The festival of WordPress
January 22, 2021

This is an archive of the January 2021 event

Creating 5 Star Website Experiences for Clients

A workshop on how to change the website experience for clients by bringing in elements of fun and lightheartedness. No matter the process you follow from Discovery to Delivery you can make it an experience your clients will rave about for years to come. I use my 5 part experience framework for each of the project phases to upgrade your experience delivery.

Speaker: Anchen Le Roux

Time: 4:00am UTC
Region: Oceania
Stage: BOH Stage

Hello, my name’s Anshan um, I’m really honored to be. I’m here with you today. I’m excited about WordFest. Um, I’m so excited about the concept. It’s really cool. The whole 24 hour live thing. Um, thanks so much to the organizers of WordFest and especially Dan and Michelle , um, for having me and just for.

Uh, sitting this all up. Um, okay, cool. I’m really hoping that you will get some benefits , uh, from this workshop today. Um, it’s meant to be a workshop, so it’s very practical. Um, it’s got a workbook and I will tell you later on in the presentation , uh, wait to get it. Um, but , uh, yeah, it’s not supposed to be this short and so, yeah.

A good idea would be, if you can pause it, if you weren’t watching the replay to pause it and work through the workbook, otherwise just listen. And the workbook itself is very straightforward. You can, you can do it on your own as well. Okay. So , um, let me know if you have any questions afterwards and I’ll see you inside the presentation, how to create five-star website experiences.

Consumers are willing to pay 151% more for the same thing, park ticket. If they believe that experience will be fascinating. I love this quote from the Sally Hogshead, the author off fascinate. The book is about personality types and how each personality type can use their strengths to fascinate. It also has a business personality tests and how different businesses types can use or can fascinate the clients.

So if this area is interest of you to you be sure to have a look at the book fascinate. So client experience is extremely important for any service-based business. Yes, the way you deliver your service could fundamentally change the way your business and service product get received. He flipped the moment.

The whole idea just feels foreign to you, and you’re still struggling just to get the website out on time. Don’t worry. This is an incremental process you can add to this at any time. If you would like to have a streamlined and fun process to create websites for clients, or if you want, you can to be blown away by your service and become raving fans, referring you to others in this, it’s a workshop for you.

My idea of this workshop is to be very practical. So please go ahead and download the workbook. The moderators will share a link to the workbook in the live chat, and the link will be made available in a post below. We will go through the workbook a bit later in the workshop. So what to expect from the workshop, we are going to have a look at the general website process, and then I’m going to talk about some specific processes like the website in a week process, and also our current day rate model.

Then we’re going to look at creating your unique process in the workbook. I’m going to discuss the five elements of the website experience framework. And finally, beginning to go through the workbook of some more ideas and how you can decide which elements will work for you. My name is engendered. I’m a mom of three, two girls, and a boy.

I run some digital design, a boutique website studio working mainly with creative service providers in a day rate model. Uh, we do development and website design in a streamlined and fun way. I also do white level development for larger digital agencies here in South Africa. I’m a WordPress community team member.

I run the WordPress pritoria meetup. I’ve been lead organizer of WordCamp Johannesburg before all of this craziness started. And lately I was the host of the great WordPress virtual summit and the page builders summit. I started working with clients on WordPress websites in 2012. And in the beginning, everything was fine.

I didn’t really know what I was doing from a client experience, point of view, but I’ve been a developer for 15 years, so I could deliver the outcome. I ever quickly realized that there is a lot more to working with. Clients and especially small businesses. Then what I was privy to in my developer job, as the amount of projects grew, things started to fall through the cracks more or less.

This time I joined the WP Elevation course at community, and that changed everything for me. I learned about the whole process of WordPress development and a lot of things that I didn’t even know or think of doing. I had to adapt the framework for the way I work with local South African clients and the, for the things I specifically needed or, and or wanted to do.

So I came up with this five star client experience framework that we will be discussing today. This changed everything for me, not only because Cannes loved working with me, but also because projects were stips streamlined. I had all the information in time and clients knew what to do and felt secure, happy, and informed.

There’s no one way of doing anything in business. Um, so my idea of that, but this workshop is not as tangy and tell you about the perfect process or to get you to copy what I’m doing and overhaul everything that is already working for you in your business. My idea is more to help you figure out what will work specifically in your business and to identify maybe one or two things that could make a big difference for you and your clients.

