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What are your clients reactions to Symphony CMS' backend when you unveil your masterpiece?

I paid you to mow my lawn and clean my pool. Why are you showing me this?!

What are your clients reactions to Symphony CMS' backend when you unveil your masterpiece?

Usually the reaction is pretty neutral, which I think is a good sign. Most of our clients don't have much experience with different content management systems. They accept and learn whatever you show them. I guess the real difference is how long it takes them to find their way around, and how often they call you for support.

So I would say our clients are happy with Symphony's backend, but they don't know how much easier it is because they don't have a reference point for comparison. For them, everything's just how it's supposed to be.

Just out of curiosity, why did you ask? Did you get negative feedback from clients?

I paid you to mow my lawn and clean my pool. Why are you showing me this?!

:D

I paid you to mow my lawn and clean my pool. Why are you showing me this?!

Fantastic :)

The reaction jensscherbi describes is probably ideal - really they shouldn't even notice the CMS. I think this is Symphony's strength - it's simple and logical (and of course very adaptive). There isn't anything for a client to get excited about, but really, how excited do they need to be about inputing content?

Usually the reaction is pretty neutral, which I think is a good sign. Most of our clients don't have much experience with different content management systems

Good point.

Just out of curiosity, why did you ask? Did you get negative feedback from clients?

I was just curious as well. Most of my clients don't know what to expect from a CMS either, but I have had a few that seem to think I can pull magic rabbits out of the backend.

There isn't anything for a client to get excited about, but really, how excited do they need to be about inputing content?

Well, I don't expect clients to be excited. However, there is definitely a balance between expectations and ease of input.

I probably worded that badly actually - really I just mean that the UI and structure is flexible enough to make it 'get out of the way'. It's not all like "Look at me", it's more like "Input some stuff here".

This is just my perspective though - we haven't had the chance to put Symphony in front of clients yet, but I'm sure they'll love its simplicity and ease of use. Really though that seems to be as much up to the website creator as the CMS, as it allows for a lot of variation for content input and management.

On a few occasions I've simply sent them the login link, and they've quickly figured out everything themselves. One of the few CMSs I've used where no training was required. Of course your mileage may vary. A lot of it comes down to how well you structure the backend, and how technically experienced your clients are.

We mostly send them the login code along with a short explanation of some of the more complex stuff (like when certain sections are chained together or the one feeds the other).

Mostly they figure it out. We always tell them that they can't really 'break' anything as long as they are careful with what they delete :-P

We also tell them about why we choose for Symphony: because of it's simplicity, that different content is stored in different sections, and that you always only see the fields that matter, in contrast with other, larger tree-based CMS's. At this point we mostly get reactions of recognition with previous CMS's they've worked with and then we have a laugh and talk about how stupid those are ;-)

The only times we have to write manuals or something is when the client isn't very 'good' with computers, or when some very complex things are being handled by the site, like real-estate management combined with subscriptions and user accounts. So it's really the scale of the project which increases the complexity there.

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