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When I started writing this, the idea of a skyscraper construction project came to mind.

I thought of a huge skyscraper with restaurants, retail stores, offices, gyms, and residential spaces — a large self-contained, compact community all by itself.

Source: Bernt Rostad

No one would ever start the construction process of a skyscraper like that until everything is properly planned and drawn out.

Source: Steve Newfield

I’m not a building architect or construction contractor, but I can still see the innumerable requirements you need to draw out before proceeding to construction. Room planning details, sourcing of good construction materials, managing the different teams involved in the building’s construction, zoning permits, funding allocation, natural disaster planning in case of earthquakes, the list goes on.

Everybody considers design as an important component of things; whether it’s the design of a skyscraper or the tires of your car.

Design is about not only bringing convenience, innovation, and comfort into people’s lives, but also in many cases such as skyscrapers and your car tires, people’s lives and safety becomes dependent on it.

I’m not an architect.

I’m an IT person. I’m a concept designer to be more exact.

For years, I’ve been designing strategies and conducting research for very large, ambitious website projects.

Concept design is the foundation of a robust website architecture. Like in the construction of a skyscraper, you need to have a sound blueprint for building large-scale websites.

In this article, I’ll share our company’s process for architecting large websites.

The Website Architect

Let’s first figure out whose role it is to do this thing called website architecture.

To me, this job is carried out by a website architect.

I deliberately avoid mentioning UI/UX designers and the IA guys here because website architecture goes beyond — or rather encompasses — the user interface, user experience, and information architecture of the site.

The website architect needs to have a solid understanding of usability, in-depth knowledge of web development tools, online marketing technologies, and everything else involved in the construction and maintenance of a website.

Just like an architect of a skyscraper or a residential home, she must be well-versed with the tools, materials, and processes of construction in order to plan the product efficiently and effectively.

This person, our website architect, should possess strong logical thinking, has an analytical mind, is smart with commercial aspects of websites, and be attentive to details.

Of course, for a guaranteed quality product, the architect can/should consult other specialists: designers, developers, etc.

As you see, the ideal web architect in my mind should be a broad specialist, because, as you’ll soon see below, there’s no getting away from that.

Overview of the Website Architecture Process

I’ll give you just a general overview of my company’s website architecture process.

The process is divided into these 11 stages:

1. Project Brief
2. Website Goal Definition
3. Define the Target Audience
4. Competitor Analysis
5. User Goal-Problem-Solution
6. Scenario Mapping
7. Mind Mapping
8. Information Architecture
9. Prototyping
10. Prototype Usability Testing
11. Project Specification

As you can see, all these stages are related to each other, and we’ve organized it in a sequential manner.

Let’s discuss each stage.

Stage 1: Project Brief

Gathering the needed data from the client and your team can usually take 2 days. Though you should be as thorough as possible, also keep in mind that there’s always room for elaboration and additional data-gathering in the other stages of the website architecture process, so don’t get too off-track if some pieces of information haven’t been transmitted to you.

Determine Goals and Expected Outcomes

What is the client’s goals and expected outcomes of this project, and how does she envision the end result of the project?

You should be clear about the evaluation criteria of these goals and expected outcomes to make sure you’re both on the same page.

You have to be as specific as possible; goals and outcomes should be quantifiable and measurable.

Brainstorm with the Client

Ask the client to tell you everything he has on his mind. Listen to what he says patiently and thoughtfully. Take notes. Focus on what they’re saying and resist the urge to chime in. Your ideas and remarks can wait.

If the client is passionate about his ideas for the project, he can spend hours talking about it, which is completely normal.

When the client is really into the project, he’s a great help and pleasure to work with.

Client Idea Summary

At the end of your brainstorming session, you should ask the client to sum everything up — if he succeeds in boiling his idea down to one sentence, then the idea is clear. If not, you will need better clarity and focus.

Determine the Target Audience

Who is the client’s target audience? Who’s going to use this site, and how might they benefit from the site?

The client should have a clear idea of who the end user is, so that we can produce a website for them. Otherwise, it’s like playing darts with your eyes closed: You know where the target is, but it’s going to be nearly impossible to hit it.

You can also start discussing what the client already knows about their target demographic: gender, age, location, etc.

Determine Competitors

Who are the website’s direct and indirect competitors? The client and the website architect should be aware of the existing competitive environment.

There are always competitors. Even if the website’s idea is completely unique, there are at least indirect competitors.

Meet the Decision Makers

Meet with the people who make decisions. Discuss the deadlines, the budget limit, resource availabilities, and so forth.

Organizational matters, matter.

Results and Deliverables

Some of your other questions will need to wait to be answered later on in the website architecture process. What you get out of the project briefing stage will be basic data and just to get a general feel of what your client already knows about his project.

It’s crucial to understand the client’s needs and expectations at this early stage, and to choose the right direction for the project right at the starting line. The price you pay for not giving enough time to this simple but critical first stage exponentially grows as the web architecture process and website production progresses.

A project brief template. Source: docstoc.com

The deliverable of the briefing stage is a written document with detailed information given to you by the client and the decision-makers. This document should be approved and verified by the client. It can be in the form of a design brief.

Stage 2: Website Goal Definition

A website needs goals. The client’s goals might be these: to monetize the site, to increase the offline market share through online marketing, to better engage customers online, and so forth.

The goals define the direction of the entire website production process.

Besides determining the website’s goals, you also need to define success criteria according to the client.

A good way to establish goals is by using the SMART criteria. That is, each goal should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

For example:

• Generate $50,000 income within 5 years through ads, information products like e-books and paid subscription plans
• Assist users in making a choice of what pet to own
• Provide users with advice on pet issues
• Create a marketing platform for pet products

Results and Deliverables

As a result, you will have a document containing 2 lists:

• A list of project goals
• A list of the client’s goals

This document needs sign-off by the client/decision-makers.

