My Design Process — Design and Development (Prototypes as Deliverables) - Vanseo Design

---

My Design Process — Design and Development (Prototypes as Deliverables) Posted: 28 Oct 2013 05:30 AM PDT Static design comps don’t deliver a complete picture of what’s happening on a website. While many still present comps as a design deliverable, others including myself, have moved to showing working prototypes to clients. This change is the most significant way my design process has changed. Last week I mentioned the different phases in my design process and talked in more detail about the first two (problem definition and solution planning). Today I want to continue and talk about the next two phases (design and development). As a quick reminder here are the 5 phases my process goes through. Problem definition Solution planning Design Development Deployment I left off in the solution planning phase having turned a collection of notes across several text files into an html and css style guide/tile that I present to clients. I create it to show clients possible options for the design of their site. It’s mostly contains options for type, color, and some aesthetic details that they can view in a browser as opposed to an image. If you haven’t read the previous post you may want to have a look before reading further. If you have, read on. Design Somewhere between making notes in text files and creating the html and css style guide/tile as a deliverable for clients, I enter the design phase of the project. What used to be two very distinct phases with clear beginning and end has become one longer phase with fuzzier edges In the past this would have meant a highly detailed Photoshop comp, but they don’t give a good picture of a responsive design and I often found clients would be more focused on working through details before getting the big picture set. That’s where prototypes come in. They start with the style guide/tile which, in my case, might be little more than a few color swatches and some font pairings. While hardly a prototype at that point, it does lead to feedback and gets the client involved in the process. At first my ideas for layout probably aren’t there, but little by little I build them in. If I’m going to present several typeface options, there’s no reason why I can’t use real content and there’s no reason why I can’t place that real content in a layout that could become the real layout for the site. Where I wanted early conversations to be focused on the layout, my clients focused on the details. The layout and structure of a site are the more time consuming changes later in the project so I want to get a handle on them early. However, I’d often find my clients didn’t have as much input about layout as I thought they would, at least without the details of what would be inside. Now I don’t ask for that input. The clients who do have specific thoughts about layout will tell me as soon as they see real content in any layout and those that don’t are fine leaving it to me, offering an occasional suggestion here and there. As feedback comes in about type, color, imagery, and other aesthetic details I remove the options my clients reject and place the options they like inside what I think we should use for a layout. With each round of feedback the prototype looks a little more like what will become the finished design. One thing I’ve gotten better with this past year is using Sass to organize my code. Type, layout, and color code now go in their own separate files which get included into the whole. Color files might include a series of variables that can be changed quickly to try different color schemes. It’s similar for type files that contain fonts and font-sizes, etc. These files are easy to start as they require little more than copying notes from my text files and pasting them into .scss files. If a client wants to see a different color scheme, I open the color module and change the values of the variables. If a client wants to try something different in the type it’s the same. I don’t blindly make changes based on the feedback. For example on a recent site I presented a client with several type pairings. They liked a display face from one pair and a type face from another. I didn’t think the two would work well together so I created new pairings for each of the faces they liked and had them choose one pairing. The process helps keep the client involved and focused and gets me feedback before I spend too much time going down a wrong path. I’ll create as many prototypes as needed, usually one for each representative page type and each will go through several rounds of iteration between myself and the client. By holding some things constant in each iteration we can more quickly work through the options for one aspect of the design at a time. Development One benefit of the design phase above is that by the time the design is approved a significant part of development is already finished. The design phase leaves me with developed page templates for each representative page type. If we were only building a static html and css site, it might even be done outside of creating the pages and adding the specific content for each. That’s typically not the case. (I can’t even remember the last time I built such a simple static site). More likely the site is going to end up on WordPress and the templates will need to be converted into a WordPress theme. Not always, but close to always. There are usually a few things to do first, though. As Windows and thus IE isn’t installed on my primary laptop, the prototypes will need some testing. I typically have both Safari and Firefox open while working and I find my clients are predominantly using Chrome so odds are things are working well in those 3 browsers. I’ll test in different versions of IE and Opera at this point. While I know it’s best to design and develop mobile first, my clients tend to be more focused on widescreen browsers. It depends on the client, but there’s probably some responsive work to do, though I’m likely much further along in the responsive process than I used to be. With working responsive page templates I start converting everything to the files for a WordPress theme. The basic files don’t take long at all as it’s mostly copying and pasting the right parts of the prototypes into the right theme files. I’ll then work to convert a few html things into WordPress things, such as changing an html list for the navigation into a WordPress template tag. That’s followed by working on the parts of the theme that require more functionality beyond the basic pages. It probably means incorporating a few plugins, which might also need some customization to fit the design. At some point I’ll have done all I can locally. I’ll install and configure WordPress on my client’s server and push what I’ve done locally to their server. That brings us to the deployment phase which is where I’ll continue next week. Summary More than any other parts of my process, design and development have been undergoing the greatest change the last couple of years. Mostly this is due to moving from fixed-width sites to responsive ones, but a desire to keep clients focused and get them more involved has also contributed to the changes. The change that’s leading all others is that I no longer deliver static Photoshop comps to clients and now show all deliverables in a browser. At first these are simple pages that present type and color options. Over several rounds of feedback and iteration these style guides become working prototypes for representative pages on the site, which makes development a quicker phase in the process than it used to be. What used to be two very distinct phases with clear beginning and end has become one longer phase with fuzzier edges. Next week I’ll walk you through the last phase in my process, deployment, before offering some observations about the overall process and thoughts about how I can improve it. If you liked this post, consider buying my book Design Fundamentals The post My Design Process — Design and Development (Prototypes as Deliverables) appeared first on Vanseo Design.

You are subscribed to email updates from Vanseo Design To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Responsive Design Interview Series — My Answers To Some Responsive Questions - Vanseo Design

