22 ways to deliver more value to your web development clients

Providing more value than your clients expect is a great way to build business relationships that last. Delivering additional value to your web development clients can help show you're clients that you're thinking of all aspects of their website project and business, and also make them more likely to continue working with you or your agency in the future.

The guiding principles of suggesting additional services are simple:

• Only suggest additional services that are relevant to your clients' web development project, business goals, and that fit within a reasonable budget.
• Consider bundling your web development services together, i.e. offering the additional services at a reduced price when bundled together with the initial price of the website project.
• Try to keep the cost of the additional services lower than the initial web development project's cost.

We’ve put together this handy list of 22 different web development services you can leverage to provide more value to your clients. Just keep in mind that not every service will make sense for every client; always consider which web development add-on services to suggest on a case-by-case basis.

Table of Contents

• Static website plugin services
• Marketing, SEO & Analytics services
• Web development & security services
• Bonus value-add services

Website functionality services

1. Content management system (CMS)

Offering your clients a Content Management System (CMS) with both an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor for rich text and an intuitive Visual Editor for web pages will be invaluable to both you as a developer, and to your client. Having a user-friendly CMS makes it easier for your clients to add new pages to their website, or make changes without needing to contact you for help! We recommend choosing CloudCannon to provide your clients with a customizable Content Editor for blog posts or documentation pages, and a Visual Editor for live visual editing and page building!

2. Commenting

Take collaboration a step further by giving your clients' customers and site users the ability to comment on their site. There are countless tools that provide websites with commenting and community management capabilities. We've compiled a comparison table of some of the most popular commenting tools to make it easy for freelance developers and agencies to find the one that best suits their clients needs.

3. Digital asset management (DAMs)

It can be such a pain to spend time uploading images to a website only to find that the file is too large, or the dimensions are incompatible with the website. You can completely eliminate the need for your clients to worry about their site’s digital assets by connecting their website to a Digital Asset Management (DAM) tool. Together with a DAM, tools like imgix can handle asset optimization for your clients, making their lives easier. You can easily connect your DAM of choice to CloudCannon!

4. Site internationalization

If your client's business operates internationally, or is based in a bilingual (or multi-lingual) location, it makes sense to offer site internationalization as an add-on service. This will make your client's website available in multiple languages! Managing translations on static websites is easier than you think with open-source tools like Rosey i18n. Check out the Rosey Migration Guide to help you set up Rosey on CloudCannon.

5. Site Search

Deliver more value to your web development clients by adding a search function to their websites. Including search functionality will significantly improve their website’s user experience. Free and open-source search tools like Pagefind make it easier than ever to set up search on static websites. Learn more about Pagefind:

6. Ecommerce

Would your client benefit from being able to sell physical or digital goods online? Connect their website to an ecommerce plugin to add this dynamic functionality to a static website. We have compiled a helpful list comparing ecommerce plugins for static sites.

7. Booking capabilities

Suggest the addition of online booking functionality to your web development clients' sites. You can do this on a static website with a booking plugin, or by simply connecting the website to an external booking platform. There are countless industry-specific booking platforms out there to choose from. Timely, for example, has found favor in the beauty industry. If you frequently work on web development projects in an industry-specific niche, you might even consider partnering with a well-suited booking platform to earn a commission from the clients you refer.

8. Contact forms

Make it easy for users to contact your clients through their websites with contact forms. Providing a site contact form can increase your clients’ leads by making it clear how to get in touch. Forms aren't just limited to forwarding an email, either — some CMSs, like CloudCannon, have a wide range of external integrations for forms, from Zapier to Slack, IFTTT, and Make. Here is a list comparing contact form plugins for static websites to help you choose the one that's right for you, and your client. 

9. AI powered chat bot

Add value to your client’s web development project by offering the creation of an AI powered chat bot to make it easier for their site users to ask questions, and find what they are looking for. This way your clients can rest assured that questions will receive a prompt response, and their users will be directed to the appropriate resources without the need for constant monitoring.

10. Newsletter automation

If your client sends out newsletters, offer to streamline and automate this process by connecting their website to a newsletter automation tool. We have compiled a comparison list of newsletter plugins that are compatible with static websites, to help you choose the best one for your client’s use case. This is an ideal value-add for clients with businesses that rely on email marketing and lead generation.

Marketing & SEO services

11. Digital assets & branding

Is your web development client a new business owner setting up their first website? Or are their website digital assets, or company branding outdated and in need of a refresh? You can offer graphic design, photography, videography, or even the creation of brand guidelines, to create digital assets with consistent branding! If your agency doesn’t have graphic design, photography, videography, or branding expertise, or if you’re a freelancer who only wants to focus on web development, consider partnering with others. You can develop long-lasting partnerships with graphic designers, photographers, videographers, and branding experts, while earning a commission by referring your web development clients.