Stage 3: Define the Target Audience

This stage involves researching the target audience. We need to identify what types of users will go to the site, and also define the needs of each group.

Gather Characteristics Data

We need to create a common persona for each group. The user interface design depends greatly on the results of this stage. To get started with this, we first need to define what our audiences’ common characteristics are.

Define Socio-Demographic Characteristics: We should figure out the sex, age, education level, and occupation of our target audience. Targeting teenagers (15-18) is going to differ from a site meant for people over 60.

Define Psychological Characteristics: We should determine the lifestyle, personality, temperament, motivation, value system, philosophies, etc. of our target audience. This information is even more important than socio-demographic characteristics in terms of user interface design. If, for example, our users are early adopters, the user interface and pre-launch strategy will be different than other websites.

Define Wants/Needs Characteristics: We should figure out why our user would want to sign up to our website, what problems they’re looking to solve with our site, etc. We define their pain points and aim to solve it with our website.

This information is vital, though it’s hard to find. If you’re working on a website redesign project, the client may already have this information if they have user feedback tools in place.

Sometimes the competitor can have it (but good luck getting them to share it with you). In this case, you need to perform user research studies and conduct surveys.

Geographic Location Characteristics: Country, city, region, continent — these are all helpful information. Being online does not completely eliminate the location factor.

Sometimes geotargeting is the first thing to think of when creating a national site, government website, or any location-dependent website.

Moreover, website content and website copywriting is heavily determined by the audience’s location.

You will need this when you’re in the information architecture (IA) stage.

Create User Personas

When the target audience portrait is well-defined, we can then create personas.

Example of a persona. Source: uxmag.com

The main goal of the web architect here is to determine all the possible groups of users, starting from the largest (core) group, and ending with the smallest one.

Then we create a persona for each group.

Each of the personas you develop should have a:

• First and Last name (Don’t use the names of real people to avoid distortion of the story)
• Photo
• Age
• Location
• Occupation
• Marital status
• Hobby
• Skills
• Problems they need to solve
• Personal and professional experience

To get a better image of your target audience you can interview potential users. This is about marketing research at this point.

Results and Deliverables

After finishing this stage, you should now have two things:

• A document presenting the general characteristics of the target audience
• Personas

Stage 4: Competitor Analysis

To ensure the success of the project, you need to know your competitors and have good ideas on how to get ahead of them. You should discover their strong points and weak points.

There are several methodologies involved in conducting competitor analysis research, including market participant polling, and Internet and print media research.

If you’re creating a local website, don’t limit yourself only to your country. Look through international websites that are doing similar things. Most likely, there are similar or analogous projects up and running somewhere in the world. Some of these projects can be rather inspiring.

For example, we’ve been working on a social networking site for pet lovers for a client in Russia. We didn’t find direct competitors in the local market. However, there are several foreign sites and indirect local competitors. They are:

Your website’s competitors can be direct competitors or indirect competitors.

• Direct competitors can be defined as any website operating for the same user base and who offer analogous products. For example, a direct competitor of Microsoft Windows is Apple Mac OS.
• Indirect competitors are competitors who offer similar products, but only partially satisfy the target audience’s needs.

SWOT Analysis

There are different approaches towards competitor identification and analysis. I like SWOT analysis the best.

SWOT — which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats — helps indicate the strong points and weak points of your competitors, and more importantly, aids you in figuring out project opportunities.

SWOT matrix. Source: wikipedia.org

While analyzing competitors, you can discover useful site features and ideas worth adapting onto your own website — general, universal site features like commenting systems, web forms, etc. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel in these cases.

All good ideas you end up with during the competitor analysis stage will be needed for the mind mapping stage (which we’ll discuss later on).

Results and Deliverables

You should now have:

• A list of direct and indirect competitors
• A SWOT analysis for each competitor
• Research summaries (ideas generated, market opportunities, etc.)

Stage 5: User Goal-Problem-Solution

Proceeding from the personas we’ve developed, we can start working on goal-problem-solution.

User Goals

Every person has short-term and long-term goals.

There can also be sub-goals. For example, a person might desire to improve his career, but first he needs to find a job. The sub-goal is finding a job to reach the goal of improving his career.

For our website project, we identify a person’s goals, problems, and we look towards providing solutions for them.

All goals should be designed well. Fuzzy goals won’t help, as it’s impossible to solve all problems within one site. Focus on primary goals and keep the list of goals short.

Some clients think if users listen to music online, their site should also provide such a service, even if their website isn’t looking to solve this problem. The more features we add, the more diluted our core objectives become.

User Problems

When we have a list of concrete goals, we can determine concrete problems.

For example, a user goal on our website might be to find a contractor that can build his construction project. That goal is more complex than it seems: How do we locate the right contractor for the user’s specific construction project? Is it important that the contractor is located close to where the construction project is? How do we allow them to quickly evaluate many candidates? Due to questions like these, you’ll generate ideas easily.

Our Solutions

When we’re done identifying goals and problems, it’s time to design and develop solutions for them.

This process brings great fulfillment to the website architect because she’s looking to solve pain points that her users have.

Results and Deliverables

As the result, we’ll have a goal-problem-solution matrix designed for each persona we’ve developed for our website.

Stage 6: Scenario Mapping

Scenario mapping is the stage dedicated to revealing possible user flows.

User experience mapping. Source: adaptivepath.com

Once again, we need to think like an end user and create probable scenarios of his actions on our website.

Every goal of every persona has his/her own set of scenario maps.

These scenarios help reveal weak points in our existing ideas and knowledge. Scenarios also help the website architect develop good user flows later on.

Results and Deliverables

We should have scenarios mapped out for critical site goals that we’ve established in the previous stage.