---

Responsive Design Interview Series — My Answers To Some Responsive Questions Posted: 24 Oct 2013 05:30 AM PDT A couple months ago I had the privilege of being interviewed by Justin Avery as part of a collection of interviews with designers on the topic of responsive design. I say privileged given the other names in the collection and wondering how I could be considered part of a group that includes them. People like Mark Boulton, Brad Frost, Laura Kalbag, Chris Coyier, Andy Clark, Jeremy Keith, and Sara Wachter-Boettcher to name but a small few. Somehow I was included as well. Justin asked everyone the same few questions, with the occasional follow up questions and compiled all the responses along with some of his own thoughts in an ebook for $3.99. It’s an interesting book with diverse thoughts and opinions to similar questions. Justin is also the person behind ResponsiveDesign.is and the responsive design weekly newsletter, which arrives, as you might expect, as a weekly email. You could probably read little more than the newsletter and be clued in to all that’s happening in the world of responsive design. My Interview About Responsive Design Justin was kind enough to let me republish his interview with me here so below are his questions and my answers. Justin told me not to hold back with my responses and you know me, I can talk a lot so it’s a long interview. It’s all so new and requires a different mindset from what we did before, but look at how far we’ve come in a short time Many of the other interviews have appeared in the weekly newsletter and are available on the site, though the collection together is easily worth the $3.99 to have them all in one PDF. What was the best implementation of responsive web design you saw in 2013 and why? This is a hard question for me to answer. I always have a hard time responding to questions about my favorite or what I think best. I don’t think there is such a thing as either. When I see a site I like for any reason, I’ll pause a moment and think about why I like it. Most of the time I’ll then move on to something else. Sometimes I’ll grab a screenshot or copy the URL. I never remember when I saw them and I resize my browser a lot less than you might think to test how responsive the page is. However here are a few sites I like in part because of something they do responsively. They didn’t necessarily get created in 2013 or come to my attention in 2013. These first 2 sites I like for the same reasons The personal blog of Mark Boulton Information Architects Both are responsive and neither does all sorts of fancy rearranging of their layout. Both are essentially single column layouts regardless of the device they’re seen in. They’re not typically what you think of when you think responsive, but I like both because of their simplicity. Neither site needs to grow past a single column and so a new layout isn’t forced just because the size of the browser can accommodate more. Sometimes I think designers (myself included) like to do something not because we should, but because we can. Even more than the simplicity of both sites, I like the attention to detail in the type. Resize your browser and notice how the size of the type changes. Information Architects has a great post about responsive typography and how the ideal font size depends on the viewers reading distance. We tend to hold our phones closer when reading so the font size of both sites is smaller at phone sizes. You don’t see a lot of responsive sites focusing on details like this. Some clearly do, but I think it’s still the exception rather than the rule. When I come across a responsive site I like, it’s often not the whole site that attracts me, but specifically how it does one thing. That’s the case with David Bushell’s site. The site itself is great and David does a good job with responsive design in general. Why I like it though is the navigation. David implemented an off-canvas navigation pattern and at the time I came across his site I was looking to understand how to code off-canvas navigation. He wrote a tutorial for Smashing Magazine  showing how he built it. I particularly like the final example from the article that uses transitions and transforms to bring the menu into place. I’ve always liked Simon Collison’s site. It was one of the first responsive sites I came across and I’m always going back to take a look. The design itself is beautiful and Simon’s illustrations stand out. One of the things I like about the responsiveness is how some things you see on a widescreen aren’t there on a small screen. The category and favorites navigation on the main blog page aren’t present when the site becomes a single column. All the content is still there, but some of the ways to get to it aren’t. We could have a healthy debate on whether or not it’s a good idea, but seeing it done taught me it’s ok not to include every element on a page at every size. It’s ok to present a more minimal, albeit fully functional design at one size, and then enhance that design as room allows. Nick Jones has an interesting site. To access much of the content you have to click and drag with a mouse to scroll horizontally. Quite honestly it’s not the easiest thing to do on a widescreen browser. However, it works great on a mobile device where you simply swipe left and right. It makes me wonder what’s possible and how we can deliver that easy swipe on mobile devices while offering another way to move through the content when you don’t have the same touch capabilities. One design that I believe is from 2013 is Microsoft’s redesign. I like it less for the specific design, though I think the guys at Paravel did a great job with the design in every aspect. I like it mainly because a company the size of Microsoft chose to design responsively. I think the site will help to take responsive design more mainstream where it won’t be just designers who know about it. It’s going to help bring an expectation that every site be designed responsively, which I think is the right approach for all sites. One thing I should point out about all the designs above is that the experience, regardless of device, is great. That’s truly how you create the best responsive design. It’s not about getting this or that right. It’s about presenting a great experience to every person who visits, whether they visit on a phone, tablet, widescreen browser, or any other device imaginable. The best responsive designs are going to follow the same basic idea as the best designs always have. They’re going to provide a minimal experience that works for all, and get as many details right as possible. What are two responsive web design frameworks/plugins/shims/etc that you recommend/couldn’t live without? I can’t recommend any responsive framework or plugin since I don’t use any. I don’t have anything against them, but I think using them tends to lead to more of the same. Your design decisions end up being made by someone else who’s never seen your project. I have looked at parts of frameworks like the navigational systems used by Foundation and Bootstrap in an effort to learn how they were built. From there I code my own responsive navigation. I do use Scott Jehl’s respond.js polyfill on every responsive project. It adds support for media queries in IE6–8. I no longer support IE6 and IE7, but I think it’s too soon to drop support for IE8. I also use Remy Sharp’s html5shiv on every project. It’s not specifically for responsive design, of course, but I find it’s another I can’t live without. Those are really the only two things I can’t live without at the moment. What is the one thing with responsive web design you would like to see improved/developed in the near future? Like most designers I’d like to see responsive image solutions improve. On the surface it seems so easy to deal with images. You set a max-width of 100% and a height of auto and technically you have responsive images. As soon as you begin working with images though, you start to see all the other issues like serving extremely large image files to devices on a 3g network. You try to fix that by creating multiple images of different sizes and serving the appropriate one to each device only to find every image is downloaded to every device. Things like srcset and the picture element will help, but even then there will still be issues. I think the longer term solution is less images in general. Not that we won’t display pictures on websites, but where possible we’ll use more code. Ideally css will keep developing to give us more things like rounded corners and gradients and shadows. I think we’ll also have to adjust and make more use SVG. These won’t solve the problems we face using bitmapped images on the web, but if we use less of those images we minimize the problem to some degree. Beyond images, more sensors of any kind would be great. The better we can know the capabilities of a device the better we can provide a good experience for that device. New design/development tools would also be great. Our present set of design tools weren’t made for a responsive world. We’re managing to work with them, but tools developed specifically for a responsive workflow would be welcome. We’re already seeing the early stages of the next wave of tools. Adobe has developed a number of different tools and I’m excited about Macaw when it’s ready for use. I’m not worried though. Look back over the last couple of years and think how far we’ve come designing responsive sites. It’s all so new and requires a different mindset from what we did before, but look at how far we’ve come in a short time. I have no doubt we’ll see a lot more improvement over the next few years. If you could offer one piece of advice around responsive web design, what would it be? I’ll assume I’m giving this advice to someone new to responsive design. I’d say not to feel overwhelmed. More than anything responsive design is a different way of thinking about design. The technologies behind responsive design (flexible layouts, flexible media, media queries) are actually pretty easy to use. What’s more difficult is changing your thinking in how you design. You have to be more aware of the flexibility of the web from the moment you start sketching. You have to understand how much less control you really have over your design in order to hold on to the control you do have. Once you accept this, you learn to see it as a good thing. Instead of worrying about what size a browser is open to, you instead think solely about your content and you create systems to ensure it works and looks great no matter what device is used to access it. If you’re just starting out in responsive design don’t stress too much about some of the details right away. Just build a site keeping in mind the 3 tenets of responsive design. Flexible layouts — stop using px and start using % for horizontal measurements and ems for vertical measurements. Flexible media — set img: max-width: 100%; height: auto and you’ve done the basics. You can worry about the issues of responsive media after you’ve built a few responsive sites. Media queries — don’t obsess over what breakpoints to use. The major changes in your design will generally occur when you add or remove a column in the layout. Think about how the design will look as a single column, as two columns, and possibly three or four columns if necessary. Develop whichever layout you want first and then adjust the width of your browser to see where your design falls apart. See where it needs to add or remove a column or where something like your navigation needs to be reworked. Dave Rupert built an indispensable tool called FitWeird. It’s a bookmarklet that displays the size of your viewport. You adjust your browser and it tells you how wide the browser is open. When you notice your layout needs to change, see how wide it’s open, set a breakpoint, and write some css until the layout works again. It’ll all come with practice. After building a couple or three responsive sites, many of the difficulties you encounter on the first responsive site won’t be difficulties any more. The main challenge is in changing the way you think about design. Complete List of Interviewees Here’s a complete list of all the people interviewed, that aren’t named me. I’m sure you’ll recognize many if not all. Chris Coyier Dave Rupert Paul Robert Lloyd Laura Kalbag Brad Frost Andy Clark Jordan Moore Stu Robinson Aaron Gustafson Matt Stow Ben Callahan Matt Griffin Trent Walton Jeremy Keith Tim Kadlec Mat Marquis Daniel Mall Val Head Anna & Sandijs from Froot Mark Boulton Sara Wachter-Boettcher John Allsopp Luke Brooker Tyson Matanich Mark Hayes Again it’s an honor to be included in such a distinguished list of names. Thanks for including me Justin. If you liked this post, consider buying my book Design Fundamentals The post Responsive Design Interview Series — My Answers To Some Responsive Questions appeared first on Vanseo Design.

