 We're gonna be talking about onboarding your new clients, which I know can be oh so much of a joy of making sure to get all of that information. And then a little bit about me, my name is Michelle Butcher-Jones. I am the COO of WebArk Technology. We're just a small little agency based out of, outside, a little bit outside of Las Vegas. Sorry, I had to complete mine, because I just actually started there a couple of weeks ago. I'm also on the staff for Cornell University doing content for the Johnson School of Business. I am a Work Camp US organizer since 2017. And every year, it all depends on if I'm going to be continuing doing it, because let me tell you, contributing to, and being an organizer for Work Camps, we'll do a little pause here for this, is a wonderful experience and I suggest everyone who likes to be in the community to be an organizer of a local Work Camp or join in as a volunteer organizer for like US or your other flagship ones if you're from Europe or like Asia. They are so much fun, but they are work. But they are so much fun. Core contributor, I was on the 5.7 All Women Lead Team. That was also a great experience. Headgeek for the website Can't Speak Geek, which is a little bit of talking about WordPress and technical stuff in non-geek terms. And when I do have time, I love to photograph. Why is onboarding important? Why can't we just hit the ground running? Well, when it comes to websites, you can't really hit the ground running. You've got to know how to log in, at least. And you've got to, when you're inheriting clients, especially who already have the sites, have hosting and they're like, we just want you to do our content. We just want you to do SEO. We're wanting you to just do some like CRO changes. And to do those kind of things, you have to get into the website. You have to get into their files and their hosting. If they're wanting to like migrate their hosting to you, you've got to be able to get into their DNS or their domain registrar. And so you have to have these logins. It's kind of like baking a cake. You have to get all of the ingredients before you can actually make it. And properly onboarding them will set you up in them up for success. Because if you go into it where I'm going to get all my information before we even have a kickoff or anything, makes it so when you kick off and you take the information you go to your developers or if you're just an agency of one, you start it yourself, you're already prepared. Consider it like for when you're baking your cake, if you go in and you prep, like you see on the cooking shows, they had the little bowls of like baking powder and baking soda, flour and all that. Or all you have to do when you're making it is just dumping it in. Now if you had to like unbox and open every item that you're doing to making a cake, that's gonna put on some extra time for your making it. And your team will be so much happier for you to have all this information if you are an agency or you work for like a bigger house place. Because it was nothing more that will aggravate a developer. When they're like, hey, we need you to change the color of the header from blue to purple. They're like, all right, I can do that. And they go to, they see they're hosted at like say Flywheel and they go to it and they're like, I can't get in. Can't change colors if I can't get in because it's a CSS change. And we don't want to do that in like the file editor in the backend because CSS is a little bit different but if you're working on a PHP file using the theme editor and you go to like add a function or something like that, you forget to put that semicolon in. Guess what's gonna happen to the website? Boom. And then you have to get that information to be able to fix the site because you sure can't do it through the theme editor. But why is it always such a headache to get that information? Show of hands, how many people who have onboarded clients in the past where you are taking in already built sites and they're like, we don't know where our site is hosted or we don't, what's DNS? I don't know where I bought my domain. Oh, the guy who worked for us 17 years ago has our GoDaddy account. And you sit there with it and you get off the call with your client and you just go to your desk and you just start headbutting it because you're like, why do these people not know these things about what they own, about their site? Why were they not educated when the site was built or given a list of like, here is where your login is, this is where you're hosted, that's your URL, this is where your DNS is and giving it to them because it is their property. And so many of them are like, I don't know. And so you have to go on a hunt to get that information which should have taken you like a 15 million meaning now takes you three hours and 14 days and a carrier pigeon to get it all. And it's many clients are just not educated with it. They pretty much, especially if they get just a one-off developer to build the site, they're like, here it's live, have fun, bye. And they're like, wait, how do I log in? How do I update content? How do I, anything? They're like, well, maybe I should find an agency to help out with the maintenance for it since I don't know what I'm doing. And it's also the wild, wild west. Unfortunately, there's not much of having, sorry, can not think of the word, you know, just norms of how to ask for the information or even like cheat sheets that are