Web Design

[wizer]

So a couple of threads on here recently have got me thinking. I'd quite like to get back into doing freelance web site building. I've got quite a lot of experience. I was doing it as a career between 97-2002 but decided to take a cooshty wage packet with my current employer. Since then 'Ive done a bit' to keep my hand in. But I'm now thinking about doing it proper as a supplement to my wages. All above board, etc.

My question is. Do you think the work is there? I'd be aiming at small businesses. I can build large commerce sites and content managment systems but I'd like to aim towards tradesmen, static sites. I can produce these basic sites very quick and as I'm sat at the computer for 90% of my day, I might as well make it pay.

Views?

 

[jlawrence]

Yes Tom the work is there - or rather the need is there.
The problem with aiming for the 'small' tradesman type person is that they are very often 'not' business men. They tend to think that they can diy - hence why many of the sites are simply aweful. Your main job is proving/pursuading people that they get a better job by paying for it - or at least you should.
Many many people have very unrealistic ideals of what they want from a website - or at least they don't comprehend that their designs can take time. Oh, and mention a webdesign price for a fully fledged customised cms or commerce site and most will run a mile.

 

[big soft moose]

yeah i reckon so - so long as you dont charge too much . Ive dabbled in this for a couple of years (tho probably not at your level of competence) and you do get the biz though you have to be fairly proactive in finding them.

part of the problem is that a lot of small trades dont realise what a website can do for them so you need to be quite persuasive / demonstrative - the other thing is that a lot of tradesmen arent willing to pay a reasonable price because they think they can do it themselves using a site in a box programme.

mind you some not so small firms need some serious help in the web dept too - tilgear come to mind

 

[wizer]

I'd love the opportunity to re-do Tilgear's site :roll: :wink:

You've both hit the nail on the head. Smaller firms\tradesmen think that it's a simple as buying Frontpage or even Dreamweaver. Websites can be so powerful for business, especially at this time. Practically everyone one uses the web now to search for this kind of stuff. Your site has to be concise, to the point, easy to navigate, look stylish AS WELL AS be optimised for search engines.

I might put together a website and try to lay it out in a way these small firms will understand.

 

[big soft moose]

you might want to look at offering to set up social media for them too - not appropriate for every business but in a lot of cases its well worth having a corporate facebook/myspace etc but lots of trades people dont realise that these exist or what it can do for them.

for someone whose tech savvy its dead easy - but if your client struggles to turn their computer on they might prefer to pay you to set it up.

 

[jlawrence]

Frontpage maybes, but you'll find few tradesmen willing to shell out for dreamweaver - let alone actually learn how to use it.
500 quid (just about the cost of DW) would actually knock up a half decent website for this market - assuming all they want is a shop window so to speak rather than the whole shop.
I've thought about doing similar, but haven't had time to sit down and see if the figures add up - though if nothing else it'd give my machines something to do.

 

[TrimTheKing]

If you need some practice or want a guinea pig, my missus is seriously considering setting herself (and maybe me if I get made redundant in Jan) up in portrait photography and will be looking for a site.

She is a qualified Chartered Accountant and ex FD for a global company so is knowledgeable on the commercial requirements she would want but layout, design etc is the area she would need the most input.

I haven't got even a starting clue on how much it would cost so we would need to discuss this. Not that I'm looking for cheap, but I really don't have the first idea how much we would be needing to spend to get what we want.

Drop me a shout if you want to chat about it mate.

 

[wizer]

Happy to talk Mark. I'm cheap You need to sit down with something called a pencil and a bit of paper and write down what content you want on the site and then either draw out how you think you'd like it to look or find plenty of examples.

The biggest bug bear in dealing with small businesses and sole traders, is that they expect the designer to do everything. Then get upset when they don't like the mockups.

 

[jlawrence]

At the end of the day it isn't much different to designing a bit of furniture for a client (not that I've ever done that other than for swmbo). I'd normally come up with 2 or 3 layouts based roughly on what the client outlined. It is very rare (in my experience) for clients to actually know the look that they want - if they do then it's simply a case of finding a way to make that layout work online.
If the website is written well then changing the layout can be a quite quick thing.
Pricing would be directly related to the amount of work involved - a simple static site would likely come in pretty cheap (certainly under £500), then you've got hosting on top. Hosting can easily cost more than the site itself, though I can't imagine many in this market wanting/needing enterprise level hosting with fail-overs and disaster recovery servers - a simple CD with the site on it that could be moved to a 'generic hosting' sever would likely suffice for DR. There's no point paying for obscene levels of uptime - which are pretty meaningless anyway.
Not all hosting is created equally though - some is good, some is tripe and some is simply indifferent. A good way of judging hosting (imo) is to see if you can get someone on the phone (or even via email) who actually knows what they're talking about. Hosting isn't about supporting people with their computer problems - I couldn't really careless whether the support guys can talk someone through how to use windows or not, what I care about is can their explain why xyz isn't working on the server (which won't for me be a windows box) - I can't remember the last time I had to put up with the muppets on first line support.

I've learnt my lesson the hard way over the years - there's next to no chance of anyone getting me to work for a fixed fee (or if they do then it'll be tied to a very tight contract). I've had (and seen) too many clients change the goal posts well into a project without any thought as to the amount of work invovled in changing things - admittedly this tends to happen with bigger (and thus more complex) sites.
I tend to work on a per hour basis (£25 per hour) and sites tend to be based on a minimum 8 hours (ie £200). You'd be surprised just how big a static site can be created in 8 hours of working.