I’m going to explain the process. Um, our, I have it here and this is like, this is like a full website process. Um, like I mentioned, we nowadays do a direct model, which of course is a little bit different. And also I’m going to give you an example of the website in a week process, which is similar, but then just in a shorter timeframe.

So incoming for me is everything that happens before the client pays the deposit. So I lead my contact, you or the market referred. He set up a discovery meeting and after the meeting you can send them an instrument or a proposal, or in our case, they could just book the day. Um, so then that happily accepts the proposal.

You send him an invoice and the client pays you. So obviously there’s a lot happening in this stage and it’s never this easy, but we’ll look at some of the ideas for the framework later on. Okay, next step. We’ve got onboarding. So onboarding for me is everything that happens after the current deposits until the project formally begins.

Uh, you can, you can break it up into onboarding and discovery. Like I have it here or you can just have it. All in one. So this is where , um, I educate them about the process, how we will work and timelines, et cetera. And we will see later on. That onboarding is the perfect time to do certain things of the framework, especially in like educating them.

Um, we’ll talk about this later, but it is important, but it’s an important part of the process because it sets the stage for the rest of the project and what’s to come. Discovery for me is everything that happens from when I started get information back from the client. So this might include reviewing their homework, might be doing a discovery workshop, or it can also include a branding and content workshop.

Um, this also includes the , uh, part of the process where they have to fill in the content worksheets, homework, or whatever you need for the process that you follow. The next step is design and development. And so it can be broken up into two different phases if it’s a big design project. Um, and this includes everything.

That’s part of the delivery of this, a six successful design and website. Next up we’ve got launching. So this is the fit where we go live, and this can include social media announcements, a polity or event, or just a couple of beers to celebrate. Finally we have of boarding. So offboarding is the part of the process.

After the site goes, live it, get, it can include a free maintenance period, or it might be introducing them to your care or maintenance plans and converting them onto that. It can also include a goodbye package , uh, training, um , or, or just showing them how to take this site overall.

So the re the website in the week process, or the tyroid model is just an example of customizations of the longer website. Yes. Yeah. Behind this concept is to build a website in a short focus time. This can depend on the time that you want to do it. It can be one day, like we’re doing it now. We can be a week.

Like we used to do it, or any amount of time that works for you. But the idea is that you work with one client at a time, or at least have the illusion of working with them exclusively. The most important part of this sort of service delivery is that all preparation work needs to be done in that fonts.

So logos branding, photos, and all content needs to be meet, needs to be created before you can start communication and preparation is essential. Another very important thing is that both tech stack and the delivery process needs to be productized and standardized. In our case, we use a base or a starter site that as a starter theme and all the go-to plugins.

And any standard kind of standard customizations already made. So all we need to do is to make a clone of the side or use something like all in one migration and easily set it up with everything already there. I also have the process set up in free camp or in the sauna. Um, and it’s got this specific task that needs to be done every day.

So in this example that I’ve got here is now when we used to do it in a week. So this is it’s got the specific tasks for every day to get it done. Yeah. Weak link. Just go through the advantages of doing it this way. So you can get booked. Out weeks or months ahead, the client needs to pay a deposit before they can get booked into your calendar.

And this house of canning ahead and with cashflow. Secondly, you get all the content you need before you even start. Uh, so they need to get all the concentrated in our case or in the, in the websites and the week , um, case we used to do a discovery workshop, and then we will decide if the client needs any logo, brand elements, photo, shoot, or help from a copywriter.

And then if any of this is needed, all this will get done before they got booked in. For the direct model. Um, we’ve got , uh, part of the process, uh , um, they get a kickstart your successful website , um, course, and this is a DIY self-based cause that they go through before they , um, before the chain. And , um, this helps him get everything ready.

It’s also quicker to do further , uh, in this way because everything is standardized and everything is product type. When you can create something this way, it makes us more productive and efficient, so you can get a higher profit. Um, and it’s also a better experience for the clients. It’s a collaborative process.

So the chance for you that their input is taken without them leading the process. I think this is really important that you still the captain of the ship and just stay in charge, but that the client feels that their input is valued. Through open communication. The client knows exactly what to expect.

For example, when we used to do the website in a week, we invited them into an Asana project and then assigned the feedback task and they gave feedback straight into this, on our task and alternative way that also works very well with the rough day rate. Clients is a plugin called WP feedback. Um, and you can get feedback straight onto the website.