out there, like there's a lot of things in Canva and like Google's templates where, you know, asking for information if you are a school or something like that, but there's not much in there for us for finding out information. But you can make this easier on you and I promise you can because I have dealt with kind of not having any of those type of information readily available for me. So what I did is by little OD, OCD, HDBrain, is I made it for myself. And it has helped out so much to have that information readily available, have that template that goes out to them that already has all the information on it. And the first thing is just be prepared for it. Have all your items ready. Have a package that's like, you know, if you use teamwork, have a teamwork template project set up where it already has like your folders in there and what information you need to ask for. And if you're just a web agency, have like a folder that is for development, a folder that's for support, folder for design, or if you're like a digital marketing full agency where you have the SEO and social and support web and all of that divided out. And then also, this is one I cannot say enough is to have one login email and a default username for your clients. Because if not, they would be like, oh, our login to WP Engine is frank at gotmail.com and here's the password. Well, the next person is, oh, we're at WP Engine too. Our login is jack at site one.com. And so you might end up, if you have like a hundred clients, 32 different logins for just WP Engine clients. And then like say 12 for Flywell and 17 for SiteGround where you could have it set up where they just send you delegate access to that one like say, client logins at webarch.tech. So then all of them go right there. So if ever you have to log into WP Engine, you know it's the one login and you could look at it from there. And also for having the one username, it makes it so much easier so you're not going, what's the login to this? And then always have your own login to the client site and to the client's hosting if available. If they're on a C-Panel type of host, typically those don't have shared access but we'll get into that a little bit later. And then document all the things. And then also something I did not put in here is have one central place for all of the information. So you're not like having like five Doompiles going, I know I have that login here, okay, here it is. You know, there's, you can build your own internal site, air table, even as simple as having one big spreadsheet where you have each client on a row and it has all the logins and stuff in it for you. But just have one central source of truth for that information. And then for going into the documentation type stuff, in Google Slides it does not make it easy to put in a portrait style PDF in a landscape thing, so I kind of chopped them all up. But the first thing is, is have a new client login form that will have all the information and this is actually three slides but you'll be able to see in the part. The first one, have the business name is a lot of people cannot really remember what the client name is, well remember what the website is. And then have that name and then also that main website URL because like we'll pick on Verizon Wireless. I could have Verizon Wireless here but one of their URLs is this vzw.com. If you don't have that URL up there you might just always just go to VerizonWireless.com instead of like maybe what their actual one is because a lot of different businesses will have like domain names that are close but not exact to what their business name is. And then in this also make sure you're getting the client's names or titles, emails and stuff which you already have I know in your sales CRM but you'll want to make it easily accessible with all the other login information. And then going down in this, I have this as just a paper thing to do, you can set this up in like a Google form which I ain't too thrilled with or I was gonna say a contact form on the website is also good but make sure you're using something that can encrypt it. Please by all please do not say hey send us an email with all your logins and plain text. Please don't ever do that. If you wanted to have it that way and not have an actual form, you can say please I need this information please send that to me via a quick forget link or a one time secret.com. I personally like quick forget better because quickforget.com will give you the option to set multiple days and multiple times it can be used and you can attach files to it. Quickforget.com, one time secret.com. In these like say I can put in my information say it can be accessed five times within 24 hours. After 24 hours that link no longer works and you can't access that information. But if you use it for sending two clients make sure you say this link can only be looked at like three times in 72 hours I think is a default. Make sure you copy this down in a safe place so you don't lose it because like if I reset a client's password I drop it straight into there so even I don't save it because if it's a personal login to something I shouldn't know their login. But for this you'll want the WordPress login and then or we say you set it up for us and give us that information. Existing hosting URL and login which is preferred if you're migrating in as well so you can look to see they're like oh we've got a little website it'll be on your smallest hosting