 

[wizer]

Agreed. It's exactly the same process as commissioning furniture/kitchens, etc

I have a hosting account, so I'm geared up for offering hosting or I can leave it to the client. It really doesn't bother me with smaller static sites. CMS, Commerce, SQL type stuff, I insist on having the site on my servers. It's much easier for me to administer. I have three sites running on my servers at the moment, one is mine and the other two are clients who've been with me for a few years. One of those clients is a commerce site (a hire company). Neither of them bother me more than a few times a year. I'm happy to do their small updates for nothing as long as they're not too time consuming.

 

[jlawrence]

Lucky you.
I think I've currently just short of 200 running on my shared Linux hosting servers (about 300 on windows servers) and lord only knows how many on the rented out colo's.
Fortunately I only ever have to deal with the linux sites and not the windows ones - I find windows servers a nightmare to admin. I have a few other servers that I'm contracted to manage but they don't really take up much time (thank fully). Of course nothing really takes that much times until the s hits the fan - then everything seems to break all at once .

 

[devonwoody]

How about asking to be paid by results and not a fee.

i.e. paid by hits,

Might work?

(you can always do it the orthodox way as well.)

 

[Oryxdesign]

If you start up let me know, I know some people who will be interested.

Simon

 

[mickthetree]

Hey Wizer

I'm a freelance web developer (for the last 6 years) and build sites day in and day out for many small businesses and individuals alike, as well as the occasional larger site.

I have found that most people want to you tell them what a website should consist of. Not the other way around. you should be able to tell them what their site needs, how it should be built and how it should be run.

I find that if people are not prepared to listen to me and use my experience then I dont deal with them. Experience has taught me that these people will only cause me headaches down the road.

Fortunately I get 100% of my work through recommendation, so this kind of pre vets my customers before they even call me.

There are very many small local businesses, that want a single person, close to them, with the skills and experience to build (and run) their website for them.

Make sure you build all of your sites to W3C web standards and build for accessibility and usability and use descent fast servers and you cant go far wrong.

Give it a whirl! I love my job.

www.digitalhand.co.uk

 

[wizer]

Thanks Mick, that all sounds familiar from when I was doing it back in the late 90's. Except I was a lot younger and didn't have the balls to state my terms. I also didn't realise then that I had nothing to loose and money wasn't as important as building a business\career.

As you say, business by recommendation is the best way to go with this, just like the trades people we have on this site. Their name is their business.

But to build that up I need customers. So I am willing to do a few lost cost favours to begin with. In the name of building up a portfolio and also learning the ropes of business.

Simon: I'm ready to go now. Between now and the end of Jan, I've got a lot of time on my hands. Even when I go back to work I'll be on reduced hours for the first month or three. So feel free to sound out anyone you think may need some work done.

 

[Dibs-h]

Thanks Mick, that all sounds familiar from when I was doing it back in the late 90's. Except I was a lot younger and didn't have the balls to state my terms. I also didn't realise then that I had nothing to loose and money wasn't as important as building a business\career.

As you say, business by recommendation is the best way to go with this, just like the trades people we have on this site. Their name is their business.

But to build that up I need customers. So I am willing to do a few lost cost favours to begin with. In the name of building up a portfolio and also learning the ropes of business.

Simon: I'm ready to go now. Between now and the end of Jan, I've got a lot of time on my hands. Even when I go back to work I'll be on reduced hours for the first month or three. So feel free to sound out anyone you think may need some work done.

I would be careful Tom - this is a public forum and if you are on sick leave your employer may not take to kindly to you "working" on the side.

Even if everything is fine in that respect - I would look to get a company setup so that the tax side of things doesn't bite you on the ar5e later on.

 

[wizer]

Yes, of course I meant as a non-financial favour, in my spare time until I'm back at work.

Once I'm setup I will declare my business to my employers. I've done it before when I built other websites. They are only concerned that it's not a conflict of interest. My line manager is supportive.

 

[Dibs-h]

Yes, of course I meant as a non-financial favour, in my spare time until I'm back at work.

Once I'm setup I will declare my business to my employers. I've done it before when I built other websites. They are only concerned that it's not a conflict of interest. My line manager is supportive.

Cool :wink:

PM sent

 

[xy mosian]

One of my biggest gripes with all sites, but it seems more often with those representing smaller businesses, is their not being updated. One in particular promised to be selling high quality hand tools, and showed some good product, unfortunately later visits still listed stands at future shows well after the event. This makes me think they have given up on a potentially good idea. My point? Perhaps there is an associated market in chasing updates for a site you have set up and doing the updates. Repeat work if you like.

xy

 

[wizer]

There are two problems with that. 1. They are unable or can't be bothered to do their own small updates. 2. They are unwilling to pay for small or even large updates.

Training is difficult for small static websites. Without a 'back end' that the user can not log in to and make updates (like you would with a forum or social networking site). So the only way to make update is to go into the code and start mucking about in there. Formatting, links, pictures all become difficult when you are looking a page of HTML or CSS. You can't expect a customer to understand or edit this. You could teach them how to use a WYSIWYG editor, but it's not ideal and still allows room for cockups. If they muck something up, do you charge them to put it right? Do you charge them for phoning you every five minutes?

I really don't know what the solution is to that. In the past I have either done the updates for free or the customer has faded away and left with a site that's out of date.

This time around, If I do it, it needs to be a well thought out procedure that is contracted and agreed on.