Fantastic post again.

I know for sure this will improve my process and presentations.

thanks!

I like to get my clients focused in on who their audience(s)are and most often I write the content, as well as design the site, with that in mind.

In my mind, websites answer questions leading to the sale. Sometimes visitors don’t understand the questions, so that must be dealt with head on. Language issues are central to the communication strategy, and if the client has multiple publics it might be necessary to carefully survey the mix, the strategy, and perhaps even position certain pages to certain groups.

I absolutely agree the central point of design is communication. Nielsen’s research indicates that visitors are more and more impatient with sites that lack clarity and fairly obvious responses to “what’s in it for me”. I think he termed it “information predation”. Any designer not reading useit.com is really missing out I think.

I am doing websites for $400 apiece (with a free year of web hosting), roughly $10 an hour. I am in the toughest of rural markets, all small time operators. This is quite a departure from the old days of $75 an hour, but it is immensely satisfying to help a small time operator create and maintain a decent web site. The core principles all apply, but everything falls on the back of the content creator. I am pretty sure they have no idea what a bargain they are getting.

Your writing is very useful. I think it is helpful to pause every now and then, come up for air, and think about what we are doing. It is obvious that you spend time thinking about your craft. Thanks for sharing.

MD

In terms of the text you should charge more, and it is easy to if you clearly define content delivery as part of the design/development process.

After the design is approved you should have a content delivery due date, and the content has be turned in by that point and fully approved/edited/etc. Any changes will be billed hourly. If you establish this up front the client will take you seriously and make sure the content is right the first time. If you just switch it out indefinitely they have no reason not to make sure they are happy with it.

In terms of payment you have to get over it. Realize that your work is valuable and understand how much your time is worth. Once you are confident in the fact that you have a valuable skill you will have no problem asking for money. Would you go to a grocery store and expect to get the food for free? What about getting a hair cut? Of course not, and neither do clients. However if you offer to do it for free of course people will take you up on it.

In terms of billing do a milestone approach, 50% at the start of the project, 20% after the design is approved, 20% after the content has been put into the site, and 10% before you launch the site.

Also, some people want the sidebar to the right on the home page and to the left on the rest of the pages. How can I explain that that doesn’t look good?

What about when somebody gives me the text, I load the text and then they correct the text again and again, should I charge more?:?

How do you handle the payments? do you send an invoice and expect the check on the mail? do you have a credit card on file and then charge people. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable charging people. do you have some words of advice on how do you tell them that they have to pay??

thanks