and then you get it and you migrate it and they have 32 gigs of images in their WP content folder and you're like this thing will work on my little two gig hosting plan I'm gonna have to bump you up. So it's always good to have that before migrating so you know what you're getting yourself into. The domain DNS login because anyone who's ever had to migrate a site and then have to send them the IP address and changes wait for them to do it to let us know that they did it if they even let us know they did it and then sometimes they're like well why is my site getting an SSL error because you didn't tell me you changed it so I haven't set it up yet because you have to wait for the site to go live before the SSL will work. And then if they're using DNS that's different from domains like say they were on Bluehost for a while Bluehost likes you to have their DNS there and then also like Cloudflare if they're using that you definitely want them to delegate access to you for Cloudflare because of clearing cash issues if you're building things. And that is one definitely that they can send to your default address. But then also something a lot of people doesn't think about is the premium login themes and other logins. Say you use Salesforce on your site you have gravity forms on your site you are like an Avada or an infold theme user or you're using your Toppo client reputation management. This is a place where you put in those logins for it because of course if you don't get one like say they're a WooCommerce site and you don't say get them to send you a Stripe login to their account guaranteed a week later something will go wrong with their Stripe connectivity. And it's always good to have that information beforehand because for anyone who worked in web longer in about five minutes have learned Murphy's law on what can go wrong will go wrong happens I think in this career field than any other career field. Because like what do we not do on Friday? We do not launch on a Friday. And then the other thing that I like to put on here for the client is the above logins have been reviewed and verified that they work because how many times have they sent you like say they're go daddy login and the password's been changed. Putting that on them to check that they are right before giving them to you. So that should make your life a lot easier. And then the acknowledgement that they know if they change any of these passwords for like say the cPanel account that they can't share access to they will let us know within five working days. So we're not out here trying to chase a new login and then I want them to sign and date it so that they know. And because when you get those acknowledgements that makes it a bit easier later down on the road when there are questions. But then also I have cheat sheets that I've made up for helping people who like say and a new account managers came in where they were like an account manager for Coca-Cola since I know Coca-Cola. But wait a minute, this is a Pepsi area, right? Not Coca-Cola. For especially the people's knowledge like say if you get an account manager that worked for Coca-Cola that's now came over to your web agency where they understand if how to keep clients happy but they don't know the technical jargon. This is where it's really good to have the knowledge-based type information. And I did, you can find my cheat sheets actually at mlb.pw slash sheet ssheets. But I did put some of the basic information on here for you all as well as to go through. Give it a minute for if you want to write that down or screenshot it. And it'll also have a PDF of my client form on there that you can download it is in Adobe but you can copy the information and make it in your own for branding and stuff. Or if there's something you're doing like two months later you're like, oh Michelle you probably forgot to put such and such on it, let me know because it just makes my life easier for knowing what things that should actually be on there because we're all growing experience on learning here. But the first thing is what information do we ask for and why do we ask for it? And I gave answers for all of these questions on the cheat sheet. But like the first one, what type of site do you have? Sometimes they don't even know what type of site that they have. And what is a site URL? That's another question kind of make sure that you are in the right place. What is the admin logins that goes back to your sheet? Can you provide us with hosting or FTP access? One of the things I'll go in for with hosting or FTP access. For a liability reason if you are doing any type of support work, make sure you have hosting or at least FTP or SFTP depending on whether hosted access because you don't want to make those changes like using WP file manager plugin or using the theme editor or plugin editor to make those changes. Because in the event like you forget one of those semicolons bringing the site down well then you're having to get a hold of the client to let them know oh your site is down and I do need the hosting to get in there to fix it because you wouldn't give it to me beforehand. All that's gonna do is make it upset client, your team's gonna be upset, it's not gonna be good situation. And I am of the type where you give me this information or we are only doing content and media changes. I will not update a plugin, I will not put a plugin on the site, I will not change any CSS, even putting it in