You are subscribed to email updates from Vanseo Design To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

My Design Process —Defining The Problem And Planning A Solution - Vanseo Design

---

My Design Process —Defining The Problem And Planning A Solution Posted: 21 Oct 2013 05:30 AM PDT My design process is always evolving. I make changes to improve efficiency and quality and I adapt the process as technologies for building websites improve, such as the industry shift toward responsive design the last couple of years. I recently mentioned design processes in regards to starting down the path toreduce costs in your freelance business and I wanted to share where my process is today and where I think it’s going. My Evolving Design and Development Process Every project is different, but for the most part when tasked with a new design or redesign of a site I go through the same process with a handful of distinct phases. Problem definition Solution planning Design Development Deployment As I started writing about each of the phases above in more detail and how they’re changing, I realized I had a lot more to say than I thought so I’m going to break up this conversation into 3 parts. Introduction to my process with details about the problem definition and solution planning phases. (This post) The design and development phases, which are the two phases that have seen the most change recently. The deployment phase, where I think the process could be improved in the future, and some general observations about how my process evolves. Problem Definition You can’t solve a problem until you know what it is so the first phase of any design process should begin by defining the problem. This phase starts from the moment a potential client contacts me and asks for a price. Organizing content and content types helps me better understand the site and business. We begin a conversation so I can understand what they want and they can understand how I work. I try to gather as much information as possible about the client, the client’s goals for their business and site, their market and audience, their budget, etc. I ask some open-ended questions and listen, often listening between what they’re saying. I try to speak only in reply to a question they asked or if I need more clarification about something. I prefer a phone call to get started and before the call I’ll create a simple text file to which I add any information the initial contact provided along with some cursory research about an existing site if there is one. While on the phone I’ll continue to take notes all the time seeking the root problem the client wants me to solve whether it’s a more modern site or to improve how many widgets they sell or to improve the client’s brand or whatever. I’m writing down things that suggest more possibilities and I’m writing down things that add constraints to lead the solution. After our initial conversation I begin my own research. I’ll look at industry sites to see what others include and don’t include. I’m mining the industry for ideas and inspiration and I’ll often be able to pass on some thoughts to hopefully give my clients ideas and inspiration for their site and business. One part of this phase is gathering as much content as possible. Ideally the client will be sending me what content they have while I’m researching, but more likely all I’ll get is information about the content will be. I want to bring up content as soon as possible to get the client working on it. While I’d ideally like to have all of it, what I really need is information such as what content will be included, what are the different content types that will need to be on the site. I don’t just mean sales copy and articles. I also want to know will we include a copyright notice? is there a tagline for the logo? What are the calls to action? I want to know as much as I possibly can about the content. Solution Planning Somewhere after the initial conversation, my research and any follow up questions I have, I start to think about how I’m going to solve the design problem and I start planning possible solutions. I’ll think through different concepts for the site. I’ll begin sketching potential layouts. I’ll organize what I know about the content and start thinking about navigation. I usually begin all this thinking with more text files. The first ones almost always begin with the content. Organizing content and content types helps me better understand the site and business. It leads to higher level thinking about what doesn’t need to be included and what isn’t there that should be. My goal here is to think through how best to structure the content and also what kind of navigation will be best to access the content. I’ll pass my thoughts to the client and keep them thinking about content. There are other text files I’ll create to help me get down my thoughts for a concept and possible solutions. Typography — I’ll list possible fonts and makes notes about what each communicates. I’ll group fonts in different pairings that might be used. I’ll begin making typographic choices and start testing size, line-height, measure, scale, and proportion of different fonts in a browser and record which values I think work. Color — I’ll think about possibilities for a dominant color and try these colors in different color tools to develop a color palette for the site. I might scan sites like ColourLovers looking for existing color schemes to see if any work or just for some inspiration. Along with the different values I record, I’ll add notes and thoughts about what each scheme communicates. Layout — I’ll usually begin thinking through layouts visually by making quick sketches with pencil and pen in a notebook. My sketches are about as rough as a sketch can be. Much of the time I’m building the site on a grid so I’ll start thinking about how many columns the grid will contain and working through a little math based on the given content and how I’m thinking of laying out the site. The files, along with the number of sketches, grow for awhile as I include more thoughts and research. At some point I start refining all my thoughts and notes into fewer workable possibilities. I might take some sketches and work them up a little more as a still rough wireframe in Keynote. None of the above is shared directly with clients. I used to work up more detailed wireframes to send them as a first deliverable, but where I wanted them to focus on the layout, they tended to focus on the details. I’d end up going through several rounds of refining the wireframe(s) over more time than I wanted to spend on them. Since I’m not sending much to clients at this point, but I do want to keep them engaged, I ask more questions. I ask them to send me sites they like and don’t like with reasons why for both. I’ll usually have some specific questions as well. Because it’s easier for me to make decisions about type, layout, and color when I can see the possibilities on the screen and because it’s easier for clients to offer feedback on what they see, the notes in my text files eventually become one more working web pages. Sometimes these pages are just a few headings and paragraphs to show typefaces I’m thinking of using. Sometimes they include some color swatches. At this point they usually don’t include much in the way of layout, but at times they might. It’s my version of a style guide or style tile and it becomes the first deliverable to show clients. Somewhere between creating the text files and turning them into an html and css style guide/tile, I enter what most think of as the design phase of the project, which is where I want to pick up next week. Summary Your design process should evolve as you evolve as a designer and developer, as the industry changes with new techniques and methodology, and as a way to improve your business. My process has been changing a lot the last couple of years for all these reasons, though mostly due to the shift toward responsive design. The process starts the same way at always has by gathering as much information as possible to define the problem and then spending time thinking, researching, and exploring possible solutions to the problem. These phases are dominated by pen and paper or typing into text files. While these may not be the most exciting parts of the process to consider, they are by far the most important. If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. — Albert Einstein Next week I’ll walk you through the phases of my process that are changing the most and I’ll share how my design and development phases are become one fuzzy phase instead of two distinctly separate phases. If you liked this post, consider buying my book Design Fundamentals The post My Design Process — Defining The Problem And Planning A Solution appeared first on Vanseo Design.