Here’s an example of a scenario:

User Goal:

Choose a dog

Scenario:

1. Go to main page
2. Go to "Zoopedia" section of the site
3. In "Zoopedia" section, find topics and discussions about dog breeds
4. Read topics and discussions of interest
5. Go to the Read Also section, located at the end of the topic because there’s more information there
6. Choose 3 preferred dog breeds
7. Return to "Zoopedia" top-level web page
8. Read some more
9. Find links to people selling dogs of these breeds
10. Make an informed, final decision
11. Go to a pet store to purchase a pet

When we wrote out this scenario, we ended up adding these site features:

• "Zoopedia" rubricator
• "Read Also" widgets
• Links to pet stores and dog sellers on the breed information pages

As you can see, scenarios help us find opportunities for improvement.

See Also:

• Customer Journey Maps

Stage 7: Mind Mapping

When we have a bunch of ideas, it becomes helpful when we start visualizing and interconnecting them.

The mind mapping stage is dedicated to creating a solid system of logically connected ideas and also helps us cut out unnecessary things. It’s a popular design conceptualization tool.

To create mind maps, we should use Xmind.

Find your list of ideas and divide them into logical categories. For example, let’s say we’re working on a real estate website. The real estate website’s sections might be:

• Property Catalog
• Community Forums
• Articles/News
• Information Center

Map all of your ideas into one of these categories.

If an idea fits in more than one category, choose the best fit for it.

Brainstorming will help sift out the useless and unneeded features, web pages, etc.

Each website section should be planned logically. Don’t forget about section-dependent features (such as the user being able to rate each property, in our example). Mark this connection with an arrow to remember the dependence (in our example, it would go to the Property Catalog).

You can design your own symbols to indicate different functional sections. If the web architect, for example, is undecided in terms of which section a certain site feature belongs to, she can mark it with a question mark. These symbols are really important if the project is large.

Results and Deliverables

As a result, we have a bird’s-eye view of the interconnections of site features and sections.

Stage 8: Information Architecture

Now that we have a detailed mind map of our website, we can start working on the website’s information structure, which will be the foundation of the website’s prototype.

The website’s IA can be created with the help of flowcharting software like Visio.

Results and Deliverables

You should end up with an information architecture (IA) design after this stage.

See Also:

• Information Architecture 101: Techniques and Best Practices
• How to Create Content Maps for Planning Your Website’s Content

Stage 9: Prototyping/Wireframing

You will need prototyping software for this stage. I recommend Axure, though there are a number of other similar programs.

The home page prototype doesn’t necessary have to be prototyped first. For example, in the case of an online shop or a blog, the product page or blog post page should come first, because these are critical pages, and will typically be the landing pages of most users on the site.

The website architect is going to lean on the mind map and information architecture diagrams to develop this prototype.

When creating each web page prototype, you should focus on how the user can achieve his/her goals. Before prototyping, you should refresh your knowledge of your target audience using the previous stages in the website architecture process.

Prototype the Primary Navigation Menu

The primary navigation menu is the first to create. We need to figure out the number of menu items and the number of drop-down menus.

Prototype the Header Section

Then we design the header section that typically contains these items:

• The primary navigation menu
• Search form
• Contact information
• Website logo

Prototype Contextual Areas

Now we start designing contextual areas, which will differ depending on the web page you’re prototyping. We will make content blocks, some of which are constant for every page, some of which won’t.

Prototype the Website Footer

The footer typically stays the same on each web page. Usually, the footer duplicates the main menu. It also contains auxiliary information such as the website’s privacy policy, links to social networks, contact information, copyright information, and so forth.

Client Feedback

The first web page prototype should be shown to decision-makers, and the reason for the layout should be explained to them. The client might revise and suggest some adjustments. That’s OK, because having this done on a low-fidelity prototype is much easier than if we had a higher-fidelity prototype.

After the first page is approved, we can move to the next prototypes. All the ideas represented in our mind map should be found in these prototypes. It’s crucial not to forget about the smallest detail, as it can turn to hell in the long run if you do.

Test the Prototypes Against Scenario Maps

Our scenarios will help test the mockups to ensure the logical order of every action.

This is the most time-consuming component of this stage and requires a lot of patience and attentiveness. In the case of large websites, there could be over 100 unique interface prototypes.

Results and Deliverables

The deliverables after this stage are low-fidelity prototypes/wireframes of all web page types.

Examples:

There are 90 some such prototypes for the example project above. As you can see, each prototype was broken down in detail. This way, no questions and uncertainty arose during the design of the functional prototypes and finished web designs.

Stage 10: Prototype Usability Testing

This is one of the best ways to quickly validate the effectiveness of the website architecture and make changes before things progress further.

Axure generates HTML from prototypes, which make them interactive and ready to test on users.

Usability testing at this stage will help you notice gaps and flaws in the architecture.

For testing purpose, we invite some representatives of target audience and observe how they manage to reach certain pages and results within the site.

Then, the users can be interviewed regarding the site in general.

After usability testing we make final corrections.

Results and Deliverables

As the result, we will have validated and improved the user-friendliness of our web page prototypes and we get a better picture of how users would be interacting with the site.

Stage 11: Project Specification

The final stage of the website architecture process is to create the project specification document. This should contain a detailed description of each stage of the website architecture process.

The project specification is the result of all the stages you’ve gone through. It typically will contain a detailed description of each prototype, user flows, and so forth.

The specs should be full and unequivocal. Be detailed and thorough, but also keep it as succinct and as concise as possible.

The project specification should contain all the information regarding software and web technologies required for the website.

Design requirements should be clear.

Once the project specification is approved, website development starts.

Related Content

• Planning your E-Commerce Website
• Agile Web Development That Works
• How to Bake Content Strategy into Your Web Design Process
• Related categories: Project Management and UX

About the Author

Nikita Semenov is the founder and CEO at SECL Group Ltd. Web development has been his life’s work since 2003. Contact him via the company website contact page or on Facebook.

