We've been asked (at late notice) to demo Umbraco as a suitable CMS for a
client in a couple of days.
We are going to create a 'generic' Umbraco demo and are considering using Warren's CWS as a base.
The proposed website is a shop window for rental properties and will need to integrate with a booking system at a later point. The audience will a mix between techies and general management.
Our question is, in your experience:
What demo's well? Which bits of functionality wins clients over? Which packages impress clients in a demo?
From my experience, every client expects different things from a CMS. However across all my demos they are all impressed by the security features - both front-end and back-end (especially back-end - allowing the admin to restrict access/permissions on a node-by-node basis)
Rollback functionality also impresses - knowing that if they make a mistake, they can back-track! (along with the audit trail - who did it, who can they blame!)
Everything else, like templating, modules (macros), etc... they tend to expect all that functionality - so there's less 'wow factor'.
doing any sort of Canvas demo, i.e click stuff to edit stuff is usually an eye-opener for the non-technical people. I did a csszengarden packgage to try to show off that aspect of umbraco....which is in the projects section of this site.
It's would be good to back that up with a more workflow based demo of the backend though. adding pictures, permissions for certain user types etc.
Doing a demo using windows livewriter or an equivalent blogging tool to update a certain section might also be a good shout?
I depends how technical the crew are that you demo too. If they are mainly editors that will b looking after the site, I find a well designed site appeals to them and a little demo of the backend showing the ease of use for publishing, adding new sections etc.
Our clients like the work flow aspects of Umbraco but thats not really a wizz bang kinda thing thats more for training/using.
So i would show them work flow but without realy mentioning it and then have a couple of killer features. I like the mapping one because people don't really think about how to locate things on a google map and Darrens package makes it so easy. - http://our.umbraco.org/projects/google-maps-datatype
In addition to that if it's rentals they are trying to sell I would go for the chucking a video banner in one of the rental pages and with a pre prepared video show them how easy it is to engage the user seamlessly using video. Grab a 30 second clip of Location Location Location and play it in the banner. If you're going to run it locally i would show them how to upload the video to the Media Lib and then place it in the page using the media picker publish it and show them the finished article.
Mostly start of with Warren's CWS2 which is a great starter and focus on features clients want (mostly based on feedback received before doing the actual demo). Clients get pretty fast impressed with the ease of creating new pages, updating documents (properties), rolling back in case of errors.
As Lee pointed out already, security trimming is a must show (backend), explaining different types of users (and possible workflow features), and most of the times also show off some sort of basic front-end membership features such as registering, logging in, accessing protected content, ...
And always try to do some kind of basic 3rd party integration using a custom section (Really basic stuff, but emphasize the fact that data can be integrated from anywhere, if that's required...)
Lastly, include features of must have packages such as imagegen, image cropper, data import tool.
Most impressive demo I've ever done, was to take the basic Runway package, and quickly demonstrate how to create a simple but flexible product catalog in 15 minutes, without doing any coding at all.
I did this once to a designer, where he asked: "I need to design a site for a company that sells boats. They want to display all the boats they have on stock with images, technical details etc. How can I do this?"
1) I took a basic Runway installation.
2) Created a "Boat" doc type with all the fields he wanted.
3) Created a matching template.
4) Created a simple XSLT macro to display a list of available boats.
5) Created some nodes, boats, categories etc. in the Content section.
Which only takes 15 minutes if you've done it before. Afterwards, the designer replied: "Impressive! I'd like you to build a system that can do this for my client!". To which I replied: "What do you mean 'build it'? I just did that...".
His jaw dropped, and he has refused to work with any other systems since then :-)
Thanks SO much for all the input guys, this thread sure shows off just how fantastic this community is.
All the ideas are really great. Reading through them all, in this particular case the consensus produces the following demo 'tick list'
Firstly the demo site should be 'pretty' (we'll use CWS as a base):
Demo ease of adding content
Demo ease of updating content
Demo Security Features / Multiple editors
Demo Rollback functionality
Demo Workflow
Demo Livewriter
Demo Canvas Editing
Add some Video
Add some images (include use of Image Gen & Image Cropper)
Demo Google maps (great idea!)
