Turnkey Websites

[kenwmitchell]

Hi,
I am interested in tapping into my local market in the U.S. by offering to deploy websites from start to finish. My clients are mostly interested in turnkey solutions.

My thoughts right now are to purchase a HG reseller account, register and handle all domain names for the clients (keeping ownership unless they request otherwise), and provide the working website for an upfront price plus yearly fees. Then, because many of my clients barely know how to turn on a computer, perhaps offer an hourly rate for consulting or periodic development. Additionally, many of my clients will want some form of e-commerce, and I am prepared to assist with various areas of that, such as SEO and marketing and even setting up inventory and accounting.

I have a strong technical background with experience in networking and programming. I will likely be outsourcing design, or giving away free templates (depending on the clients wishes). I feel like I have strong business sense, but this particular area is new to me. Therefor, I am particularly interested in the business, legal, and logistics part of it.

Does anyone have any experience or suggestions for me? I would greatly appreciate whatever guidance you give me.

[kmaw]

Sounds exactly like what many of us around here are doing... I'd suggest giving ownership of the domains to the clients... I find it just easier.

[aaron_nimocks]

Id recommend a contract also.

Just have them sign a contract what you are doing from them, who owns what, who is responsible for what, ect...

Depeding on what kind of clients you get the last thing that you want to be held accountable for is downtime of their website which they will lose money from.

Basically just have them sign a contract to cover your butt.

[Goddess Dix]

spell it out, spell it out, spell it out. make sure your folks know, in plain english, what you do for them and what you charge. dileniate responsibilities clearly to avoid issues later.

i am also always very iffy on situations where the service provider maintains ownership of the domain name. i find few clients understand domain ownership issues and have seen both individual providers and hosting companies hijack domain names when an issue arises. you can purchase and manage domains for clients as a turnkey type solution without being the legal owner of the domain name.

[marko1]

Keep your clients as the owner of the domain with you as the technical/billing contact. This is the honest thing to do. I have dealt with many clients with domains owned by somebody and it can be a nightmare to transfer.

You should also find a content management system that you can offer to your clients so that they have the ability to update their own web sites. This combined with the domain and hosting is what most of my clients are after. That way you are also not bugged everytime they have a small update and you can charge a bit more to keep the cms updated and train them with it.

[kenwmitchell]

Thanks so much for the advice folks. I'll keep that all in mind.

I can see why owning the domain name myself may be a bad idea. I don't care to hand it over, I just want to be sure I can manage them all from one place. I'll dig deeper into that aspect.

I will be using CMS or similar, but I suspect that many of the small business owners in my area will want the "hands-off" approach. My current thoughts are to do "design, hosting, and consulting" (I have a partner). Maybe sell the website and whatever features they wish, and then either include a number of consulting hours per month in the package, or offer the work on an hourly basis.

What I would like to do is to meet with Mr. X and offer to have his e-commerce site up and running with the special functions he wishes for Y dollars with a DEFINITE line between the deployment of the site and the ongoing website support (not technical support).

Kinda like this (obviously made up prices):

Package A
Fully functional website (design and development) = $5
*includes 2 hours training and content

Hourly
$2 per hour or include discounted hours in yearly hosting fees.

I would have to somehow distinguish between technical support (like outages and errors) and helping them with their website.

Am I completely out of sync here?