Ajay,
Yesterday we covered "The Good Project" in our three-part email series called "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." Yes, it was was all unicorns and rainbows. I set an hourly rate of $65.00 per hour which guaranteed a nice income on the project. But as I mentioned yesterday, most clients want a fixed fee on web design projects. They want to know exactly what the cost will be.
Today, I am going to share the details of a project that went bad. It hurts to even think about it… but for your sake I will re-live the past so I can help you avoid the same mistakes. Well, let's get this over with.
The Bad Project:
This project started off innocently enough. The client had a very nicely designed site in Wordpress. They had a few parts of the site that were broken because they had tried to make some changes themselves. (Imagine that.) They also wanted to change some of the content on the pages. They also wanted to move to a new Wordpress theme.
All in all this was a pretty straightforward project that should have taken roughly 10 hours to complete. So here was my first mistake. Because this was a small project and I was familiar with the new theme, I assumed everything would go smoothly. Because I assumed everything would go smoothly, I bid the job too low.
I should have added 30% to my bid to cover any problems that came up, but I didn't. (By the way, pricing, estimating and proposal writing are important skills for running a successful web design business. These are topics we cover in our new coaching program… more on that in a moment.)
The second mistake I made was not setting clear expectations with the client on the scope of the project. It is amazing how often this happens. Even when you detail the scope in writing in your proposal. When my client wanted to make a design change that was outside of the scope, I pushed back. It was a tense moment. We ended up with an agreeable compromise, but it still cost me time and money.
This is one of the hardest parts of the design process. You want the client to be happy, but you can't let them run over you.
The third big mistake I made on this project was poor project management. This client was on a tight deadline to have the new site up and running in just a few days. There were a flurry of emails and text messages flying back and forth and I ended up wasting a lot of time. Here is an example.
The client gave us a video to use as a background for the home page. After uploading and installing the video, the client decided he wanted to remove the audio from the video. So he sent us a new video. Well, that video was not working, so he started troubleshooting to find out why. Finally, we had to ask the client to send another version of the video. That video still did not work. So we had to find a solution. We ended up with a work around to solve the problem.
Do you see what went wrong here?
After we installed the first video, the home page was complete. We should have been done. That was what we were contracted to do. The project did not include multiple changes and revisions to the video. When the client asked me to swap out the video, I should have politely told him that was an additional change and we would have to bill him accordingly.
I know this is a delicate situation. You don't want to wear out the client by billing them for every little change. On the flip side, it is easy to find yourself in a never ending cycle of revisions. The key is to detail the scope of the project in your proposal, set client expectation, and carefully manage the project.
I know this was a kind of doom and gloom email, but hopefully this will help you avoid or at least minimize the "Bad" projects.
We will be discussing this and other hot topics on our coaching call this week. If you would like to find out more, you can check out the details here:
http://www.on2url.com/lnk?MTg0MjY5OXwxMTU1Mzc2Njc3fHM9MQ%3D%3D
That link will take you to a coaching program I just launched. I am helping a small group of web designers break through barriers and finally reach their goals in 2016. If you have any questions about the coaching program just reply to this email.
To your success,
Conrad Feagin
LearnWebDevelopment.com - Learn. Soar. Get Ahead.
P.S. I am looking for few web designers who want to expand their business in 2016. If you are interested, follow this link for the details:
http://www.on2url.com/lnk?MTg0MjcwMHwxMTU1Mzc2Njc3fHM9MQ%3D%3D
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PO Box 1355
McKinney, TX 75070
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