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My new web design service [critique]
- Thread starter Butters
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Yvan256 said:
That thing is really annoying. I ran a site I made with it and it came up with 40 errors. Most of them were missing alt tags in the images (compeltly useless considering how the site works... and just a waste of code), missing height tags in tables and cells (once again, often worthless if not neccessary) and missing </br> tags. None of these have ever given me a single issue. Just for some persepective MR has 44 errors, apple has 8 erros, CNN has 35 errors, and interestingly the only site I found that could pass validation (beyond the validator itself of course) was microsoft.
My point... worry about developing your design skills and building up a portfolio before you start worrying about small coding errors that won't really hurt much. Test out the site on multiple os's with different browsers.
I'm a student too. I went through your situation a few summers ago. I've learned alot and I"m just now redesigning my home page to reflect that. I've got another thread somewhere around here critiquing that design. Take a look at comment
... anyway, here's what I suggest: Don't sell your self short. You'll never get the kind of clients you want. Generally people who are only willing to pay $150 (sorry... I'm too lazy to convert that to pounds) for a site are just going to be a pain. They don't respect how much work actually goes into a site. I think you are going to be limiting yourself to those kind of people.... those who respect design and understand that coding and building a website is not as easy as clicking and moving stuff around are going to see your prices and assume that they're going to get what they pay for. Which at those prices, shouldn't be too much. I generally charge about $50 an hour. I think that's fair for a student. I'm in the same situation as you in that I don't like to keep track of how long I work. Alot of my time spent working on a clients page goes into just playing around and trying to teach my self new things. I don't like punishing my client for that. I usually look at the site ahead of time, estimate how many hours I think it would take me of straight work, and give them a quote. Don't veer from that price just because it takes you longer to do the site... stick by your estimate unless there demands change. If suddenly they want an entirelly different site with all sorts of extra stuff give them a new quote and make sure to explain how much extra work its going to be. See if they really want it.
Ok... I could go on and on. If you've got any questions feel free to PM or email me.
Ok people thanks to all the advice I've recieved here
I've raised my prices to what I think is fair and also still very very affordable, I don't feel comfortable doing the per hour thing so Instead I'm doing the this is my estimate for the entire project and the actual price depends on the complexity of the project.
I've validated my pages and made minor tweaks to the text and the packages here n there to refine my pricing model.
Now all i need is to get some interest
once again, thanks to everybody.
I've raised my prices to what I think is fair and also still very very affordable, I don't feel comfortable doing the per hour thing so Instead I'm doing the this is my estimate for the entire project and the actual price depends on the complexity of the project.
I've validated my pages and made minor tweaks to the text and the packages here n there to refine my pricing model.
Now all i need is to get some interest
once again, thanks to everybody.
Butters said:
I'm not a designer, but I think your site looks nice. It loads pretty quickly and the navigation is good. My one complaint: I hate it when I'm hovering over a link and the destination doesn't show up in the status bar. I assume you used JavaScript to blank that out?
In response to the payment issue, the client doesn't know how many hours you actually worked. Yes, it does seem like a stupid system; it can be and is frequently abused. But by far, the majority of "consulting" work in this world is done on a hourly basis than by flat-fee.
If you really want to do flat-fee, this will probably appeal to customers, but you have to make sure you get very specific requirements about what they want, and get them in writing before you start doing any work or accept any payment. Those requirements basically become your contract. Anything nebulous in the contract terms is just a loophole for the client to change their mind and make you do extra work at no cost.
I work professionally as a consultant billing an hourly rate, and I also work in my free time as a free-lance consultant billing at flat-rates. They can both be very profitable, and which one you go with depends on the client and the project. I recommend you leaving your billing options open.
savar said:
Very very very very very very good piece of advice. Had that happen to me several times.
Did this entire site myself: http://www.annabskincare.com/
Was supposed to be a "few" pages... ended up mushrooming into a huge project that took months.
Although, to be fair, I am proud of it.