than this and include your own CSS and JavaScript files.

Every time your client sits down to manage their site, they will be reminded of your business and the great work you do for them. Once you have created your own customizations you can use them on every site you develop using Perch.

3. Create an email list to build relationships with clients and potential clients

2013 seemed to be the year of the email list with many business owners discovering the power of collecting email addresses and then staying in touch with contacts by way of a regular newsletter. If you use Perch for your own site then it is easy to get started collecting emails using our MailChimp app – and MailChimp itself is free for small lists.

You don’t need to feel that you have to write lengthy emails to your list. Collecting links and interesting information relevant to your target audience and then writing a short description of why each link is useful is enough to bring value to the people who receive it. That might be links to information about great website copy, or about the latest trends in social media or marketing – anything that you spot that would be of interest to your clients.

Ideally, in addition to giving your clients information about how to improve their business your emails will include things that they might wish to contact you for help with. So remember to include a call to action to contact you if they need advice on the next steps for their site! By sending an informative email you will be reminding them that you are a person or company who is knowledgeable and can help them improve their business by the work that you do.

4. Create recurring revenue with a retainer service for upgrades and enhancements

We regularly update Perch, not only to fix bugs but also to offer enhanced features. Upgrading Perch generally just involves replacing the core folder, however with each update there may well be small changes you could make in addition to just updating the software that would add more value for your clients.

Consider offering a monthly retainer service to clients. For a small fee each month you will ensure their site is up to date with the latest version of Perch and any add-ons and also make small tweaks to improve things – either due to changes in Perch or just because you have noticed something that would benefit the client. Sell your retainer service to the client by explaining that for a small fee they can be sure you will be making sure that they are keeping up to date not only in terms of software but also changes in the way people are using the web for business.

Recurring revenue from retainers is a nice way to know that you have a certain amount of money coming into your business each month – before you have to start finding additional projects. Also, by having clients n a retainer you stay in touch with them. You can suggest larger pieces of work that would be outside the retainer when you can see that their business would benefit from them.

5. Offer clients a website review

If you built a site for someone more than six months ago, why not get in touch and offer them a free review. In the review you can suggest ways in which they could improve their site. It’s nice to give them some tips that they can achieve themselves – everyone likes something for nothing – but naturally there will be some things that you could help them with.

If the client doesn’t currently have a CMS, it’s a great point to show them how using Perch could allow them to edit their own content, and Perch is perfect to retrofit onto an existing static website.

If they are already using Perch then you could include in your review how they could be using some of the free first-party add-ons that we have launched or improved over the past year. Perhaps your client would benefit from launching their own blog, podcast or email list? Perhaps they could start selling online using PayPal or creating a part of the site to post information securely only for registered users to view. Our first-party add-ons are all free and simple to add to an existing Perch site, so you can add a lot of value for your client and bring in additional revenue to your business.