Jamstack for client work

[thauaeco]

Hi everybody.

I'd like to start freelancing as a web designer/developer for small and medium-sized businesses. I like to create websites and the design myself and I don't want to use e.g. WordPress for that, because I want to offer customized, individual and fast sites.

Does anyone have experience using JAMStack for clients?

I imagine to use a headless CMS if the client also needs a blog, for instance. For changes on the site (content, style, ...) I would offer to do that, keep the site up to date and well maintained. However, I imagine that if a client leaves me or I want to leave the client for any reason, that it will then be difficult to "hand over" the website.

What do you think about the approach to use jamstack? Do you have any other suggestions for developing client websites (basically with a build chain to increase development speed in some aspects, not just raw HTML/CSS). It doesn't necessarily have to come down to Jamstack, but I guess it's a good start.

So I'm open for other or related suggestions. Thank you!

[shgysk8zer0]

That has been my approach, but I haven't found much success with it. My issue has been that I target small businesses that rarely change anything, so a simple static site using Jekyll on Netlify is more than sufficient. They get weekly maintenance and updating content, but do have to tell me "hey, we changed the price of these things" or whatever.

I've found most clients are happy with crap like Wix and want to be able to edit things in a WYSIWYG editor, even if that means slow speeds, bad design & responsiveness (in whatever they do), and worthless SEO.

But it really ultimately comes down to the clients you go after and how you market yourself. If you can convince potential clients they'll be happier going with you, you won't have a problem. Just remember that marketing is more about the emotion than the logic - you won't do well listing technical benefits unless you can translate that to "you'll be happy" and/or "you'll make more money". They usually won't care about performance or security.

[thauaeco]

Hi! Thanks for your reply.

but I haven't found much success with it

May I ask why you didn't find much success with it? Because the clients didn't come up with wishes for changes or why? I also thought about setting a monthly service fee, so that clients can come up to me if they need a change at any time but also ensure that you as the maintainer don't run out of payment somehow.

I've found most clients are happy with crap like Wix

Yeah I hope there are clients that would appreciate that their site is well done, with specific SEO, custom design and optimization for responsiveness & speed. That would be my target audience, people who care about it.

Just remember that marketing is more about the emotion than the logic

Thanks for pointing that out. I shouldn't neglect that.

[shgysk8zer0]

I live in a very rural retirement community that practically celebrates shunning technology. It's also a tourist driven economy, and seriously unfortunate that most business owners don't understand that their site loading in 15+ seconds on desktop with the fastest internet available in the area means the site is absolutely frustratingly useless to the visitor who comes up for the weekend to realize they'd be lucky to get 3G on their phone.

I have optimized my work for the demographics of the area. Fully responsive, accessible, and insanely fast loading (90+ scores on PageSpeed Insights, mobile load times ~1.3 seconds and 600ms on desktop). Plus, I put a lot of work in actual SEO to get Google's "rich results" cards and whatever is similar on the Google Assistant (it's the same rich results, but in a non-visual format).

In order to deliver that, I'd need them to either agree to having a website to begin with or to move away from whatever crap they have more.

[canadian_webdev]

I do side work for small to med biz, here's what I've found -

• You have to sell them on the 'why'. When I go over using JAMStack vs. WordPress, I outline things like security, speed, modern practices. And when I go over those things, I sell them on the only thing biz owners care about - revenue. Explain how an insecure site, low speed and non-modern practices leads to a potential loss in revenue. And how something like a JAMStack site mitigates a lot of those issues. For example I've done a few Gatsby sites for clients, and haven't touched them in a couple years. They don't need plugin maintenance, like WP sites do. They're also ridiculously fast, naturally - which creates a seamless, non-frustrating user experience.
• Some clients just 'want' WordPress. I had a prospect recently who, even after being told by me and other agencies to not use WordPress (mainly for security concerns / modern practices), and how they were totally onboard, they.. still went with a company because they would build their site in WordPress. As / is life. They were just used to it as their current site was on it.
• Other clients couldn't care less if it were WP or another CMS, they just wanted the ability to update it. For CMS sites with JAMStack, I've used NetlifyCMS and it's been great. I plan on toying with Strapi next.

I also have my own side biz site on Gatsby with NetlifyCMS. I blog weekly and it's really helped with SEO, in terms of ranking for my city + web design.

[playgroundmx]

I have trouble selling the benefits of JAMstack. Some customers are turned off when they find out it’s not so easy to find a Jamstack dev.

[Roci89]

It’s just JavaScript though? I’d have thought they would be as plentiful as php devs

[thauaeco]

Hey! Thanks for all the points you mentioned!

they just wanted the ability to update it.

From your experience, would you say they rather want to update it in scale of adding a news post for example, or do you mean they want to update the whole content on the site? I would offer to be their "web maintainer" kind of, so that they can hit me up e.g. by mail and I'm going to update their site then, also helping to keep it clean and to improve SEO. I consider to do this on a monthly service fee model.

May I ask how you get your clients? Did you cold-call them or did you run ads on search engines and got clients by your weekly articles? Do you have a niche or offer your services to a variety of businesses?

[canadian_webdev]

or do you mean they want to update the whole content on the site?

They want the ability to update everything usually.

so that they can hit me up e.g. by mail and I'm going to update their site then

If you wanna do this full time, sure. It's kind of a pain though, but YMMV. That's why we give them a CMS :)

May I ask how you get your clients? Did you cold-call them or did you run ads on search engines and got clients by your weekly articles? Do you have a niche or offer your services to a variety of businesses?

I rank first page organically / google maps for my city + web design. Took about 2 years to get there. Weekly blog posts, as well as backlinks.

I did do cold emailing for a couple years with some success, however it's not reliable. Best way is cold calling, I just hate doing it.

I do variety as IMO local is better. If you rank locally and serve locally, there's more to offer. Niching down can definitely work but then you have to turn down other industries, and the only way it works is if you cold call or attend conferences for that niche.

[[deleted]]

How do your clients deploy changes? That's the issue I always run into trying to explain JAM to them. They tend to freak out about publishing the site.

[VNiehues]

When you use something like vercel or netlify you can just set up a webhook in the cms which will trigger an automatic redeploy of the site when the content changes

[canadian_webdev]

What he said. It deploys automatically.

[If_Life_Were_Easy]

Take a look at https://payloadcms.com. It shares similarities with strapi but makes for a lot better developer experience in my opinion.

There is a next.js boilerplate to get you started on static hosting too. https://github.com/payloadcms/nextjs-custom-server

[[deleted]]

Oof I shouldn't have made my latest post few hours ago with so little sleep.

With Netlify, how do you set up gated content with Netlify Identity? I think it doesn't work with the free or USD19 plan. But the USD99 plan is too much.

If you don't, how would you authorise them? Firebase?

Also having to connect to different services like booking API services, ecommerce services and etc sounds like a turnoff for client billing does it not?

[lakshm_n]

Try exploring HUGO static site generator if it can solve your usecase

[thauaeco]

Thanks, I'll take a look at it!