By Rachel Andrew CHAPTER 11tent management system. But we do expect them to know how to develop
a static HTML website.
We have, however, picked up a number of customers who use visual
development tools such as Dreamweaver and Freeway Pro, and who don’t
know HTML. When such person contacts us prior to buying our product
we always explain that Perch requires HTML and CSS knowledge. If they
then go on and buy, however, it can be quite difficult to support them.
We have recently raised the price of the product, making it perhaps
slightly less attractive to the hobbyist, and aiming more at the professional
market. We would need to make a number of compromises to make Perch
usable for people without any HTML knowledge. We don’t want to com-
promise the product in that way because we want the product to be a tool
for professional use, and to attract professional designers and developers
to it. There are other website building tools out there that would be a better
fit for the non-coder.
Supporting customers who are not a good fit for your product is diffi-
cult, as to meet their requests and needs could mean becoming a different
product. Good sales material can help, as well as clear indications of who
the product is for, with typical use cases. However, our experience shows
that even when we tell a potential customer directly that we don’t think
Perch is for them, they sometimes still go on to buy a license.
ReallY DiffiCulT PeoPle
We’ve found that by being friendly and professional we don’t have a huge
number of problems with truly difficult customers. Probably the hardest
support conversations are with the noisy person with the very specific
feature request that we have explained we are not going to fulfill.
We offer unlimited free support, which I feel releases us from some of
the potentially tricky conversations we would have if people paid per in-
cident. It doesn’t matter what the issue is: if we can help we do, or we help
the customer get help (for example, if the issue is with their host).