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Web designers who want to make passive income are in a very good situation right now. Most businesses nowadays commit significant resources towards their websites. This means that the demand for web design skills is higher than ever. It also means that there are plenty of opportunities for web designers to create streams of passive income by leveraging their existing skills and experience.

Let me start by defining what passive income is. Passive income is money you generate from things that require little resources and time in maintenance. You may need to provide customer support or updates to your product, but most of the work will be done in the production stage of whatever you’re selling.

What are examples of things web designers can make to generate passive income? Below are some examples and inspiring success stories.

E-books

Now is a great time for writing and selling e-books. Last year, e-book sales went up by 46%, showing that the demand for books in digital form is increasing.

Similarly, sales of mobile tablets — the devices that make e-books much more convenient to read — is growing. In Canada, for example, 1 in 4 people have a tablet. And in the UK, the number of tablets in households is forecasted to nearly double this year, from 5.87 million to 10 million.

Now is a great time to make and sell e-books.

Web designer Sacha Greif (a guest writer here on Six Revisions) made $15,000+ in sales for an e-book about designing user interfaces from scratch. It only took him 3 weeks to write.

Web developer Jim Gray made over $15,000 in 6 months with his e-book Clean Ruby. He shares some stats and tips in a blog post.

App designer Nathan Barry (who has guest posted on Six Revisions before) made $6,000 in the first day of launching his e-book, The App Design Handbook. He reveals his strategy for achieving this amazing product launch in a blog post.

Online Courses

Many people around the world are eager to get into the web design industry. They are hungry for quality information that would help them master the craft.

Online video courses are an excellent medium to teach web design. Either publish them yourself or look at sites like Treehouse, Code School, Udemy, etc. to see if they can be the publisher of your online course.

Can you make a good amount of passive income through online courses?

Let’s take as an example designer/developer Chris Converse who currently has over 3,500 subscribers to his $150 online course on Udemy about creating a responsive web design.

By June 2012, the course generated $80,000 in sales during the time that it had less than half of the current subscribers.

Mobile Apps

iPhone and iPad sales are not likely to slow down anytime soon, which means that there is a constant demand for all kinds of apps, from entertainment to productivity to education.

Nathan Barry made close to $30,000 in a little over a year and a half from the first app that he launched, OneVoice.

One of Barry’s other apps, a personal productivity tool called Commit, has generated $6,000 in profit.

"Start working on your app today," says Barry in a post where he discusses his experiences generating income from his apps.

WordPress Themes

With WordPress being a leading content management platform, there’s a big demand for affordable and high quality WordPress themes that allow users to have a beautiful website without having to spend a fortune hiring web designers.

In one report, Web designer Kriesi, a top seller at the Envato marketplace, was able to produce over $1,000,000 in sales from his WordPress themes.

Serial entrepreneur John Saddington has built a successful business around a single WordPress theme called Standard. "It’s not too complex to create your own WordPress theme," says Saddington.

Conclusion

Web designers have a very real opportunity to make themselves more financially secure and independent by creating sources of passive income.

I hope that these success stories have inspired you to, at the very least, get started on your personal project and thinking about how you could possibly monetize it.

Share your thoughts and other inspiring stories in the comments!

Related Content

• Making Money Designing Themes: What You Should Know
• Is There Money in Open Source?
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• Related categories: Project Management and Web Design

About the Author

Agota Bialobzeskyte is a writer at FounderTips, the only online marketing blog for web designers and web developers.

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Over the last two years of working at Buffer, I’ve come to learn that there are a few preconceived notions, stereotypes, clichés, and commonsense knowledge about startups that simply aren’t true.

I’d like to share some myths that I’ve discovered while working at a tech startup.

Myth 1: "You Need to Have Deadlines"

It’s hard to find companies, new or old, that don’t have deadlines. It’s in the business culture to set deadlines. And deadlines, on the surface, seem even more important in a newly launched Internet startup as a gauge of rapid progression.

And, honestly, in the beginning, we got sucked into thinking that deadlines were important to our success.

Here’s what we’d do: We’d set a deadline, work like crazy as the date arrives, and then, once the task is finally finished, we could relax.

As most of you probably already know, that never works when you’re trying to do something innovative and new; when you don’t have a manual to refer to on how to perform your tasks. And having deadlines didn’t make us happy either.

So, instead, we decided to apply the idea of pace. We help everyone on the team perform their work at a fast pace. We never try to build up to a big launch anymore.

At Balsamiq, we don’t have deadlines. Ever."

- Giacomo "Peldi" Guilizzoni, founder and CEO of Balsamiq Studios

Myth 2: "You Need Everybody in the Same Room"

This is may be the most obvious — and surprisingly still prevalent — myths about working at a company.

I have to admit that I was very skeptical about working in a remote team. My thinking went like this: "Yes, you can probably have a good team working remotely, but what about a great one?"

The truth is that you can build better remote teams than ever before, and most likely an even better one than having everyone in one place because you remove the geographical factor when you hire team members.

The people on the Buffer team live in Australia, U.S. and Europe.

I believe that embracing remote teams is one of the most important elements going forward.

"The technology to successfully run and manage remote teams has never been better."

- David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and partner at 37signals

"WooThemes will always stay true to our remote roots."

- Adii Piernaar, co-founder of WooThemes

Myth 3: "You Don’t Need a Company Culture at the Start"

So, you’re a team of 4 or 6 or 10. The intuitive thinking in this situation is that company culture is a huge waste of time.

You’re small. You’re just starting out. What you need right now is users, marketing strategies, and beautiful code.

Who cares (or has time to think) about company culture?

Building a company culture from Day 1 was one of the most important elements in Buffer’s growth.

I remember that when I first got on board, Joel (the company’s founder) and I wrote a short document called "The personality of Buffer." This simple document helped us in staying aligned with our vision whenever new ideas or challenges came in.