Um, you can , uh, annotate that on the page itself. So that works very well. Um, there’s also another plugin that I haven’t tried yet called project cuddle that does something similar. So you get paid on time because there’s specific milestones for the payments and we call, so it has a specific set time.

There’s no confusion about when payments are due clients pay the deposit, as I said, and then the balance is payable just before the site goes live before the end of the week. Um, For day rates, many people , uh, pay the full amount straight away when they book and alternatively, they can pay the deposit on booking.

And then the balance is due the , uh, the morning of their direct. Another thing that makes this process stand out from the default is that clients don’t keep coming back with revisions and requests afterwards because they know that that specific time plus they booked in time. So they respect your time.

Okay. So we’re going to switch to the workbook and are, will take you through , um, creating your own process. Okay. So this is the rip side of workbook that I can talk about. So go ahead and download this , um, either in the chat, uh , um, if this is live or if you’re watching the replay in the post below, and I’m just going to walk through some of this, I’ve got a lot of examples here, so , um, you can have a look at it.

Um, so the first tip is to just go ahead and brain dump everything in your process. So from start to finish every little detail that you can think of, it doesn’t have to be an order right now. Um , it, it’s more of just like a random and , um, I think I have things here, like client gets in contact with you sent him the website worksheet , um, and then.

Different tasks. I’ve got , um, different email templates that I use. Um, and if you’re for reading, got a similar process like this, or you’ve got it in a sauna or Kickapoo anywhere else, you can just copy and paste it. Okay. So that’s everything that you need to do. Thing , uh, next up is your don’t likely. So this is a list of everything that real clients have complained about.

That we’re actually , uh, they formed. Okay. So things that they , um, things that might’ve fallen through the cracks or anything like that. So I have here , um, they were not sure what they should do next, or they didn’t read what they should do. Um, it was too much work , um, that couldn’t get everything done and , um, things like they didn’t invest in a Cape plan or in social media.

So anything like this, you can add here and then below , uh, there’s this list of things that could break down. Um, it might have not happened yet, but there’s this thing that you’re always a little bit. You know, scared that , um, it might happen. So I think that they might not be happy with the design. They might not pay on time, anything like that.

You can list over here. Okay. And then you’ll do like Liz is anything that you do like, and you would want to keep the same in your process for , um, so I have things that they are eager to work together and create the content or provide with all the info. Um, they give me great constructive feedback in the right format.

So these are things that, that you might’ve gotten right already. And you want to keep that way. Okay. So next up, we’ve got. Um, looking at the top do’s and don’t brainstorm where in your process, you can address these things and what steps can you put in place to make sure that it happens or doesn’t happen?

So this is looking at your , um, At your process and then think about where you can , um, address the certain things. Now we are going to talk , uh, I’m going to talk about the elements of the star experience next, and this might help you with starting , um, where to look at the seat or what exactly to, to use. So you might want to wait with this.

Um, until we to , um, the elements. Okay. So I’m going to switch back and we’re going to talk about the five star five star website experience elements next week, going to look at the elements of the five star website experience the number one way you can stand out in your market. Isn’t producing your process of putting in more hours.

The number one way you can stand out and what are your clients over and over again? It’s by creating a fast five star client experience actively look, these five elements. And for each of these elements, you can identify where you will have the most impact. So you can convert basic transactions into experiences.

And you’re going to look for additional ways to serve and delight your clients. So let’s have a look at each of them. So education , um, so you need to educate your plans on how you want them to behave. How do you want them to deliver content to you or how to give feedback? And you need to set the expectations for out the process.

New clients might not know what to expect and other more seasoned chants might be used to taking charge or follow a different process. Yes, you need to educate them on how you want to work or how you want them to work with you. And it’s very important to set boundaries during this process

communication. We all know that communication with clients is key to a successful project. Unfortunately, a lot of us creative, so coders are really big introverts and this part can feel like a huge burden. Creating a communication process helps with this as it is pre-planned and sometimes even automated , um, keeping up the conversation, reinforcing expectations throughout the process and keeping the clients relaxed, knowing what’s happening next, having a transparent development process in a do like free canvas kicker can also help you stay on top of communication.

Don’t shy away from it. Be overly clear, repeat yourself, even if it feels weird. If you’ve documented many of these conversations of in past projects, you’ll be able to copy and paste, pasting and tweak your templates and re and look really awesome to your class preparation. Griffin depression needs to be traced with education, and this helps them.

