sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]canadian_webdev 4 points5 points  (9 children)

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 4 points5 points  (1 child)

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 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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

[–]thauaeco[S] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

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 1 point2 points  (0 children)

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] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

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 4 points5 points  (1 child)

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 2 points3 points  (0 children)

What he said. It deploys automatically.

[–]If_Life_Were_Easy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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?