Demo 3rd Party integration - (we'll demo Google Analytics for Umbraco)
We also thought about a quick multi-lingual demo too.
The fact that we can set this project up from scratch and have it ready for a demo in a couple of days really shows the power and speed of Umbraco development!!
Really appreciate anymore feedback.
Many thanks
Rich
@Soeren - think this may go over this particular audience’s heads, but that sounds like a superb 15 min demo!
@Dan: Completely agree. I just demo'd contour to a client and they're now building all their web-forms themselves - doing me out of a good few days of development work. In hindsight this was a massive mistake, which I won't be making again. In future I may actually only present Umbraco verbally without going into detail about any particular functionality or packages.
It's frustrating because I definitely think there's a value in actually recommending and setting a client up with Umbraco - the money the client will save in the long-term is absolutely huge - but how on earth are you 'rewarded' for bringing such massive savings to them if it's not through making decent margins on development of things which Umbraco makes simple?
It's a tough one, knowing how much to show the client and weighing up the benefit for their business of using this system versus the time things actually take to develop with a neat system like this.
Depending on your audience you may think about finishing with the "Sites that use Umbraco". Throwing up a slide with international names of 'Vogue', 'Peugeot' and 'Heniz' gives clients an assurance of the product's quality, stability, flexibility, scalability, coolness, etc.
Try and tell the client what the benefits are rather than discussing the features. For example, if the benefit is 'A faster more maintainable site' you may want to demo content editing. If the benefit is "resiliance and control" then you could show workflow and versioning.
Before you go in to the demo, try and find our what they want to see, and in particular any issues they've had with previous CMS systems. Show them how their previous problems are now solved with Umbraco.
Similarly to Dan(s) point, ultimately you're selling your or your company services, not Umbraco.
In my experience, it's as much about the clients needs as what the CMS offers. Find out what the client likes and doesn't like about their current solution. Then demonstrate how Umbraco is a better fit solution to meet their needs.
Demoing Umbraco - what impresses clients?
Hi,
We've been asked (at late notice) to demo Umbraco as a suitable CMS for a client in a couple of days.
We are going to create a 'generic' Umbraco demo and are considering using Warren's CWS as a base.
The proposed website is a shop window for rental properties and will need to integrate with a booking system at a later point. The audience will a mix between techies and general management.
Our question is, in your experience:
What demo's well? Which bits of functionality wins clients over? Which packages impress clients in a demo?
Would really appreciate your feedback on this,
Many thanks
Rich
From my experience, every client expects different things from a CMS. However across all my demos they are all impressed by the security features - both front-end and back-end (especially back-end - allowing the admin to restrict access/permissions on a node-by-node basis)
Rollback functionality also impresses - knowing that if they make a mistake, they can back-track! (along with the audit trail - who did it, who can they blame!)
Everything else, like templating, modules (macros), etc... they tend to expect all that functionality - so there's less 'wow factor'.
doing any sort of Canvas demo, i.e click stuff to edit stuff is usually an eye-opener for the non-technical people.
I did a csszengarden packgage to try to show off that aspect of umbraco....which is in the projects section of this site.
It's would be good to back that up with a more workflow based demo of the backend though. adding pictures, permissions for certain user types etc.
Doing a demo using windows livewriter or an equivalent blogging tool to update a certain section might also be a good shout?
- Tim
I depends how technical the crew are that you demo too. If they are mainly editors that will b looking after the site, I find a well designed site appeals to them and a little demo of the backend showing the ease of use for publishing, adding new sections etc.
Our clients like the work flow aspects of Umbraco but thats not really a wizz bang kinda thing thats more for training/using.
So i would show them work flow but without realy mentioning it and then have a couple of killer features. I like the mapping one because people don't really think about how to locate things on a google map and Darrens package makes it so easy. - http://our.umbraco.org/projects/google-maps-datatype
In addition to that if it's rentals they are trying to sell I would go for the chucking a video banner in one of the rental pages and with a pre prepared video show them how easy it is to engage the user seamlessly using video. Grab a 30 second clip of Location Location Location and play it in the banner. If you're going to run it locally i would show them how to upload the video to the Media Lib and then place it in the page using the media picker publish it and show them the finished article.