the customizer, I will not do anything that involves even the little bit of code or something that can cause a plugin conflict if I cannot get the back access to be able to fix it if need be. And then also is your site or FTP controlled by IP address. A lot of times people put on plugins or set in their HD access that only certain IP addresses can access the back end of the site or can access the file manager. You'll kinda need to know that to be able to make sure to get into the site. And then for the hosting delegate access and then again with the domain registrar is your site using any premium plugins or any third party integrations because like say they talk about, for their site and then two months later they get complaining about something with their CRM integration with gravity forms and you were never told anything about this. It's good to kinda find out that information at the beginning. And then also one that skipped a lot is your site or multi-site. So I've seen a number of times where you go in to work on a site and you can't see the plugins because it's a multi-site and you only have one access to the one sub-site. And then also does your site have an SSL and what type of certificate they have? A lot of times now with hosts they'll just have the free let's encrypt type one. But some of them that say if you get like a doctor's office or one of those they might have a actual paid SSL certificate that they'll need to migrate over for like HIPAA or government contracts or they just want the bigger one because they're a big e-commerce type company. And then also some cheats for hosting and login access again going back of having the admin login or super admin and then again going back having the default username and email to give to the clients and also make sure that the passwords for each one of these sites are different because if you keep the same password for all of them if one site gets hacked with that password and it's found out to the little hacker bot guess what's gonna happen? Everyone of the passwords you're using everyone of the sites you're using with that password including if it's in your personal ones will also be able to be able to get into quickly because most of those password bots once they learn password is the one that is being used it just starts putting in a rotation for ping. And then hosting, be ready with URLs to send to the clients for popular hosting links to share how to delegate that access. In my cheat sheets page you'll see for the login and hosting cheat sheet it will give you a list of some of the most known hosting companies like GoDaddy and Bluehost and H2 Hosting, WP Engine, Flywell there'll be URLs in there to tell you how to share access or if there are C-Panel-based ones I'll put a note in and stay in there. And I always recommend the delegate access over them giving the login is how many picking on GoDaddy because this is one that it does happen a lot on is they'll say oh my GoDaddy number is my password is just go ahead and log in there and you can do everything and you sit down in a new IP address and you go to log in there's a little box we need your, do you want me to send it to your email or to your phone number for a key? Now I gotta call this client, hope the answer or set up a time for them to answer for me to be able to get into this. You'll do that about four times before you or like the next time I'm logging in here I'm just sending myself delegate access and I will do that every time they're adamant on I don't know how to do the delegate access I'm like all right we'll send it to me we'll log in right now and I will send it to myself so I don't have to wait for that text message or email because there's only for GoDaddy 10 minute window you can do it and so many times you'll email them and be like hey you should have just gotten an email from GoDaddy with a key in it please send it to me and they send you at like the 12th minute and of course it doesn't work thanks and then again if they don't want to give you access just kindly let them know what you're willing to do with their site due to liability because like a site goes down and yet it is your fault that it went down because like say missing that semi colon and they're like well why'd you take the site down blah blah blah well if I would have had the access I requested this would not have been an issue you said would have been down for like 30 seconds and not 17 minutes and in onboarding terms you need to know there's a sheet in there for this I think it might actually say DNS sheet but like the different type of terms of what is a website what is a domain or URL what is host and hosting what is files what is a database what different types of servers like what's the difference between managed hosting and a C panel what is FTP SFTP SSH what is domains and DNS where you're talking about the lingo with what's an A record what's a C name what's an MX record like for you know when we send over the A records from migrating a site and we're like here's the IP code and they're like well my site's currently pointing with a C name I put the number in there and it said it didn't work or I need you like WP engine powered I tried to put it in where it said for the A record and it said it wouldn't take it and you'd be able to explain how that works and then what's a text record and then using the at sign and DNS and then different types of common domain and DNS companies and then also