12. Customer relationship management (CRM)

Consider becoming an affiliate for a customer relationship management (CRM) software provider. You can set up your clients’ CRM account, and connect it to their website. This is a highly relevant add-on service for clients that need to collect data from ecommerce sales and web forms.

13. SEO services

You can deliver more value to clients without in-house marketing expertise by offering to conduct full SEO audits and reports, on an agreed upon basis (quarterly, yearly, etc). Fix any SEO related technical issues, and provide clients with insights about their individual web page’s search engine rankings to help them make improvements. There are many free (Google Trends, Answer the Public) and paid tools (Ahefs, SemRush) that you can use to conduct keyword research to inform a content marketing strategy for your clients' websites. Or you can conduct A/B tests with free tools like Google Search Console to evaluate the effectiveness of on-page SEO changes.  SEO copywriting is another great value-add for clients building new websites from scratch.

14. Pay-per-click advertising

Deliver more value to your clients by offering digital ad management as an add-on service. Connect your clients' websites to Google Ads and create, monitor, and optimize their ads. You can create search, display, or YouTube ads, depending on each client's specific industry and budget constraints.

15. Web Analytics

Deliver more value to almost any web development client by offering to connect free website analytics tools, like Google Analytics, to their website. This can be easily done through Google Tag Manager or directly in the website’s code. Alternatively, you can earn a commission by referring your clients to paid web analytics providers. Many of your clients may not know how (or why) to use their connected web analytics tools. So as a freelance web developer or agency owner, you can step in to fill this knowledge gap by offering monthly web analytics reporting as an additional service. This saves your clients the time and effort required to learn to navigate web analytics tools and make sense of the data, while still being able to benefit from analytics insights.

Web development & security services

16. Hosting, domain names & CDNs

Offering web hosting and a custom domain name are the most common web development add-on services, they go hand-in-hand. You can offer shared hosting packages, cloud servers, or virtual private servers, depending on your client’s needs and budget. You can add even more value to clients who operate internationally by bundling web hosting with a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to optimize loading times by storing their websites in multiple servers across the globe. You can manage your client’s hosting, domain, and CDN, and bill them for the costs along with your web development services. Some of these services are trivially quick and easy to set up, so offering these add-ons is a no-brainer. 

17. Site maintenance

As the world of web development continues to evolve, it is necessary to make incremental changes to maintain best practices. You can provide your clients with the best website possible by bundling website builds with a yearly site maintenance retainer. This ensures that your clients will continue to make the most of the site you build them, and has the added potential to provide you or your web development agency with a recurring income.

18. Spam prevention

Add value by protecting your clients' web forms and mailbox's from spam by connecting their websites to anti-spam software like Google’s free ReCaptcha. This will save your clients the headache of clearing out spam.

19. Cyber security testing & HTTPS/(SSL)

Online threats to your clients’ websites are constantly evolving, and so should your clients' cyber security strategies. For large clients, consider offering to conduct periodic cyber security penetration tests on your clients' websites to identify and resolve potential vulnerabilities. And of course, you can ensure that your clients’ websites are secured with an encrypted connection by offering an SSL certificate with every new site you build.

Bonus value-add services

20. Email addresses & signatures

Have you already arranged a domain name for your web development client? Add on the creation of domain connected email addresses to improve your client’s business credibility. You can deliver even more value by offering to design on-brand email signatures to boost your client’s perceived professionalism.

21. Business profile & reputation management

Is your client starting a new business? You can offer to setup their business profile on Google Business Profile, Facebook Business Pages, and any other platforms relevant to your client’s industry. Add more value by then setting your client's business up on free reputation management tools like Google Review Link and Place ID Generator. This will help them keep an eye on reviews and comments about their business.

22. Site hand-off workshop

When developing new websites, deliver more value by running a hand-off workshop to help clients and their employees set up accounts and learn to use any new platforms like their CMS, CMR, analytics tools, and more. Provide a virtual or in-person overview of how to manage their new website, and leave extra time to answer questions.

Did we miss any web development value add-on services? Let us know on Twitter or Mastodon! And take your freelance web development career, or web development agency, to the next level by signing up for the CloudCannon Partner Program. As a CloudCannon Partner, you’ll unlock exclusive benefits and savings for you, and your clients, with every new client you bring on. All while delivering more value to your clients by choosing CloudCannon as your easy-to -use CMS!