You are subscribed to email updates from Vanseo Design To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

iCan't Internet

---

What is this gclid parameter in my weblogs? Posted: 18 Oct 2013 01:33 AM PDT Have you ever come across a url like this in your weblogs: http://mydomain.com/?gclid=CN-OsbGA23azFa7JtAod3Fr5z and didn’t know where it was coming from, or what it was doing? Well, search no... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

You are subscribed to email updates from iCan't Internet To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

How To Price Freelance Services — Improving Cash Flow - Vanseo Design

---

How To Price Freelance Services — Improving Cash Flow Posted: 17 Oct 2013 05:30 AM PDT Freelancers, at least this freelancer, has a tendency to see business in waves. We’ll be busy for a time and then not so busy. It can sometimes create an unrealistic picture of how much money is flowing into the business and it creates occasional months where cash, or rather a lack of cash, is an issue. Note: This post includes an audio version. If you don’t see the audio above, Click here to listen. For the last few weeks, I’ve been sharing some thoughts about the business side of freelance design. I’ve talked about setting prices, understanding costs, and reducing costs. One last topic to cover in this discussion is cash flow. There are a handful of things we can do to manage the the flow of cash into and out of our businesses to smooth out the ups and downs. Improve how you budget your money Improve project scheduling Schedule payments more frequently Increase recurring revenue Include side projects and “passive income” Let’s talk about each in a bit more detail. Improve How You Budget Your Money An obvious solution to the ups and downs of cash flow is simply to get better at budgeting your money. Be more disciplined when money is coming in so there’s more in your account when it isn’t coming in. Be more accurate in recording your revenue and expenses, both business and personal. It helps to track both over a longer time frame. Don’t be deceived by a lot of money coming in over a short period of time. Understand what you spend on average each month and stick to your budget. Have your money flow into a single business account and only withdraw what your monthly budget allows. Pay yourself a salary and leave the rest in the account to cover your future salary. Ideally you’ll build up a reserve in your business account so you know you can cover a few months of lean times. Improve Project Scheduling If the problem is being too busy one month and not busy enough the next, you might be able to fix the problem by scheduling projects better. Instead of taking on projects all at once be more realistic with your calendar and spread out projects over a longer time frame. You collect a deposit to reserve a spot on your calendar and ideally you’ll be able to schedule enough in advance to be the right amount of busy. It’s possible you’ll lose some clients you can’t help right away, but more often than not you won’t as long as you aren’t pushing their project off too far into the future. Leave a little wiggle room in your schedule for the unexpected and occasional projects that can’t wait. Building some flexibility into your calendar will allow you to be more flexible in the work you take on. Schedule Payments More Frequently I assume and hope you don’t wait to charge in full after the job is complete. It’s a quick way to go out of business. At the very least you should take a deposit before beginning work. For years I’ve taken half up front and half on completion. To help with cash flow I’m spreading this out more. Instead of 2 payments I’m pushing for a 3rd one. Payment 1 — before work begins Payment 2 — after approval of design Payment 3 — on completion There’s no reason why 3 payments can’t become 4 and then 5 and I think I’ll continue to increase the number of payments for most jobs. Andy Clark often mentions that he uses a weekly payment schedule. Spreading out the payments naturally smooths cash flow, but it also means neither client nor freelancer is ever on the hook for much. The financial risk is reduced for both parties. Another way to schedule payments is to complete a job and bill the client beyond the completion date. Instead of the client paying a few thousand dollars over the few months it takes to complete their site, I might have them pay a few hundred each month for a couple or more years until the project is paid in full. I wouldn’t do this with new clients, but I’ve tried it with existing clients where there’s trust on both sides and it’s worked out well enough to try again. You can usually increase the overall price for the job a little, because you’re waiting on the money. Clients benefit by not having too pay to much at once and you benefit by having money come in each month even if it means waiting for the project to be paid in full. Again trust is important if you do this. Increase Recurring Income Some clients will need work on their sites again and again. It might be as simple as maintaining and updating a CMS or the client may come to you multiple times throughout the year with projects. Some might email often with questions. You can ask if these clients would like to work out some kind of retainer agreement with you. They pay you at the start of each month and you do whatever work they send in that month. There’s a balance you have to find between how much you charge and how much work you have to do for that monthly payment. It’s something you have to work out with the client. Be clear about what work is and isn’t covered by the retainer and you should be ok. I’ve had clients take advantage of this relationship expecting thousands of dollars of work each month for a couple hundred in payment. I even had to fire one client who consistently tried to take advantage of the relationship. Most of my clients don’t take advantage, though. I tend to give clients a bit of a break when they agree to a retainer and pass on the savings of not having to estimate and negotiate each project with them. It’s worth a slightly lower fee to know I have money coming into the business each month. You’ll likely need to periodically adjust fees. Keep track of how much time you spend working and revisit the agreement every so often to make sure it’s fair to both you and your client. The work itself will still ebb and flow and this is one reason to keep some flexibility in your schedule. The money, however, will remain consistent from month to month. Build up enough recurring work and you have a business that provides for you regardless of what new work comes in each month. Include Side projects and Passive Income Your clients don’t have to be your only source of income. You can add other forms of revenue to your business that are more passive such as advertising. Running ads on your site may not be the most lucrative thing to do, but it can provide a small bit of cash each month for little work. AdSense takes minutes to set up. You might join an ad network or look for affiliate products to promote. You will need an audience to make money with any form of advertising and that does require work, however if you’re already blogging for other reasons the additional work is minimal. When I say minimal work, I’m talking about advertising or selling affiliate products as something you do on the side. Either can be done as a full time business, which will require full time work. However, if your site gets enough traffic, you can place a few ads and/or links on parts of the site and make some residual income without much effort. Side projects are a little different in that they may or may not lead to passive income. In regards to business they’re projects you do for yourself during lean times with client projects. We often think of side projects as doing something just because you’re interested in doing them, but there’s no reason you can’t make some additional money from them too. You can create books, themes, tools, whatever. Once complete you can offer them for sale and assuming they meet some need or want, people will buy them. Depending on what you create and sell it may not be as passive as you’d like, though what you sell may evolve into a thriving business on its own. Instead of products you can offer additional services. For example hosting through a reseller account. It means you’re dealing with server issues, but in some cases you might be doing that anyway. You could offer domain services or anything related to your basic services to generate some kind of recurring fee. Summary Even a busy business can suffer cash flow problems. Most freelancers don’t receive consistent work. Projects tend to come in waves leading to ups and downs in revenue. The way to smooth out the ebb and flow of cash is to spread out the money you earn in some way or to add different forms of revenue that come in on a more consistent basis. Improve how you budget and schedule projects. Set up longer term payment schedules and offer recurring services to clients. Look for ways to bring in additional forms of revenue where it makes sense. Some spread out the work, some spread out the payments, and some bring in additional revenue. If you liked this post, consider buying my book Design Fundamentals The post How To Price Freelance Services — Improving Cash Flow appeared first on Vanseo Design. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