another thing is where to find site info at who is hosting this.com who is built with and then there is a gosh I cannot remember the name of it now but there is an extension for Google WAP-a-Lizer WAP-a-Lizer that will tell you like what type of site it is like if it's Wix or Shopify, huh? WAP-a-Lizer W-A-P-A-L-L-I-Z-E-R and it'll tell you like what technology on sometimes it will tell you what hosting company they're on and a lot of information it's like I had a client that came over and said we're Shopify site, we're Shopify site and they did have Shopify stuff except for we couldn't figure out we would change the stuff on Shopify and you couldn't see it on the main site and this went through three different developers one of the developers was a really great senior developer and they couldn't figure out why making these changes on Shopify wouldn't work. That's because their main site was on Contentful and it was me looking at it clicking the WAP-a-Lizer button and going guys no one thought to check it we trust clients now with all these informations and we're not looking they also say they start looking every time and then also with the lingo type stuff it was one thing I didn't have up here is to know like the acronyms and things for I had a client one time that was very technical client was having their site rebuilt and they were talking about the needs for the hosting because they were on Amazon web services and the gal who was talking to the client didn't really know the technical type stuff and so she said well we're on Flywheel and that's an engine X type of server yes how she spelled engine X E-N-G-I-N-E-X and it was a very technical client and I was just like oh gosh hold on a minute let me message it back I'm guessing spell checks such as her N-G-N-X to engine X ha ha type of thing to kind of smooth it over because I knew that client was gonna be like these people don't even know how to talk the right tech and then also like I said send the information securely if you're going to do it through an online way like if you're using gravity farms make sure it's got the encryption set up or like one of the form things do not send it please over plain text emails and then also research before the onboarding meeting that's where I'm like use built with see where it's hosted at and be ready with the knowledge already kind of know where they're hosting it so when they're like well we don't know where the site's hosted you can be like oh actually I've already looked it up it's on WP Engine you'll be able to go to mywpengine.com to log in to be able to send us the delegate access and then have that onboarding meeting with the client it is so important to be face to face and saying this is the information we need this is why we need it and this is why it's important because you're setting yourself up to have those expectations when I ask you the client for this information it is a need and you should give it to me or we're not gonna be able to be a successful partnership in this and then also to set up that expectations of time too of you know we are asking you for this information the longer you take the longer we're gonna get started on it because if you're like building a site and say you're waiting for the client for content or images and stuff then you're already starting to see with how long it takes them to get you back the onboarding information probably how long it's gonna take to get the content back and the images back and the QAs back you're already gonna be able to see a bit of a picture on that and as I mentioned it is required and it really does set the tone with them to show this is how we do you can talk about your process going through it and it's also just a good get to know you type at the time where you're already past that sales process where you're not having to be nervous about that are you sure for the sale you've already passed that nervousness you're getting ready to really talk about the meat and potatoes of the stuff but you're having that more one-on-one with them and then we're done and then the whole slides for the information can be found at mlb.pw slash wcatl 2023 All right, we'll kick it off with some questions I'll go over here first make it over to Susan second First of all, thank you for the presentation it was wonderful One resource that can be very helpful to go along with a lot of what you said is a online resource called clickminding.com They have just about every SOP standard operating procedure already documented CLICK? CLICKED.com Clickminded you need to have a customer of yours send you their Google Analytics stuff and they don't know how clickminding has a step-by-step tutorial on how to do it and you just send it so they have every standard operating procedure and you can recommend to them one that you need, they'll write it up for you No, is that a free resource or a paid monthly? There's free resources up to a certain point then you have paid and agency level the agency level you can wipe it with but clickminding has every standard operating procedure available everything to do with Facebook, social media, WordPress, you name it No thanks, I have not heard about that I hope this isn't like a silly question but on boarding for clients along my stuff I do gravity forms through links that I share from my website Could I not ask them to fill in this information via gravity forms? I would be okay for filling out the information via gravity forms but