Warranty period for websites

I do a year for bug fixes. Nothing more nothing less. But your contract needs to specify what a bug is. Otherwise you'll be doing stuff for free.

Those possible issues you outlined should be on the contract too.

Reason I say a year is as traffic increases and data might get larger you may run into issues. Negativity spreads like wild fire and people go out of their way to spread it.

I think for that kind of small customer I'd be saying "once you sign off, we're done". Unless you have a good reason to want to help them (eg, they might lead to new business etc). A lot depends on your situation though - the trade off between being helpful and being taken for a ride ;-) I once had a small business customer email me 10 years down the line demanding I fix something but not offering any money...

@ohffs love when that happens. More so for me is site ranking going down because they never update the content.

@jekinney they seemed genuinely surprised that I wouldn't re-write their shopping cart as their back-end processor had closed down 'I mean, how long can it take?!' etc etc. I don't really agree with compulsory programming education, but sometimes I wish there was just enough to give people an inkling of how much work goes into 'a cart' ;-)

Mind you, I'm sure there are physical shopping cart engineers out there listening to IT people moan about squeaky wheels and muttering to themselves 'If only you knew!!' ;-)

And you mean I can't just put a website online with a big png image, never update it and not be the number one result on every search engine?! I had an SEO Guru email me and said he could 'fix google' just with meta tags!!! ;-)

Personally I tell clients it's 30 days from launch and make it clear that it's wise to take out a maintenance plan. I'm a sucker for just fixing stuff like you mention though, after 30 days, and quite often get taken advantage of because I'm always keen to keep clients happy. It's fine as long as you keep a healthy balance and communicate well.

I agree with @jekinney on a year, however if it's a bug programmer did (not framework bug) longer for free should be fine. After all they paid for "a working site" not a site where a field displays something wrong. Just example. But clients have to be treated nice.

Thanks all for your thoughts!

Too often we're fixing something we think is not our responsibility, but the client thinks it is. And clients have to be treated nice indeed, but like @ohffs said; the trade off between being helpful and being taken for a ride.

Customers don't get scared away by the 30 days @steveperrycreative?

Not at all @TheNephilim but I make sure that I communicate it well from the start. Most clients take out maintenance plans so it's not really an issue for them.

Communication is huge!!

That is why I mentioned contracts. You set the features, time, money, payment dates, milestones and expected results (Scope doc!!) along with general info like warranty and updates etc.

Any time a client comes back for changes I create another contract I call Change Request. This extends the current contract with new/added information and amended price etc. Course people in the USA are sue happy, so mainly to cover may butt from that.

I basicly mirror construction practices that require this paperwork trail, but also eliminates miscommunication and he said she said issues.

I guess a general scope doc that sums it all up would be a good idea. For small projects (like simple websites) that might be enough in our case. With bigger projects it's probably wise to include a full contract too.

Actually we never really ran into problems, probably we're mostly working with/for local companies, but at least it's nice for our clients to have a general idea of certain terms. Like what you mentioned as a scope doc.