You are subscribed to email updates from Vanseo Design To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Introducing “Design Fundamentals: Elements, Attributes, & Principles” - Vanseo Design

---

Introducing “Design Fundamentals: Elements, Attributes, & Principles” Posted: 14 Oct 2013 05:30 AM PDT It seemed like this day would never arrive. As one of my goals for the year I committed to writing a book For a long time I wasn’t sure if I’d make it, but I’m happy to announce the book is finished and available now. The day did arrive. The title of the book is “Design Fundamentals: Elements, Attributes, & Principles” and if you’re wanting to get right to the book and purchase it, thank you and click here. If you’d like to hear a little bit about how the book came to be, what it’s about, and some behind the scenes changes I made to the site, read on. And then click the link above or at the bottom of this post to buy the book. Did I Really Finish a Book? The idea for Design Fundamentals began sometime in 2012 and my original plan called for finishing the book last year. I never did make time for it other than a couple of weeks last fall where I worked out the general outline and made a few quick notes on what the book would be about. This year I put it at the top of my to do list and started working on it just after New Year’s. I decided to follow my blogging process, since it’s, in part, designed as an easy way to fill up blank pages. Here’s a month by month breakdown. January — Worked on the outline and structure February — Made notes for each chapter and section March — Wrote first draft April — Edited draft May — Created and searched for images and continued to edit June — Worked out how to format the book for .pdf, .epub, and .mobi files and continued to edit. My goal was to have the book ready by the end of April, but here I was 2 months late when it dawned on me how much work I’d need to do on the site to be able to sell the thing. That’s what I’ve been working on all summer long (and a few weeks of fall) in between projects for clients. I did a little more than just set up a way to sell the book, but I’ll get back to the additional changes in a bit. Why I Wrote Design Fundamentals I didn’t go to school to learn graphic design. I suspect that’s true of quite a few of you as well. I entered the web design industry as someone who could string together html tags and make them look presentable with css. I taught myself some javascript, php, and mysql along the way in order to feel confident that I could develop websites. When I began in business I had a partner, a friend of mine who would handle the visuals, while I handled the code. Our business didn’t do so well and she went on to do other things. I wanted to continue and was struck with the realization that I’d have to design as well as develop. It was a scary thought and I’ve spent a few years teaching myself whatever I could about design. There wasn’t a lot of information online when I started. Some information was online, but hardly a lot. I turned to reading as many books as I could get my hands on and tried to put together a course of study for myself. I figured there were others in a similar situation who perhaps didn’t have access to the books I found and struggled to find anything online. I started writing here about what I was learning in the hopes of reaching some of you. However, that information isn’t necessarily easy to find even when limited to searching here. It’s not presented in the best order for learning. Older articles needed updating. Missing pieces needed to be added to tie some things together. Writing Design Fundamentals gave me an opportunity to correct these flaws. About Design Fundamentals Before I get to what’s inside, there are a few details about the book I’d like to share. First, it’s an ebook only. There’s no print edition and I don’t plan on there ever being one. The book is available in .epub, .mobi, and .pdf formats so whatever device you use for reading you should have a file that works. You’ll get all 3 files in a zip when you order. One reason for ebook only is the ability to update the book. It always bugged me when I’d buy the 3rd version of some technical book only to see version 4 in the store a few months later. I’d feel a bit cheated, though I certainly understood that the publisher had costs in printing a new edition and couldn’t just give it to me. That’s not the case with an ebook. There are costs in updating an ebook, of course, but not in printing copies. Updates to the book will always be free. I don’t know how often I’ll release an update, but I do plan on improving the book over the next few years. At first it will be to correct typos and other minor things. Later I’ll refine some sections, write new ones, and who knows what else. When you purchase the book you’ll be asked to create an account. You’ll be able to login and download the book as often as you like. I’ll also ask you to subscribe to an email list which is how I’ll let you know when a new version is available. What’s in the Book? The title pretty much says it all. Design Fundamentals: Elements, Attributes, & Principles is about the fundamentals of design and it contains 4 chapters. Visual Grammar — An overview of visual communication Design Elements — What we work with (space, lines, shapes) Design Attributes — How we describe elements (color, size) Design Principles — How to put together elements and attributes to better compose a design Those 4 chapters come close to filling 250 pages and at the end I present a reading list of books I recommend along with many articles online. It’s my hope that after reading you’ll have the tools necessary to compose a design that attracts and keeps visitor attention to ensure they hear your message and take the action you want. Additions to the Site I mentioned working on the site all summer. Naturally to sell the book I needed some kind of shopping cart. I decided to go with Pippin Williamson’s Easy Digital Downloads and I’ve been vey happy with it. However, I added a couple of things beyond a shopping cart. I wanted to do more than just sell you a book. I wanted to be able to talk with you about it and let you talk with each other about it and let all of us talk with each about design and development in general. To help build community on the site, I’ve added a bbPress forum with extended BuddyPress profiles. For now the only way to get to either is to buy the book, but down the road I’ll open the extra Press’ to everyone. It’s my hope that you’ll share thoughts about the book and how I might improve it. I’m hoping you’ll help me shape future editions. When buying the book you’ll create a login and you’ll gain access to the new additions. I’m going to keep the list of sections smaller at first to give me a chance to let the community grow and show me where it would like to go. Thanks That’s the story of how this book came to be, what it’s about, and how this site is evolving. It took longer to get here than I expected, but here it did get. Naturally I hope you’ll buy the book, enjoy it, learn from it, and help me shape future versions of it. Thank you in advance if you do. If all you ever do is read the blog, thank you as well. It always amazes me that anyone is interested in the things I have to say and I appreciate everyone who leaves a comment, sends me a nice email, or simply reads what I’ve written. Once again you can buy the book now. Just click here. I hope to chat with you on the forums inside. Thanks. The post Introducing “Design Fundamentals: Elements, Attributes, & Principles” appeared first on Vanseo Design.