Hope that helps.
Mostly start of with Warren's CWS2 which is a great starter and focus on features clients want (mostly based on feedback received before doing the actual demo). Clients get pretty fast impressed with the ease of creating new pages, updating documents (properties), rolling back in case of errors.
As Lee pointed out already, security trimming is a must show (backend), explaining different types of users (and possible workflow features), and most of the times also show off some sort of basic front-end membership features such as registering, logging in, accessing protected content, ...
And always try to do some kind of basic 3rd party integration using a custom section (Really basic stuff, but emphasize the fact that data can be integrated from anywhere, if that's required...)
Lastly, include features of must have packages such as imagegen, image cropper, data import tool.
/Dirk
Most impressive demo I've ever done, was to take the basic Runway package, and quickly demonstrate how to create a simple but flexible product catalog in 15 minutes, without doing any coding at all.
I did this once to a designer, where he asked: "I need to design a site for a company that sells boats. They want to display all the boats they have on stock with images, technical details etc. How can I do this?"
1) I took a basic Runway installation.
2) Created a "Boat" doc type with all the fields he wanted.
3) Created a matching template.
4) Created a simple XSLT macro to display a list of available boats.
5) Created some nodes, boats, categories etc. in the Content section.
Which only takes 15 minutes if you've done it before. Afterwards, the designer replied: "Impressive! I'd like you to build a system that can do this for my client!". To which I replied: "What do you mean 'build it'? I just did that...".
His jaw dropped, and he has refused to work with any other systems since then :-)
Best regards,
Soeren Sprogoe
Hi all,
Thanks SO much for all the input guys, this thread sure shows off just how fantastic this community is.
All the ideas are really great. Reading through them all, in this particular case the consensus produces the following demo 'tick list'
Firstly the demo site should be 'pretty' (we'll use CWS as a base):
We also thought about a quick multi-lingual demo too.
The fact that we can set this project up from scratch and have it ready for a demo in a couple of days really shows the power and speed of Umbraco development!!
Really appreciate anymore feedback.
Many thanks
Rich
@Soeren - think this may go over this particular audience’s heads, but that sounds like a superb 15 min demo!
@Soeren I'd be careful showing clients how easy it is to build sites in umbraco - they'll want it cheaper! ;-)
@Dan: Completely agree. I just demo'd contour to a client and they're now building all their web-forms themselves - doing me out of a good few days of development work. In hindsight this was a massive mistake, which I won't be making again. In future I may actually only present Umbraco verbally without going into detail about any particular functionality or packages.
It's frustrating because I definitely think there's a value in actually recommending and setting a client up with Umbraco - the money the client will save in the long-term is absolutely huge - but how on earth are you 'rewarded' for bringing such massive savings to them if it's not through making decent margins on development of things which Umbraco makes simple?
It's a tough one, knowing how much to show the client and weighing up the benefit for their business of using this system versus the time things actually take to develop with a neat system like this.
Depending on your audience you may think about finishing with the "Sites that use Umbraco". Throwing up a slide with international names of 'Vogue', 'Peugeot' and 'Heniz' gives clients an assurance of the product's quality, stability, flexibility, scalability, coolness, etc.
Try and tell the client what the benefits are rather than discussing the features. For example, if the benefit is 'A faster more maintainable site' you may want to demo content editing. If the benefit is "resiliance and control" then you could show workflow and versioning.
Before you go in to the demo, try and find our what they want to see, and in particular any issues they've had with previous CMS systems. Show them how their previous problems are now solved with Umbraco.
Similarly to Dan(s) point, ultimately you're selling your or your company services, not Umbraco.
In my experience, it's as much about the clients needs as what the CMS offers. Find out what the client likes and doesn't like about their current solution. Then demonstrate how Umbraco is a better fit solution to meet their needs.
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