designing for clients who wish to do their own updates

[canpress5]

Obviously WordPress/Genesis is ideal for clients who wish to do their own updates or add pages/posts without needing to contact their web guy every time.
Those of you who build sites for this type of client, I'm interested to know how much this effects your design decisions?
EG do you sometimes compromise/simplify the design in order to make the site or sections of the site easier for your client to update?
Or do you use whatever design/layout you prefer and then figure out a way for the client to make his/her updates within the preferred design?
Do you build sections of the site that the clients are not allowed to touch, and other sections that they have free reign over?
Which WordPress features do your clients use? Just the simple page/post editing area and featured images? Or do they often edit/add their own widgets, custom fields and sliders?
Adding regular news items or blog posts must be a common request, but how about pages that change less frequently, do your clients want full control over those pages too?
I know each client is different but, as someone who usually builds sites for myself, I'm interested to hear different experiences about client expectations for doing their own updates.
Thank you for your input!

[Gary Jones]

The easiest way to know what a client will want, is to ask them. They may not know, and that's fine, but allow for a little bit more time making things more easily editable by them, than you'd otherwise give.

WordPress is built for users - so I'd expect that the majority of them will want to try and add new content by themselves. You can use that as a business opportunity to offer training to them on how to do that.

If you use a tool like Pods, or Beaver Builder, then you're giving them the tools to make (and brake) the site, without them having to contact you every time. Just ensure that your contract makes it clear that if they brake the site, then it'll cost them for you to fix it again!

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WordPress Engineer, and key contributor the Genesis Framework | @GaryJ

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