I would not have it to send you an email with all the information in that email I would just have it set for delete out the all fields thing and maybe just put their contact information in it so you know that it came in and then you can go to your website and pull it down from the entry Yes, when you go into the notifications area in the message field it typically will have the all fields and you can just delete that out and then put in what you want on the right side there's a little like we'll say it has a little square with a little brackets in it you can click on and it will help you populate those fields Hmm? Yes, and also delete that entry after you copied everything and so it's not sitting in your database I'm sorry, I'm not able to see the slide that went up with those two so I'm wondering what else it might do Oh, I'm sorry Did it work right? You know what, it didn't take so I'm sorry Oh, made it work right? Okay, fine, you got it There you go Now it works So what you gonna do with the client? That's when you know you've messed up a few times and how to fix it real quickly Awesome, well we have a few extra minutes does it further any other questions from Michelle? From me I had a question Sure So I do some client service work as well and integrating these clients into a process and creating that process when I don't really have one I just kind of help out where I can You have any advice for how we can start to develop a process and integrate that into the flow of the practice? Find you an OCD friend and they love writing processes Nathan's talk and another kind of way to look at is for if you're doing agency or agency of one work for processes take a look at some of the other bigger agencies especially if you're wanting more of like internal how to security type stuff human maids technical resource that they have online is amazing and can get you a lot of the information about security best practices and stuff for your companies for when it comes to like how to ask for information or migrating sites or any of those type of processes honestly asking around Twitter if anyone has resources they'd want to share with you grabbing out what you see blog posts where they go through it and writing your own WP beginner taking what they have and making it more focused towards to yours what you do because a lot of times like say they'll be a write up of say how to migrate to WP engine from Bluehost but it won't get into I need to put at the bottom that we're adding them to manage WP and putting that information into our client database information you can just add that stuff that makes it uniquely yours at the bottom of those type of processes and there's actually I cannot remember the name of it right now but there is an also I can tweet it out and do hashtag workampatlanta but there is a knowledge base plugin that is free on request.org slash plugins that I have been using that has been amazing for building my own knowledge base processes I don't know it but I'm going to look for the knowledge base plugin I do not know it but I'm going to tweet it out and do hashtag workampatlanta for it but because I've been working on building my own new knowledge base for the company I need to start working at Very cool we have another question it was just to add what we were saying it's worked very well for us at our agency for me as myself to think about future out of and to put a bit more work into the effort we do at the beginning of our project because later on it makes life easier for future out the more that we stop and think now the more that we document now as much as it feels like this barrier we have to get over and you just want to get started and give me the positive or whatever future out is really going to make so we're thinking about thinking ahead putting the other thing is we're going to have a larger agency when I joined people have this kind of imposter syndrome I mean you look at other people they're way more organized than you they normally aren't so the time that you put into putting together that template what gets you there doesn't have to be perfect now but you start it you try to use it the next time and you build on it and then the other thing is we don't want anything in spreadsheets we don't want all our passwords in one place it just seems like a huge risk but we will use things like a one password or something like that that way we can have thoughts from our different staff members and if somebody needs the organization you can pull away their access I am a huge fan of one password or last pass or key pass or anything you can put all of your passwords in where all you have to remember is the one password to get into there I really didn't get into that side of it for onboarding because that is a very big soapbox that I climb on it takes a whole lot longer than 40 minutes when it comes to security best practices for agencies as a matter of fact I do actually have a talk on Intro to Security that is on WordPress TV where I get really into about how secure things are and how to be secure online here is actually that knowledge based plug-in that I mentioned knowledge based for documentation facts with iInsistence its layout is really clean it's got three or four different ways you can set it up and it just looks really nice and it's easy to set up and it seems to be pretty lean and pretty supported well thank you so much everyone for having me Michelle thank you so much thank you