Don’t visualize what you need from them and what you want them to be. Fight plan should know that they will be homework and that there will be a deadline for them to deliver. Otherwise it will be consequences like a delight project or they moving back , um, in your calendar. To create a five-star experience for your clients.

You need to help them with this preparation as much as possible. You can create content, workbooks, checklist, copywriting templates, all of the things like all things that will help them. Um, with this part of the process, stuck expecting clients to create content in a visual vacuum. Most clients can’t picture content and images flowing into a design.

The way we can. It’s unfair to expect content with any kind of structure or visual reference. And in the face of Oh one clients will outright avoid the star

collaboration. A collaborative process is deliberately creating a better way to work with your client. Not for them. A strong system will help you be productive and actively guide your clients rather than always reacting to drama. It will minimize the time on repetitive work and maximize your time on creative work.

The secret here is to be in control. I have to set boundaries, but then to lovingly guide your client to work with collaboration tools like emails, templates, Aguilar frames , um, will help with this. Value adds or found things. All of the previous things help your CRA help you create a streamlined and seriously professional experience for your clients.

But what you really want to do is to delight them. So , uh, let’s put yourself in your customer’s shoes. What do they need, or what would make the experience of your service funeral special, own unique? How can you show them that you care? How can you solve the problem for them related to their service? So ideas can be things like stationary give to help with preparation work.

For example, sample planners, sticky notes , um, or physical workbook. It can also be coffee vouchers when it’s time for them to do their homework , uh, proper lunch launch party, or just loose drinks. You can take inventory of your current digital offerings, the paid ones and the free ones and ask, which of them might benefit from the addition of a physical touch point touch points could include postcard to check up on progress.

A welcome packet with pertinent information or a followup survey and small celebrating gift with their complete their process. Okay, so we’re going to switch to the worksheet again, and I’m going to walk you through , um, creating this , uh, phone book for yourself. Okay. So we back into our workbook. Okay. And , um, like I’ve mentioned before , um, you might’ve done this already, but if you want to add things now , um, knowing, um , the, the five elements more now and knowing what exactly to address , um, you can add it here.

So I’ve got , um, things like education during incoming and onboarding. Okay. Content, templates, or workbooks to make giving content easier during discovery. So , um, yeah, just some brainstorm, some of the specific things thing next up, we’ve got the main part of the workbook and , uh, you can , um, go through this.

So I’m a little bit short on time because of this , uh, just the 30 minutes , um, who have shopped. But , uh, so I’m not going to go through everything. Uh, but it’s pretty straightforward. Um, so for every stage of the process , um, we looking at some questions, we’re brainstorming some ideas, and then we’re looking at certain elements, tools , um, things that you can do for each of those elements of categories.

So , uh, for example, I have, um , uh, the question. Is there anything from you two and tankless that you can add to your incoming process to prevent this from falling through the cracks. Okay. So you have those lists, you know, what’s what might go wrong, what all going wrong. So now you’re going to address it at the Creek stage.

Um, okay. So some examples I have here for education, I haven’t intro packet, um , uh, go wide, go deep meeting or discovering meeting proposals. Um, I, if you can say specific tools, like better proposal or whatever you use, and then have things like email templates or , um, canned emails. Um, again, communication.

What can I use? Things like email and in-person or online meeting a zoom book, like a boss. I says, Oh, any other scheduling too, again, templates. And then invoice that preparation. So I really want to ask about photos, logos, content, et cetera, because I’m wanting to know which of these things we, we would have to wait for, or we would have to be.

Um, that beforehand, Hey collaboration again, the meeting , um, the invoice app and our contract signing. And then finally the value add fund can be a fun meeting, like something nice food or whatever. Um, intro package , uh, can be , uh, hard copy sent to them. Um, it can be a brand. It is B or some fun business cards or postcards.

So I think you get that idea of , um, what I mean yeah. You also see that some of the , um, elements are definitely overlapping. So just add thing to both or yeah, just whatever is easiest for you. Okay. So next up we’ve got onboarding. So again, we’ve got some questions on voting is the best time to dress you to intelligent list.

What can you address straight away? So , um, you can create a video for example, or send them a document document. Um, I have found that videos, like even like a mini course , um, can be a very good , um, way of explaining things. It’s better than. Just a written document. Okay. So some things equal education. Yeah.

um, so I’m specifically referring to Laura Elisabeth’s client portal, but anything that looks similar , um, you can is that onboarding videos, a welcome package process and project diagram, and it can even be printed out with the due dates. And then we get email templates, communication, genuine client portal PM to , um, like the sauna based camp, free camp, and also KickUp.

