Keep Your Clients Happy: How to Have a Smooth Project Handoff
While it’s easy to wish for a project that lets you have full control, we know that in reality, you’re helping someone build their business, their dreams, their portfolios. Building a website is more than just a technical process, it’s a stepping stone to the next stage of an idea. As an entire company comes into focus, the gravity of your own business lends to some raw emotions, heavy stress, and high anxiety from clients. For some clients, maybe they’re anxious, maybe they don’t trust your judgment or their own, maybe they’re feeling the cost of your labor and want to ensure the value is being matched. These are totally justifiable feelings, but if we’re being honest they can make the process feel more intense. And the most complicated stage for any designer is the handoff - where all final decisions can be changed, misunderstood, or even abandoned.
If you’re a Squarespace developer dealing with a complex client, use our tips to your advantage. Learn how to transform any difficult website build into an open-minded collaboration.
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Keep Your Clients Informed
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At Launch Happy, we love our clients. But we know some can be more demanding than others.
We’ve developed a reasonably foolproof approach to make sure we have happy clients, not angry ones, whose needs are met. Discover how to achieve more successful web handoffs with the following tools and techniques.
Be the master negotiator you know you can be!
Here are the three key steps we cover:
Getting final payment from your client
Giving them admin access and ownership
Getting your client up and running
Make Sure You Get Paid
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Before you go live or hand off ownership of the Squarespace site, you need to get paid. This way you ensure that you work with the client’s motivation.
If the site goes up and you haven’t received payment yet, the process of getting paid for your work can get delayed indefinitely. You want to avoid creating this unfortunate situation.
Get paid before you hand off a website to keep your client motivated to pay.
You don’t want to inadvertently create a difficult, non-paying client for yourself. Protect yourself by setting up a process that ensures you get your final payment first.
What to Include in Your Email
When you email your clients, fill them in on your process so there are no surprises. Here’s a recommended flow with key points to include in your communications.
Once you’ve gone through your final revision (ideally your second revision), email your client.
In your message, include, “The changes you requested are done.”
Continue with, “To launch your site by [DATE] and get it live, these are the next steps.”
Proceed with something like, “The next step is for you to submit your final payment. This way, I can give you ownership of the site.”
Communicate Your Process
Always communicate your process as you go so the client knows what to expect. If you don’t communicate clearly and in a timely way, you might anger your client.
Communicate openly, emphasizing this very important point:
“This is our process, and once you’ve taken the next steps, we can get everything up and running and live for you.”
Be aware that you may need to reword this slightly to meet each client’s unique needs. They may need to connect the domain, for example, or they may already have a live website. Take these and other considerations into account to create a clear message that best matches the client’s situation.
Payment Platforms
Always make it easy for your client to pay you. Include instructions in your email message.
Include a link to where they can pay you.
Whether you use QuickBooks, PayPal, HoneyBook, or any other payment platform, walk your client through how to pay you.
Only Grant Backend Access After Final Payment
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Once you have received the final payment, you can move on to Step 2, which involves transferring ownership and providing your client with backend access. Here’s how you do this in Squarespace:
Go to Settings.
Click on Permissions.
Invite a contributor.
Give them Administrator access.
Hit Send.
Once you send this and your client accepts, you can give them ownership. You complete this using the Transfer Ownership option.
Be aware that after you transfer ownership, you’ll still have access to the site as an admin.
Making this step an integral part of your process prevents hearing from disgruntled clients months or even years later asking you for ownership.
Publishing a Site
For a site to go live, you typically need to have these things set up first:
The site has to be paid for.
The domain needs to be connected.
Watch our video, “How to Publish a Site in 3 Easy Steps,” for a walk-through on publishing your Squarespace website.
Train Your Clients on How to Launch
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Once you’ve received payment and you’ve transferred ownership, it’s time to plan a site launch date.
With your client, select a launch date, and prior to that date, hold a training session.
This training session is very important because it teaches your client the basics they’ll need for a successful launch and for completing simple site management tasks. Your clients will be so much happier when they understand what they’re doing with your helpful guidance!
During your training session, go through how to access the backend of their Squarespace site. In addition, walk them through how to publish the site.
To launch a URL, the following needs to be in place:
The site is paid for.
The URL is connected.
The site is public.
Plan these steps with your client. Once they’re taken care of, you’re free to launch and make the site go live.
Need Squarespace Help?
At Launch Happy, we offer many other resources to help business owners like you speed things up and get the most out of the Squarespace platform. Here are a few other guides and tools to check out:
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Robust SEO audit tool that evaluates your Squarespace site and provides actionable tips.
Squarespace Designer Starter Kit to teach you everything you need to know to launch a successful design career.
Need more advice? Sign up for one of our Squarespace SEO packages!
