Hi friends 👋🏻

I've noticed over the past year that the amount of time I spend adding new features to existing clients' websites is growing. And it's a fun part of my work! This week, two examples that might inspire you to ask similar questions about your own website.

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"Hey, can we make our website do _________?"

Most of the clients I work with on new website builds or website refresh projects stick around, choosing to work with me on a maintenance or support plan.

I encourage my clients to tune in to how their website is working, both for themselves as website managers, and of course for the website users. And when they come up with an idea for how we could tweak something or add a feature to make that website work better, I want to hear about it.

I love seeing clients shift into this way of thinking about their website. It's not a technical burden to be struggled with any more. It's a platform that we can build on and extend, to make their work easier or more impactful.

Here are two recent examples. Neither of these are groundbreaking innovations. Just client ideas that we were able to make happen.

📆 "I'd like to work on updates to a page, but have them set to publish in the future. Can we do that?"

This is a common request for organizations that run events or campaigns, with content that needs to "turn on" or "turn off" on a specific date or time.

Many clients are used to having to do this manually, saving a draft of the "new" content and then logging in early (or late) to manually make the change.

I just rolled out this change on one client's site, and will meet with them tomorrow to review how to use the shiny "New Revision" button in their editing dashboard. This allows you to build a "revised" version of a content piece, and schedule it to replace the original on a specific date and time in the future.

📄 "What if users could submit their own resources to the library?"

On another client website, we had started with a resource library filled with document templates and factsheets users could download.

Over time, the client realized users had their own valuable resources that it would make sense for them to be able to submit to share in the resource library.

At first, users were using a form to share a PDF with the website manager, who then had to create a resource item from the website dashboard.

Instead, we adjusted the resource submission process so that a user's form submission automatically created a new resource item in the library, saved as a draft and pending approval. Then the website manager just has to respond to a notification email, and with a couple of clicks, the new resource is approved and live in the resource library. Not groundbreaking, but saves everyone time, and helps website users feel more engaged with the organization.

The screenshot above shows the notification email we built, allowing the website manager to review all the details of the new resource, and approve it with one click 🙂 (Look closely to discover cat ipsum)

One more fun feature of this kind of continuous quality improvement on client websites: it crosses over to other client sites.

Often, I'll discuss a feature request with one client and we'll build it out. Then as I meet with other clients in the coming months, I'll tell the about what we worked on, and they might decide to add it to the development queue for their own site.

If you'd like to make the switch from a website that feels like a technical burden to a website that helps move your mission forward, get in touch.

Until next time ✨

— Ed Harris (your digital strategy guide)

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