Im New to this!!

[GR Web FX]

Hey People,

Im totally new to this and have a question. Say if i bought Actinic Developer and designed a site for a guy who has a model shop selling planes and cars etc. So i design him a shop that lets him sell his products online. If the guy DOESNT have order manager, what options are available to him as far as looking after his site? I know that if he had Catalog he could add/remove products. But if he doesnt have any actinic product, would all order processing be down to me?

If he didnt have order manager could he still recieve emails or notification when someone has bought a product say via an existing email account?

Thanks alot for any help

GR Web FX

[jont]

Hi Gary,

I have a similar client for whom I maintain the site but cannot justify the Order Manager let alone a copy of Business due to the very low turnover - I simply have developer set up to send a copy email to the customer so he knows a new order has arrived - I download the order and fax through to him - I don't mind this as it is very low volume orders but if there were a lot it would be a pain - in future I will build the cost of Manager into the quotation to remove this hassle.

[GR Web FX]

Oh right so under no circumstances design someone a shop without them having Order Manager.

Im totally new to designing people ecommerce sites and have another general question.

Whats the sort of going rate to charge someone for maintaining their site? Say that i develop someone a site with Actinic Developer and they have the Order Manager. If all they require me to do is add/remove products etc......what should i charge a month? Say the shop had 30-40 products. Should i charge per product changed? or should i charge a fixed amount per month so it doesnt matter whether 5 or 20 products are changed each month the price stays the same?

Thanks again

[jont]

If your customer does not have OM or a copy of Business then things can get very messy - best to keep it all together so they can download to their own machine and process the orders - if you start passing info on it can get out of hand.

As for the going rate to charge that is the age old biscuit. Go for a fixed rate and they can abuse the system unless you put in a clause limiting the number of changes per month - go for a per change rate and they may never change a thing or worse buy a copy of Business and start doing their own if you quote too highly. Bare in mind there is more to the site maintenance that just changing the products - there may be layout changes, templates alterations etc which if you go down the "per product" pricing model will need a seperate quotation.

It all boils down to how much up-keep do you think they will require and cost out your time accordingly - this needs thrashing out BEFORE you even start up Actinic (been there before and got fingers burnt) and get it agreed in writing.

The other option would be to include a copy of Business in with the quote as well as a training day - you design the initial site and they maintain the products etc - this is good if you are just too busy to maintain the site.

[GR Web FX]

Thanks Jont, your a big help

when choosing whether the client should have catalog or business to maintain their site, what factors should i take into account? i have compared the two products on the website and from what i can see, its really down to whether the client will be offering discounts online and whether they want to link SAGE accounting to their site.

Is it true that if i buy the developer package i get 20% off catalog and business when buying it for the client?

Do both catalog and developer come with 1 training day?

[Nadeem]

Hi Gary

Is it true that if i buy the developer package i get 20% off catalog and business when buying it for the client?

Yes this is true with the developer package

Do both catalog and developer come with 1 training day?

Only with the developer package I'm afraid.

Kind Regards