Culture, I believe, should be solidly in place before any feature update, marketing campaign, significant code-writing, and so forth. It doesn’t have to be elaborate; it could be a short document like ours that guides you in the proper direction.

"If I could do it all over again, I would roll out our core values from Day 1."

- Tony Hsieh, chief executive of Zappos.com

Myth 4: "You Have to Work A Lot, Never Sleep and Feel Miserable"

One of the most common beliefs about the tech startup life is that it’s a miserable one.

You are spending day and night in the office, fueled by energy drinks and pizza, without anything else in your life going on.

We’ve found that discouraging crazy work hours and instead building up an incredibly solid daily routine is much more powerful.

What we do is in fact quite counterintuitive to the prevalent notion that work hours at a startup has to be long — we even ask people to go home even if they’re in a good flow!

You can’t sacrifice today for tomorrow.

"Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present."

- Jim Rohn, American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker

Myth 5: "You Can’t Make Money Until You Become Big"

Making money in the early stages of a startup is often equated to "You’re doing it wrong."

The thinking goes: If you’re focusing on monetization at the start, then you’re not putting all of your attention on growth, which is the most important thing for a startup.

On the contrary, there’s nothing better for a startup than making money early. And it’s not just for the obvious reasons.

"Charging for something is the best way to truly validate your idea," is a line from Joel, Buffer’s founder.

"Making money > Raising money."

- Hiten Shah, co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics

Myth 6: "You Need to Hurry!"

This misconception about startup companies is similar to the one about needing deadlines.

The idea is often this: You’re a small startup, you need to outrun the competition and everything needs to happen quickly and in a hurry.

That’s a recipe for burning out and for making huge mistakes.

At our company, we try many things to create a balance between being fast-paced and not rushing our work.

One of the best ways to accomplish this, I’ve found, is with deliberate reflection. Recently we introduced "Daily Pair Calls" where two members of the team have a daily call to reflect and discuss their previous days. It’s a great way to slow down in order to speed up.

"Breaking things in right requires a certain amount of patience. You don’t want to push a new engine too hard. You certainly can’t sit still. And the last thing you need is to stall on the interstate."

- Todd Razor, founder of Three Razor

Myth 7: "You Need to Focus on Hiring the Best People"

Here is another myth that definitely needs some explanation first.

We see that new CEO, VP or SVP being hired away from Google to Amazon, from Twitter to Facebook, and so on. And slowly a myth develops.

You can call it the "rockstar" myth.

The "rockstar" myth is the idea that the best engineers, marketers, designers, etc. are 10x better than us regular folks, and that these are the only people you need to be working with in a startup in order to ensure success.

But, at a startup, is it practical to focus your time and resources searching for that perfect "10x" programmer?

Wouldn’t you be missing out on working with many amazing people if you limited your options to that elusive "10x" designer that probably already works for someone else paying them much more than you can afford?

Instead, at our company, we evaluate candidates based on:

1. Do they fit our company’s culture?
2. Do we have a real need for the person’s talent and skills right now?

However, if we find someone who is an exceptional fit to our company’s culture, we will still hire the person, even if the position isn’t immediately obvious.

"Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins."

- From the movie, Moneyball

Myth 8: "Be Miserable Now, So You Can Enjoy Your Life Later"

Another key misconception about working in a startup is that it involves sacrificing a few years of your life so you’re able to sell your company for a good profit and then live happily ever after.

You don’t need to sacrifice your health and happiness when you work at a startup.

A lot of our values and work at Buffer evolve around happiness. Everyone on the team has a daily call with another team member to discuss his or her daily improvement towards increased happiness, which I believe is important in maintaining a high level of productivity in our company.

"Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from."

- Seth Godin, American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

Myth 9: "You Launch Lean, And Then You Can Build Things the Old Way"

So, you’ve read and understood Lean Startup. You decide you’re launching lean with your MVP until you find product market fit, doing all the customer development you can. And then you stop and revert to the "traditional" way of running a company when you’ve gotten a bit of a foothold in the industry.

That’s what we did near the beginning of our startup journey.

Instead, I think being lean should be a continual process, even well after you outgrow the title of "startup" and become a mega-huge company.

The most impressive case study of this is Eric Ries’s (the pioneer of Lean Startup) own company, IMVU. The company’s clear focus on lean throughout all processes is something we try to see as an amazing example to follow at our startup.

Myth 10: "You Can’t Share Numbers or Sensitive Details"

Another myth that we strongly aim to work against is that, as a startup, you have to keep your numbers under the hood.

After all, you’re a small company and if you share your innermost secrets, the competition will crush you!

We found the opposite to be true. We openly shared how we met each of our investors, how much revenue we are generating and have plans of turning into a full-fledged Open company over the next few months.

I believe that being transparent and sharing our progress has helped us gain goodwill with our users and also within the industry.

Your Turn

I’m sure that you could come up with lots more myths and misconceptions about startups.

Share your thoughts and experiences on the subject.

Related Content

• Common Misconceptions about Web Designers
• Letting Bad Design Decisions Happen
• Tips for Building Trust with Your Clients
• Related categories: Project Management and Resources

About the Author

Leo Widrich is co-founder of Buffer, a better way to post to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. He also blogs about insights on lifehacks, business and productivity on the Buffer blog. You can say “hello” to him on Twitter @leowid (he is a super nice guy).

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For any freelancer, how much to charge clients is one of the hardest things to get right. If you set the price for your services too low, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table and get stuck working with clients that don’t see the true value of your work.

When it comes to pricing, most of us are either guessing or copying what others are doing.

Luckily, we can rely on some research studies to help us price our services better by applying the psychological principles derived from the studies that we’ll discuss below.

Here are seven pricing tips based on research studies.

1. Emphasize on Time Savings

When it comes to purchasing products or services, the lowest price always wins, right?

Not necessarily.