You are subscribed to email updates from Vanseo Design To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

How To Price Freelance Services — Reducing Your Costs - Vanseo Design

---

How To Price Freelance Services — Reducing Your Costs Posted: 10 Oct 2013 05:30 AM PDT The last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at the business side of freelance design and development. So far I’ve offered some thoughts on how to understand your costs and things to think about when determining a price to charge for a project. Note: This post includes an audio version. If you don’t see the audio above, Click here to listen. There are a couple more topics I’d like to address which I mentioned in passing in these previous posts. Today we’ll look at ways you can reduce costs and next week we’ll look at smoothing out an uneven cash flow. Value Pricing and Reducing Costs When price is based on cost your incentive isn’t aligned well with your client. As you gain experience and work more efficiently your cost goes down, but then so does your price. Your incentive is actually to take more time and do sloppy work, because it increases your costs and thus your price. When you set price based on value you break the direct connection between price and cost. Your incentive aligns well with your clients. Your goal is to do better work making your client happy and you work to reduce the time it takes to do that better work making you happy. Beyond gaining experience and getting better at what you do, there are some other things that can help you reduce your costs that I’d like to talk about. Process Modularization Automation Outsourcing Identify and Optimize Your Process Process gives you a roadmap for completing your work. Granted something like design has creative components that often don’t want to be corralled into a process, but much of what we do doesn’t need the absolute freedom of creativity. Much of the work we do is the sea from project to project. The details may differ, but we typically get from start to end in a similar fashion. We deal with many of the same problems again and again and we can develop processes to recognize which problems we’re trying to solve and then solve them quicker. You likely go through a similar process with every site you design and develop anyway so why not observe your natural process and work to optimize it. Mine goes something like this: Discovery and research Sketch and conceptualize Produce design deliverables for client sign-off Develop site until client signs off Test and launch My full process contains more sub-steps, but understanding I have a process allows me to observe it and optimize the various steps. For example design comps were always a bottleneck for me. My graphic skills lag behind my html and css skills and so I’ve changed the design part of the process to deliver html and css prototypes that the client and I iterate together to produce a finished design. It’s quicker for me to iterate a prototype than a design comp and by the time the client and I agree on the design a significant part of the development process is complete. Another simple benefit to identifying parts of the process is you can better determine when you more efficiently perform certain tasks. I find I’m more creative early in the morning and late at night. In the middle of the day, usually right after lunch, my brain has a tendency to shut down from creative thinking and is better suited to analytic or busy work. I seem to be able to code at any time other than first thing in the morning. Knowing when I best perform these tasks allows me to schedule them at the times when I can produce better work in the least amount of time. It also allows me to recognize when a single task might serve multiple purposes and get two things done for the price of one. Modularize Repetitive Tasks Even though every design is unique, there’s much that repeats from project to project. You may not specifically know how you’ll layout a site, but you might already know you’ll develop it on a grid or that it’ll be similar to some layout you’ve created before. Your site will include content and navigation. There’s going to be a logo. When you need a form, you probably reach for the same code. Similarly you have your way to code buttons, style lists and tables, present images, etc. Why reinvent the wheel on each site? Modularity leads to more efficient and maintainable design. If you build a library of patterns and templates you’ll save yourself considerable time. Pattern libraries and frameworks are easily found online, though I think long term you’re better off developing your own. Not only can patterns, libraries, and frameworks save you time, you can work on them independently of specific projects, making them better, and increasing their value and your value to clients. Automate Where Possible The more you create modular patterns and templates and the more your work is standardized, the more you can automate it. In a sense frameworks and content management systems are automating our work as they mean we no longer have to develop them ourselves, but there are other things we can automate. Does your code editor offer autocompletion? Do you take advantage of toolkits like Emmet? Are you automating tasks with Grunt? Do you use CodeKit, Hammer, or any app that handles project repetition? These aren’t the only tools that can add automation to your business. Plenty more exist depending on your workflow. The point is there are many tools that will quickly do repetitive tasks for you. Don’t be afraid to spend money on tools that will make you more efficient. What they cost is more than made up for by how much time they save and how much they reduce your costs on projects. How about customer service? Do you find yourself answering the same questions time and again? Could you create FAQ pages or use something like Text Expander to store prewritten responses to the questions. Outsource to Those More Capable In addition to buying tools to do some of your work, you can hire others to do it. Outsourcing isn’t something I typically do, but it is something worth considering. Your first thought about outsourcing might be to hire cheap labor and then mark up what they charge you. It’s often the way outsourcing works, however think of it in a different context for a moment. How good are you at marketing? How much time do you spend promoting your business. That time is a cost to you. Perhaps you’d be better off hiring a marketing company. Do you do your own accounting? Again how much time do you spend doing that work? Would it cost you less to hire an accountant? Freelancers wear too many hats. I certainly do. It’s worth thinking about paying others for some of that work. It costs money, but it ultimately saves considerable time and that time counts against costs. Besides, someone who does marketing or accounting or copywriting full time probably does it better than we do. Summary When we break the direct connection between price and cost it means we can work to reduce our costs without reducing our prices. We can make more money for doing the same work better and more efficiently. The first step in reducing costs is understanding your natural processes and then optimizing them. You can work the parts of the process at more productive times and you can start down the road to modularization. You can automate through different tools and you can outsource some of your work to others better able to do that work for less cost than you. Next week I’ll continue with ideas for controlling the ebb and flow of cash in your business. We’ll look at cash flow and how you can smooth out the peaks and valleys and help make sure money is flowing into your business on a more consisten basis. The post How To Price Freelance Services — Reducing Your Costs appeared first on Vanseo Design.