Um, burger ration can be an online questionnaire , uh, can be flagpole to content snakes , uh, works very, very well as a content gathering tool. Um, you could also use gravity forms for that. Um, I also, you can also use WP feedback back in this case thing, collaboration , um,  um, as a PM tool. So I think I’ve mentioned before that , um, we used to assign the sonar task to them and they would give feedback striking into the task nowadays, something like that feedback or project huddle works better for collaboration.

And then , uh, value adds can be in real life stuff that stationary , uh, what a process and welcoming packet that’s printed out and sent to them out and a coffee voucher discovery. So what can you do? Um, what can you address during discovery , um, things when you do don’t lose, why do you need from them? What is your Eagle for your discovery?

What format will the discovery be? And then again, what fun things can you add to the first is I’ve got an education. So our discovery workshop, including branding and content workshop communication, I’ve got a one-on-one or a zoom meeting. Preparation can be a client intake workbook can be a content workbook that needs to be folded in a Dropbox folder.

Collaboration. Um, can I gain the layout templates? A Dropbox folder back can also be something like contents narratives part is preparation and the input value adding fun in real life workshop was food. Uh, stationary books can help them. Yeah. Um, examples like the personal branding can be it, their personal profile, print it out.

And then the branding farm. Yes.

So that was discovery. I think. So then design and development. Um, again, they’re doing dangerous during , uh, development. Um, you can have feedback, videos and feedback templates. Uh, you can have communication can be , um, things like project cuddle therapy feedback in. Um, emailed T templates. Uh, I just have to feed back there and then collaboration can be the way you email them project huddle, envision or WPP.

Yeah. Or your project management too, or things like that. Style towels and wire frames or whatever to guide them. Um, okay. And that, yeah, that’s part of the design of listing a value add and fun can be , uh, Okay. Met weeks for us, where, when we were doing the week thing, coffee catch up , um, or anything else during your development phase that you can do to , um, add a little bit of fun to the process launch.

Um, education can be training , uh, in personal video during your launch, those email templates, communication, training, and videos. Um, preparation can be social , uh, social media on launch, I think gluts at scripts, but I have nothing there. You might want something there and then full value and a half launch party or long streams or a social media launch.

So you can of your , um, added things can be that you have templates for them. And they have like an official social media launch. And our final step of boarding , um, and ask yourself questions , like, what do they need, what would they need to take over the side? Or would you want them to , uh, go onto a care plan?

So what would you need to tell them about the Cape plan? Um, I’ve got things like a good package. Um, again, your client portal with all the info over here will also be , uh, The website owner’s manual from ad admin bond , um, now sent to everyone afterwards, and then it’s just email templates. Um, collaboration can be the cloud portal.

And then at the, in the value and fun, I have things that you can just say, like branded swag , um, that you can have like bonus services that you do afterwards. Um, You can have a Facebook group, or you can have a group where you have monkey webinars or workshops, or a 30 day free maintenance , um, maintenance spirits , um, with the reports afterwards.

And it’s also a good idea at this stage to send them the report and then same thing, the website owner’s manual, and so that they know what you’ve been doing for them. So that is everything. Um, for the word, but like I said , um, go through this. It’s very straightforward. These are some ideas, but you can, I’m sure you can definitely , um, definitely think of more things that you can do , um, at the different stages for the different elements.

Okay. So I’m just going to switch back again. Okay. So here are some of the resources that you can look at. And a lot of them, as where I learned about processes or chat experience, or maybe useful my chat experience , um, so differently, have a look at , uh, like I’ve mentioned, WP elevation was the start of it all.

Um, the community and the cause is very valuable. Um, the, and Porter. Cool client portal , um, both can portal itself. Um, and the free training that , um, Laura Elizabeth , uh, gives about the client experience is very good. The Erin Flynn, and she has a lot of good resources on things like welcome packets and goodbye packets, everything in between.

Um, then , um, when I first started Christina Marie studio had resources on the website and , um, some of what I’ve been teaching was from there. She also has a course called design to delight. And then , uh, Lakey, the WP projects, project managers Academy have been useful. And then also for day rates, they rate mastery.

Okay. So. That is basically it. So if you have any questions, please ask in the quick Q and a session afterwards, and you’re also very welcome to contact me or connect with me on social media. Here are some online details , um, and you can also find that in a workbook. So thank you very much. And I’ll see you in the Q and a session.

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