A recent study shows that most people value the time or experience over the actual price of an item. According to Jennifer Aaker, the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business:

"Because a person’s experience with a product tends to foster feelings of personal connection with it, referring to time typically leads to more favorable attitudes—and to more purchases."

Aaker and her research partner, Cassie Mogilner, set up two different studies that gauged participants’ reactions (and spending) when they were presented with options of time versus money.

Participants had more favorable reactions when asked questions about time or experience.

For one of the studies, Aaker and Mogilner set up a lemonade stand (which they called C&D’s) and had their 6-year-old sons sell lemonade in the park.

They used three signs to see if there were any effects on sales:

• Spend a little time and enjoy C&D’s lemonade
• Spend a little money and enjoy C&D’s lemonade
• Enjoy C&D’s lemonade (a neutral sign)

Customers were told that they could pay between $1 and $3 per cup.

Now, not only did the sign stressing time attract more customers to the booth, they were also willing to pay almost twice as much as the customers who wandered over when the money-centric sign was up.

What does this mean for freelancers? When you’re discussing projects with your clients, it’s better to focus on the time aspect of working with you.

Perhaps you want to stress that you won’t miss deadlines (especially if you find out that they’ve had this problem in the past), or that they can save a lot of time working with you.

When it comes to presenting your services, it’s better to emphasize on timesavings and the experience of the service, rather than its price.

Sources and Further Reading

• Time vs. Money: Analyzing Which One Rules Consumer Choices
• Does Consumer Happiness = Time or Money Spent?

2. Reset the Price Anchors Set by Your Competition

You may have found yourself in a situation where a client comes to you with a price quote they’ve gotten from another freelancer, hoping that your services will have a lower price.

You know that the quote from the other freelancer is too low. And even though you’re trying to express that to them with valid reasons, they won’t budge from the price they already have. This is because they can’t get this original price anchor out of their head.

Based on a classroom study by Drazen Prelec, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, when people have lower price anchors, they tend to want to pay less.

The professor asked his students to write down the last two digits of their social security numbers. Then he showed them a series of items.

He passed out paper and had the students write their two digits at the top of the page and next to the individually listed items.

After that, the professor asked the students to write down how much they would be willing to pay.

After collecting and analyzing the data, it turned out that the students with the highest-ending social security digits bid more, while the ones with lowest-ending numbers bid less. For example, the top 20% bid an average of $56 for a wireless keyboard while the bottom 20% bid $16.

This is how easy it is to set a price anchor that will influence future buying decisions.

So how to do you combat low price anchors set by your competition? You could make your service impossible to compare to others by changing the way you present your solution.

For example, instead of offering a generic "website redesign" service, customize the service to the the customer’s needs (e.g., "a website redesign to increase online leads.") That one small change will make sure that your solution is incomparable and will make it harder for customers to reference the low price anchor.

Sources and Further Reading

• The Fallacy of Supply and Demand
• Choice in Context: Tradeoff Contrast and Extremeness Aversion

3. Minimize the Pain Associated with Spending

Sometimes the way people choose to spend money is bizarre. But psychologically speaking, when we spend money, we are feeling a loss.

For example, say you were presented with the option of either getting a guaranteed $80 or an 85% chance of getting $100.

Most people are going to choose the $80 because they don’t want to risk the loss of $80.

On the other hand, if you had to take a guaranteed $80 loss or had an 85% chance of losing $100, most people would pick the second choice. It’s riskier, but they would rather take the gamble because there’s a small chance they won’t lose anything.

Why? Because when we lose money, we are experiencing real pain.

In a joint study from Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and MIT, it was shown via fMRI scans (which measures brain activity) that thinking about losing money by making a purchase registered as real pain in the brain.

Image source: Carnegie Mellon University

If you present the pricing on your services invoice-style with every single service as a line item, you’re making your clients analyze every single service. This causes them pain with each and every "loss."

Instead, bundle your fees into one inclusive solution with one simple price tag. Your clients will get to see the entire picture of your services, and they will only have to deal with the pain of paying once.

Sources and Further Reading

• Researching the Pain of Paying
• The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice

4. Use Weber’s Law When Raising Prices

When it’s time to raise your prices for existing clients, you should stay away from one large price increase and instead raise your prices in small increments over a period of time.

That’s because of something called Weber’s Law.

According to Weber’s Law, consumers don’t register a price increase until it’s highly significant.

When it comes to raising the price on products and services without raising a red flag with your clients, the magic percentage is under 10%.

This is why companies like Starbucks only raise the price of their drinks a few cents at a time.

Obviously, if you quote an hourly rate you’ll want to let regular clients know your rate is going up. Do this by sending them an email letting them know that, to keep up with demand while still delivering high quality work, you’ll be raising prices by a specific date.

You’ll be surprised how well these types of increases go as long as you’re following Weber’s Law by making several small increases instead of one single, large increase over the same period of time.

Sources and Further Reading

• Definition of Weber’s Law
• Weber’s Law and Why Big Business Believes You Won’t Notice a Price Increase Under 10%

5. Create the Right Context for Charging More

We all have our preferences, but at the end of the day, Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks both sell coffee.

So why is it that Starbucks gets away with charging more for their drinks? They give their brand a different context — a context of luxury.

This is seen in a study by Richard Thaler.

The scenario: You and your buddies are hanging out on a hot beach and decide that you really want a cold beer to cool off. So your friend can either go to the run-down grocery store or the nearby resort hotel.

Thaler found that people are willing to pay more for the beer from the hotel. In fact, they think that it’s unfair to be charged the same price at the grocery store as they would pay at the hotel.

Think about that for a second. The beer is the same no matter where you buy it, but the fact that it’s coming from a resort hotel gives it more value.

For freelancers, this means that the details matter. Create an experience for your clients that tells them you provide a higher value service than your competitors.

Be the Starbucks, not the Dunkin’ Donuts.

Invest time and resources in building beautiful looking contact forms, a website, cost estimate forms, and proposals that will help you set the context for what you’ll be able to charge.

