Five reasons an ExpressionEngine-driven site will benefit your clients
1. It’s not simply a web site, it’s a system.
Adobe Dreamweaver is great for building small web sites, but it provides no framework—it’s just a design and layout tool. With an ExpressionEngine-driven site, clients have an integrated system for managing their site, independent of what the designer may be doing at any given moment.
2. ExpressionEngine sites allow non-technical users to make updates without worrying about…
Dreamweaver, FTP, PHP, ASP, Java, .NET, Shell scripts, MySQL, HTML (mostly), mustard…pickle…Linux… Most clients don’t know about these things, or much care. An ExpressionEngine-driven site shields them from all the sometimes-intimidating tech talk and lets them edit their site right from a web browser, anywhere in the world. Dreamweaver-built sites may be edited by Contribute, but this requires your client to install a copy of Contribute for every user who needs to make edits, and they are tied to the machine(s) of which they install the software.
3. Reliable, repeatable results
If you set up an events calendar for a client, you’ll likely collect date, time, location, URL, description, and perhaps other information. The first time your client enters an event, and the 145th time she enters an event, the process is the same. She knows where it will appear on the web site, and that past events will automatically disappear from the list. This kind of certainty is reassuring.
4. Extensibility
If you’ve used ExpressionEngine for a while, you know how flexible and extensible it is. If your client is thinking ahead, perhaps he is wondering about RSS Feeds, forums, email newsletters, or other features for the future. Your client will be reassured to know that ExpressionEngine can meet their future needs as well as their present needs. If clients balk at using ExpressionEngine because they’re not familiar with it, show them a large scale site like TED. Though it is no longer active, you can also point out the Change.gov, the Obama-Biden transition team’s web site, was built in ExpressionEngine.
5. In the unlikely event…the ExpressionEngine Developer Network is your backup
Clients who hire solo designers or small web design firms sometimes worry, with good reason, what will happen to their web site if their chosen designer goes out of business, leaves the country, etc. It is helpful to reassure clients that ExpressionEngine is supported by a large developer network, and that if for any reason you are unable to continue work for them, any competent ExpressionEngine developer will be able to pick up where you left off. Note that this is not the case with proprietary or home-brew CMS solutions. If your client chooses Joe-Bob Random Fly-By-Night Web Developer, who uses a home-brew CMS built in .NET and Python, when Joe-Bob goes out of business, their next designer will have to plow through whatever code Joe-Bob chose to use—this can range from frustrating to impossible. Often, it means the new designer will have to start over. By contrast, a well-developed ExpressionEngine site can be extended by an experienced member of the ExpressionEngine Developer Network.
Conclusion
The above reasons to use ExpressionEngine may seem intimately familiar to you, but perhaps not to your clients. When trying to sell an ExpressionEngine solution, try to put yourself in your client’s position, and figure out what will make them happy and their business successful. Hopefully that is ExpressionEngine—but sometimes you’ve got to sell it.