You are subscribed to email updates from Vanseo Design To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

The Art of Problem Solving and Learning from Your Effort - Vanseo Design

---

The Art of Problem Solving and Learning from Your Effort Posted: 07 Oct 2013 05:30 AM PDT How do you solve problems? Do you wing it? Do you follow a similar process to solve most problems you encounter? Do you simply try a few things that have worked in the past? Recently I came across an article on the Treehouse blog by Pasan Premaratne, titled Help, I’m Stuck with some tips to specifically solve programming problems. It made me think about problem solving in general and I wanted to share a little of my problem solving process. Problem Solving Whether you realize it or not, you probably go through a process for solving problems. Odds are the problems you face are similar and without thinking you just dive in and attempt to solve them the same way you did the time before and the time before that. Before you can solve a problem, you need to know what the real problem is Naturally it depends on the type of problem. If you’re asked to add 2 + 2, I trust you know the answer instantly and don’t have to do much beyond giving it. On the other hand if you’re asked to solve 365 × (42 + 17) / 7 × 4 you might be reaching for some version of a calculator. When I face a design problem, one in the development of a site, or any technical problem in front of me, I’ve noticed I go through a similar process to solve it. In fact I tend to follow this process for most any problem that confronts me in life. Depending on the problem I may not need to go through all the steps and other than the first step, may go through these in a different order. Identify and refine the problem Search for a solution Seek and read documentation Trial and error Ask someone else Weigh the alternatives Identify and Refine the Problem If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. — Albert Einstein Before you can solve a problem, you need to know what the real problem is. When we notice a problem, what we typically see is a symptom of the problem and not necessarily its root cause. The first thing I do to solve a problem is work to identify what the problem really is. Let’s say you’re just starting out on the design of a site. The client paid you a deposit and you’re ready to work. What problem are you trying to solve? The desire for a website is a symptom. The problem is really that the client wants to build an online presence or wants to sell widget x to customer y. The first thing you have to do is identify what the client really wants. You need to dig as deep as you can to discover the root problem the site you’re building is trying to solve. There are a variety of ways to identify the root of the problem. I find asking questions is a good start. So is eliminating possibilities. For example if I can’t load this site in a browser I: Try to load another of my sites from the same server Try to load a site likely to be working, usually Google Try loading the down site in a different browser Try to connect to devices on my internal network Depending on what happens ,each of the above eliminates a possible cause of the problem and points me to a different solution. The idea is to eliminate what isn’t the problem to find what it is. Search for a Solution Once I have a handle on what the problem might be, I start searching for an answer. Google, Bing, Yahoo, or your favorite search engine is your friend. Odds are someone has had the same or similar problem and a few searches will lead you to possible solutions to try. You can search for error messages in code or write a query describing the error you’re getting. You can search for sites similar to the one you’re designing to see how other designers solved similar problems. Much of the time your first search or two won’t lead you to a solution and you’ll need to refine your search. One of the best skills you can develop as a problem solver is learning to search better. Barring a specific error message, my early queries are often toward the vaguer side. I’ll type my general query and click on some results if only to pick up some of the vocabulary I should be using in future queries. Even if the search results don’t appear promising, it’s a good idea to click through on some and at least scan their content to help you refine your searching. As you refine your queries you’re also refining the problem definition. If after a time your favorite search engine isn’t leading you to a solution, you can try forums, Q&A sites, and similar. You can go to any sites you know and search them directly. Read Documentation and Source Code If search isn’t leading anywhere, I’ll seek out documentation that might be available. Ideally good documentation exists, but that’s not always the case. If the problem is a development issue, you can go directly to the source code and try to understand what’s going on. For design problems I may consult books here on my shelf. I may open some up for ideas about color or type. I might consult one to better understand certain principles that can lead to a solution. Documentation is really just another place to continue searching. It’s not always as easy to search though, which is why I usually start with search engines and sites I’m familiar with. Trial and Error At some point you have to do and assuming you haven’t found an exact solution to apply, trial and error is your next step. Searching may not have led to the answer you were seeking, but if done well it should at least have helped you understand the problem better and given you some ideas where a solution lies. Sometimes you have to try a few things and just see what happens. Make changes that isolate whatever it is you’re changing. If you make too many changes at once you might get lucky and fix what was broken, but you probably won’t know why and you’re likely to make the original mistake in the future. If you keep isolating different things to try, you’ll continue to refine the problem and solution. It’s really what I was doing above when trying to figure out why might site wouldn’t load. I tried different things to isolate a potential problem. Now it’s about trying to isolate possible solutions. Ask Someone Else As a last resort you can ask someone else. Sometimes no matter how hard we try, a solution eludes us. We may not have the requisite skills needed or we may become so locked into specific paths to a solution that we can’t see anything else. When I suggest this as a last resort, I do mean as a last resort. Trying to solve the problem yourself can be frustrating and time consuming, but you’ll be better in the long run for having tried. Weigh the Alternatives Some problems like 2 + 2 seek absolute answers. There’s a single answer to the problem and your goal is to find that answer. Other problems, especially design problems and to some degree development problems, will have multiple solutions that work. When a problem offers more than one solution you have to decide, which solution to use, which is its own problem with its own solution. In this case everything above should have left you with a few options from which to choose. It’s now up to you to make a choice. You aren’t looking for the right solution, but the best solution, and there’s little way to know if you’ve found the best solution until sometime after you’ve implemented it. Weigh the pros and cons of each possibility and use your experience to make a choice. Spend less time worrying about whether it’s the right choice and more time observing the effects of your choice so you can do better the next time. Learning through Problem Solving Some want to skip directly to the ask someone else part of the process above. I can understand why. It’s easier. You ask and let another person work on a solution while you go off and do something else. If that’s your approach, expect to have the problem again and not know how to solve it. Asking someone else is accepting the gift of a fish. Trying to solve the problem yourself is learning how to fish. It’s an exercise in critical thinking. The struggle to identify and refine the problem, to search for an answer, and to try different possibilities, contains many teaching and learning opportunities and in the long run will save you considerable time. If you’re facing a deadline, just get the problem solved, but when you can, put in the effort to get something more. If you found code online to solve your problem, spend time understanding what it does and why it works. Figure out how to modify it so it does something a little different. Can you remove parts of the code that have nothing to do with your specific problem? When defining problems seek the root cause always. Then refine more to see if something deeper is at work. Remember the problem you see is usually a symptom of some deeper problem. Don’t stop at solving the symptoms. You might be able to hack together some magic numbers in your css to make a layout work on your screen, but the layout will probably break elsewhere or you’ll develop another site with a similar issue. Dig deeper to discover if your general approach to layouts is the real cause and if there’s a better approach you can follow. Look for patterns in every problem you come across. What similarities exist between the current problem and others you’ve come across in the past? Teach yourself to observe patterns across problems. It’s part of identifying and refining the root cause and the closer to the root problem you can solve, the more future problems you’ll be able to solve quickly and easily. To help in pattern recognition you can record the problems you encounter, the root causes you think are at play, the solutions you’ve tried, those that worked, and any observations you’ve made along the way. Keep observing even after you’ve solved a problem. Expand and refine the patterns you see. Summary If your first step in solving a problem is to ask someone else or if you copy and paste the first potential solution you find, you miss out on many of the benefits of problem solving. You may fix your problem, but you won’t have learned anything. You’ll be reliant on others to solve the same problem and you’ll miss out on the opportunity to solves a wider range of problems and become a better problem solver in general. Put in the time and effort to solve it on your own first. Start by identifying and refining the problem and seeking the root cause. Observe patterns in the different problems you encounter. Once you have a reasonable idea of the problem search for a solution. Try search engines, forums, Q&A sites, documentation, and source code. Search anything you think might contain an answer. After searching give trial and error a shot. When deadlines are present it’s ok to find something workable as quickly as possible, but for all other times take the longer road. There’s a lot to learn along the way to a solution. The post The Art of Problem Solving and Learning from Your Effort appeared first on Vanseo Design.