Sources and Further Reading

• Exuberance Is Rational

6. Show Gains and Losses the Right Way

Need to incentivize a client with a discount? Then make sure you’re discounting the right way.

Customers place a lot of weight on percentages of their discounts.

For example, let’s say that you’re about to buy a t-shirt for $20. But the salesperson informs you that the exact same shirt is on sale for $15 at another branch located 20 minutes away. Would you make the trip to the other store?

Compare that to if you were going to buy a pair of designer shoes for $200. When you get to the checkout counter, you’re told that 20 minutes away there’s a store selling those shoes for $195. Would you make the trip then?

According to another study by Thaler, when presented with those scenarios, most people would choose to travel to save $5 on the shirt but not on the $200 shoes.

So even though they’ll be saving the exact same amount of money, people are more likely to act when the percentage is larger (25% versus only 2.5% in the example scenarios above).

For freelancers, this means you should give discounts in large percentages by discounting the things that cost a small amount.

Let’s say that you’re working on a project with landing pages and social media marketing services that costs a total of $10,000.

Instead of offering 5% off the entire cost, offer them 75% off the bundled social media marketing service. Both of these discounts save the client $500, but they’ll be more likely to take action by seeing the huge percentage of savings.

Sources and Further Reading

• Mental Accounting Matters

7. Small Words Matter

Can one tiny word make the difference between winning and losing your client?

According to a study from Carnegie Mellon University, absolutely yes!

Professors Scott Rick and George Loewenstein decided to test the copy used when describing the fee associated with joining a usually free DVD trial offer.

They tested these two phrases:

• a $5 fee
• a small $5 fee

By adding the word "small" to the copy, they saw response rates improve by 20%!

Yes, a 20% improvement because they added the word "small."

When crafting your own proposals and estimates, pay close attention to phrasing. Consider using words like "small", "minor", "low", etc. They do — as shown in the study by Rick and Loewenstein above — make a difference.

Sources and Further Reading

• Intangibility in intertemporal choice

Summary

Okay, now that I’ve thrown a lot of studies at you, let’s do a quick recap:

1. Craft your proposals so they emphasize the time your clients will save or the experience they will get from your service
2. Make your solutions incomparable to your competition by showing how you’ll solve your clients’ problems
3. Bundle your services into one all-inclusive price to cut down on the perceived "pain" your clients feel when spending money
4. Opt for more frequent price increases instead of one large price increase
5. Ensure that your website, proposals, and contact forms are designed well so that your clients feel like they’re buying from a high-end company
6. Give larger percent discounts by discounting smaller amounts
7. Include words like "small" or "low" in your copy to enhance response rates

Related Content

• 5 Pricing Tips to Earn More on Client Projects
• 5 Tips to Consider Before Giving Out Discounts
• Designing Pricing Plans for Subscription-Based Web Apps
• Related categories: Project Management and Resources

About the Author

Ruben Gamez (@bidsketch) is the founder of Bidsketch, a web app that helps freelancers create professional looking proposals in minutes. He’s also the author of a free guide that teaches freelancers how to get more clients with a perfect proposal.

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Why is it that some agencies and freelancers can charge premium prices while delivering low-quality work?

We’ve all seen this time and time again.

It’s not hard to find stories of people paying tens of thousands of dollars for mediocre design or development. In fact, maybe you’ve inherited some of this work in the past and have had to repair it.

Sometimes clients aren’t satisfied with the results, but often — and this is the crazy part — they’re happy with the results, even if they could’ve received better work at a much lower price from you.

The truth is that price rarely has anything to do with the quality of work.

No, clients often pay a higher price for other reasons. Mostly it’s about what you offer, and how you’re offering it, that makes a difference.

Here are some great ways to give clients what they want so you can start charging what you’re really worth.

1. Charge Clients According to Value

If two clients ask for the same service, do you charge them the same amount?

On the surface, it seems like it’s only fair to charge based on the work you’re doing. But when you dig deeper, it becomes clear that you should never do this.

Let’s make this concrete with an example:

What’s the value of a simple 5-page website that brings in $20,000 a month in business?

It’s not the number of pages the website has, or the amount of time it took to design. The person who owns the website doesn’t care about pages or design time. So why base the price on things they don’t care about?

Instead, you should base the price on what the site is worth to the owner.

Each client who comes to you will get a different amount of value from your work. The price should be directly related to the amount of value you deliver.

Some good questions to ask (if someone wants a website):

• How will this website help your business?
• How will you know this website is successful for your business?
• What specific numbers will be affected (revenue, leads, etc.)?
• How much money is lost by not having a website (or keeping the old one)?

You want to uncover the business needs behind the project and how much real value it’ll contribute. This way, you can make sure that you’re billing what you’re worth and can deliver enough value to end up with a happy client.

2. Bundle Your Pricing

Now I’d like to talk about a style of providing a cost estimate to clients that I call the bundled pricing technique.

But first, let’s discuss two common ways freelancers provide project cost, and also the associated issues with them.

Emailing a Project Cost Estimate

Emailing the price estimate of the project is a popular way of telling the client how much the work will cost them:

Unfortunately, there are lots of problems with this approach if you want to bill at higher rates.

Some of the more obvious problems:

• The lack of professionalism and thoroughness sends the wrong signal
• If the email is short with little explanation, the client might think the price you sent them is arbitrary
• Emailed estimates are often automatically disqualified by larger companies
• There is absolutely no focus on the results/deliverables (it’s 100% about the price)

Invoice with an Itemization of Cost

Now let’s talk about the invoice-style estimate (another prevalent way of giving estimates):

There are also several problems with showing your fees this way.

To start with, you’re not telling your clients what value your services will provide for them. It’s hard to think about anything other than hours and price when looking at the above list.

You’re inviting the client to pick apart your estimate and go comparison-shopping to find a cheaper price.

