Ballpark estimate vs. proposal
When ordering web design services, people tend to miss the point of the medium. What makes it different from other platforms, products or services is its flexibility. Not the flexibility in just updating the content in a blink of an eye, but the ability to quickly change the user experience, improve it, make it better. A web site or application is a living thing: it’s adaptive and is constantly evolving.
Due to the nature of the Internet and a broad range of possibilities for any given project, it’s impossible to provide the clients with a fixed quote based on an e-mail with five bullets.
What can you do?
Respond with the best guess estimates instead of proposals, simply to encourage agile development and deal with unavoidable scope changes up-front.
Tip for the clients: unavoidable scope changes develop frustrations on both ends. The frustration is caused by fixed contract or limited budget. Consequently — production delays occur and the quality of work suffers.
With estimates clients get better picture about how overall scope and tight deadline affect the budget and can plan costs for each step accordingly. I found it that for clients it’s easier to decide about the priorities when they have better picture about what they really need.
The benefit of abstract estimates is that you usually end up doing the essential features first, and rethinking add-ons later.
Essentials vs. Add-ons
The best possible investment for clients is to hire pro photographer and/or copywriter to take care of the essential content first. Products, services and about information is a must.
Office photo gallery or office furniture, newsletter system or custom made contact form, blog or forum is an add-on. User comments might be essential, but user registration or activity log is an add-on. Simple send video link form is essential, but custom made video uploader is an add-on (the later will also produce hosting/bandwidth costs, since you have to store those uploads somewhere).
Tip for web producers: The quickest way to filter serious projects is to simply reply with a ballpark costs, for instance:
“Such sites usually cost between X and Y hundreds, thousands or millions <insert prefered currency here>.”
Production of community based interactive web site with file uploads based on WordPress
can indeed take from a week to a couple of months. And if it’s urgent, that means doubling the agency staff and raising overall costs.
Web design packages
But don’t offer packages, that’s irresponsible. We are not in a car industry. You don’t manufacture 1000 pieces of the same model each year, so you can’t create equipment packages. You couldn’t possibly analyze the costs of every single optional feature with a dozen (or two) projects a year. The sample is too small and the variety of options is too wide.
When buying a car you don’t go to a car factory and negotiate about wether the logo should be bigger or a little bit more on the left. You only get what’s offered. That’s unless you are a buyer who’s not asking about the price.
With cars it’s easy to create packages and set the prices, but with web sites virtually everything is an option. Except the domain name, of course.
001—2010.04.25.03:16
I agree with most that you said here, mostly because that’s pretty much what I do already.
But what about overseas clients? How can one know if the range of the ballpark quote one gives is significant in their economy?
Say, as an example, I’m about to quote some service as usually costing between 4500 USD and 5000 USD.
Now, 500 USD might be a big difference over here and not so much on the client country, which might even make he or she think of it as a proposal precisely because of that…
002—2010.04.26.08:36
It’s all about the communication, and as always — it depends on the context. 10% margin is in fact very precise.
The real trouble are general requests when optional features range from A to 5 * A.
003—2010.04.27.00:35
And that’s why I don’t start working until the scope is defined on a signed paper!
=)
004—2010.05.13.14:12
I like this approach, I use it myself, although after estimates and ballparks, I’m happy to add more detail for the most important experiences.
I find that having a really good graphic designer who is a part of figuring out the solution to a client’s problem is helpful, as it means you can produce something that looks great that the client wants. Doing this in parallel with encouraging clients to think about the most important experiences and what features you’d need to realise these tends to keep scope-creep down.
I like the car analogy.
J.