How To Price Freelance Services — What Should You Charge? Posted: 03 Oct 2013 05:30 AM PDT How much does a website cost? It’s a question designers and developers are asked all the time. It’s an impossible question to answer without details and your response is likely some variation of “it depends.” At some point you learn the details it depends on and have to come up with a price. How do you determine what that price will be? Note: This post includes an audio version. If you don’t see the audio above, Click here to listen. Last week I offered thoughts about how to determine your costs for a project. This week I have a few more quick thoughts about cost, but mostly I want to look at some of the things you should think about when setting a price for a project. A Bit More About Cost In last week’s post I talked about costs per project, however those aren’t the only costs we have. You probably have to pay for one or more of what’s below: services (hosting, merchant fees, etc.) computers and other equipment software utilities office space health insurance retirement savings taxes I’m sure you can think of a few more things to add to the list above. We have to pay for these things and we have to account for them when we price projects. When you’re determining the minimum you’ll accept for a project, remember the costs not specifically associated with the project. Price is a Negotiation I think most people wanting to understand how much to charge for a website want an answer along the lines of you should charge $X when the requirements of the site include Y. It’s the answer I always hoped for. Unfortunately that answer isn’t given and for good reason. The truth about pricing services is every project is a negotiation between service provider and client. For any project there’s a maximum the client is willing to pay and there’s a minimum you’re willing to accept. Assuming the client’s max is greater than your min, a price you’re both happy with can be found. If you consider only the one project, your client would like the price to be as close to your minimum as possible and you’d like it to be as close to the client’s maximum as possible. There are a lot of variables that set those mins and maxes and help determine where in the middle to meet. You have to think about more than one project, though. While there are reasons at times not to charge as much as you can, remember that the money you make as a service provider is tied to how much time you can spend working. If you’re a freelancer or a small shop, you aren’t making it up on volume. You generally need to charge more per project. What Should You Charge? I wish I could offer you the simple charge $X for a site with Y requirements, but again it really doesn’t work that way. Instead I want to raise some questions you should think about when setting prices. What is the client willing to pay? If you’re negotiating a price between 2 endpoints, it would be helpful to know those endpoints. One comes from your costs. The other from the client’s budget. I find it helpful to ask for a client budget as soon as possible. I don’t need to know the exact budget immediately, though I’ll gladly accept that information if it’s given. Typically I explain that it’s common for people to want more from a website than they’re expecting to pay and if they can give me a rough idea of their budget ($500?, $5,000?, $50,000?) I can do a better job estimating a price and what can be done at that price. If the thought of asking for a budget makes you uncomfortable read the articles below or the one I linked to a couple paragraphs above. How to Extract a Budget from your Client Getting Design Clients to Talk About Their Budget What value do you bring to the project? I can’t stress this enough. Learn to see the value you bring to clients and charge based on that value. You figure out your costs to help determine an absolute minimum to charge. Value is more about understanding what the client can earn from your work and how much your client is willing to pay. Get over feeling like you don’t deserve more because you don’t have enough experience or because you think the work will be easy. You have more experience than your client and the work is almost always more than you initially think. You determine costs not to lose money. You price to maximize revenue and profit over time. To best do that you need to understand your value. What value do you deliver in general? Think about your business in general and think about what value you can bring to all clients that your competition can’t. Maybe you have specific experience in an industry or have knowledge from another that helps improve your designs. The more you increase your skills as a designer/developer and in general, the more value you bring to every project. For example I have a pretty good understanding of search engines, and can write and edit client copy. Both of these allow me to charge more, since they add value above and beyond what’s expected of me as a designer/developer. Is there long term potential with the client? In the short term you want to maximize the one project. In the long term it’s possible you’d do better to charge a little less to build a lasting relationship that maximizes the money you bring in over the long term. That decision should come from you and not the client. If someone holds out the carrot of more work later for a low price today, I can almost guarantee there’s no work coming later. However, if you see long term potential working with a client you might adjust your price to ensure you get the job. However, understand that long term client relationships will generally not be about price, but about quality, trust, and communication. How will the price you set affect your brand? People tend to recommend you based on why they chose to work with you. If you set a price too low, expect future leads to be looking for a low price. If you set a higher price, perhaps there will be less leads, but those that come will be much more willing to pay that higher price. At any price point some will think it too high and others too low. Some will think it perfectly reasonable. Think about who you want as clients. Your prices will inevitably target some people over others. Don’t be afraid to say no if a client isn’t willing to pay your price. It’s hard to do, especially when first starting out, but it’s more important to consider the value of your brand than worry about getting one project. How much work do you have scheduled? Let’s face it we have bills to pay and sometimes we just need some work. It’s a gamble working for less than you should, because another job might be just around the corner. Still…a bird in the hand… If your business is like mine, the work isn’t steady. It’s busy for a time and then not so busy for a time. Sometimes during those not so busy moments you might charge less for a project just to have some cash flowing into your business. Can the cost of the project be justified in other ways? Is there another benefit from working on a project? Maybe when first getting started you need to build your portfolio or being associated with a project will carry prestige and lead to more work. Be careful here as we usually have a tendency to be more optimistic about these other potential benefits than is realistic. Still there are times when a project can bring benefits worth a lower price. How interesting is the project? It’s possible you’re simply interested in the project. Sometimes money isn’t the most important consideration and you just want to work on a project. It’s not all that different from working on your own projects. I’ve taken on projects because they gave me opportunity to learn something or because I wanted to be part of it. There’s even a business application in choosing projects you like. The projects you work on today tend to influence the projects you work on tomorrow. Closing Thoughts A month ago on an episode of the Unfinished Business podcast, Sarah Parmenter offered the perfect response to the question “how much does a website cost” by asking a question in return. How long is a piece of string? Just as the length of string is different from piece to piece, the price of a website is different from site to site. There are a lot of things to consider when pricing. Your prices should be in constant evaluation. Just because you charged $X for a project today, it doesn’t mean you should charge the same $X for it tomorrow. If people are saying yes to your prices too quickly, it’s probably time to raise your prices. Whenever someone agrees to my price without hesitation, I assume I charged too little and should start charging more with the next project. On the other hand if too many people are saying no to your prices, maybe you need to offer a lower price. You might be attracting the wrong clients so don’t assume a lower price is the answer, but it might be. Pricing is an art and it’s something you’ll do better with practice. The most important thing to remember is to price based on the value of your services and not the cost of your services. Learn to see the value you’re giving clients and charge accordingly. There are a couple more topics I’d like to cover in regards to the business side of design. Next week, we’ll take a look at how to cut your costs to increase your profit and also how to collect money to improve cash flow. The post How To Price Freelance Services — What Should You Charge? appeared first on Vanseo Design. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

You are subscribed to email updates from Vanseo Design To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610