There’s another problem: From a psychological standpoint, many studies have shown that people are more motivated to avoid losses than gains.

Loss aversion proposes that you’re likely to feel more pain by losing $100 than pleasure by gaining the same $100.

Going back to our invoice-style estimate, there’s a perceived loss in each line item when you show a price right next to it. That’s because:

Pain = Loss = Price

A Better Way: Bundled Pricing Technique

Alright, now that we’ve identified the things that we want to avoid, let’s look at what I think is a better way of presenting your fees:

The bundled pricing technique is one of the most effective ways of communicating value when presenting your fees.

Below is an infographic about this technique by the startup I founded, Bidsketch (a web app for creating project proposals). Click on the infographic to see a bigger version of it on our site.

Remember, the price is always going to be seen as a loss in your client’s mind. You can avoid focusing on the loss by bundling your fees into a single service with one price.

The key is to associate the price directly to the results your client wants (a single time).

The other critical part is to detail each service in the description area. Those services are what your client gains, so you want to show them off individually by unbundling the details.

3. Always Give Options

There’s a simple tactic you can use to increase your chances of getting a project and earn more revenue at the same time: Always give options.

If you present your client with a single option, you’re turning your service into a "yes/no" decision.

But when you give them three options instead of one, this changes the decision so they’re choosing the level of service instead.

They go from this:

"Should I hire this company for this price?"

To this:

"Which one of these will give me what I want for the right price?"

To make this work correctly, you need to make sure to follow some basic guidelines.

Take a look at what a good set of options looks like:

What kinds of results can you get from this? From our study of over 27,000 proposals and estimates, we found that one or two options result in 32% more revenue.
That tends to happen because most people pick the middle option when presented with three options.

Some important guidelines:

• Pick options that enhance your base service: Think of your options as basic, enhanced, and premium options. Make sure they improve the service you deliver in some way.
• The price difference in options should be significant: You don’t want a small 10% price increase in each option. If your clients give you a budget, make one option significantly more than their budget.
• Options should contain a name, price and description: Make sure descriptions clearly communicate what the client will get by choosing that service. Focus on the business results instead of giving technical descriptions.

4. Never Decrease a Fee

A client will often say that the estimate is out of their budget. There are potentially two reasons for this:

• They may not feel the service they’re getting is worth the price (see the first tip about pricing according to value).
• They really can’t afford your services.

If they can’t afford what you’re offering, they may not be the right type of client for you.

On the other hand, if this project offers other benefits (maybe for your portfolio or introductions to other potential clients) and you’d like to work with them, you’ll likely be able to work something out as long as they have a reasonable budget.

Ask the client which service he wants to remove to lower the price. Never decrease the fee by itself just to work with a client; cut the amount of value they’ll receive instead.

You might be tempted to give a discount in this situation, but you’ll be undervaluing your work if you do so.

But that isn’t to say that you should never give a discount. You just have to…

5. Give Discounts the Right Way

There are times when a discount makes sense; you just want to be careful how you go about doing it.

There are two things to consider when giving a discount:

1. Context
2. Presentation

Context

Context is all about sending the right signal regarding what you’re worth and what behavior you want to encourage.

If you give a discount because someone is a new client, you’re starting the relationship on the wrong foot. You’ll have made a statement about what your time is worth and you’ve set a lower price anchoring that may be hard to change in the next project.

A better way is to give a discount if they pay everything upfront. This way you’re encouraging early payment and removing the risk of not getting paid later on.

Presentation

How you present the discount is the next thing you need to think about.

Take a look at these examples below:

Example 1:

Increasing Leads With a Landing Page – $10,000

- Includes 5% off Project for Early Payment

Example 2:

Increasing Leads With a Landing Page – $10,000

- Includes 75% off Social Media Marketing for Early Payment

Even if the discount is $500 in both cases, the second example will feel like a much better deal because it’s a larger percentage.

You can get this effect by discounting 75% off something of lower value — in the above example, let’s say that social media marketing costs $2,000 — instead of discounting 5% off the entire project.

So the rule is to discount something of lower value but make sure it’s for the right reason.

Putting it all Together

While any one of these pricing tips will work well alone, you’ll start earning what you’re really worth when you combine them together.

Remember what they are:

1. Charge clients according the value they’ll receive.
2. Bundle your fees into a single solution with a price.
3. Give two or three options to avoid having a "yes/no" decision.
4. Don’t decrease your fees without cutting down on the scope of the project.
5. Give discounts for the right reasons and focus on the percentage.

Have you tried any of these pricing tips with your clients before? Are there any others that you’ve also found to work well? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Related Content

• 7 Things Web Designers Hate Hearing from Clients
• Tips for Building Trust with Your Clients
• Your Client Knows More Than You
• Related categories: Project Management and Tools

About the Author

Ruben Gamez (@bidsketch) is the founder of Bidsketch, a web app that helps freelancers create professional looking proposals in minutes. He’s also the author of a free guide that teaches freelancers how to get more clients with a perfect proposal.

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In freelance work, having legal contracts between you and the clients you work with is important. Contracts legally protect you and your business in various ways and helps in making sure that you’re properly compensated for the work that you do.

What follows are a few tips you should keep in mind when you’re drafting your contracts for your design services.

Though we’ve focused on the needs of designers, these tips are also applicable to a wide range of professions (especially creative services professions).

1. Always Have a Written Contract

Don’t just agree to performing freelance work by shaking hands with the client or replying "OK!" to an email. You should always have a written contract that summarizes the work to be done, the business terms and other legal details that might be boring to read, but can actually save you a lot of trouble down the road.

Sample contracts aren’t hard to find, but of course, an attorney is a good first option to take. If you’re lacking the funds for hiring a good lawyer, see if you have legal pro bono associations (like Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts) around your area that you can look into.

Also, there are some websites that sell legal document templates such as LegalZoom and U.S. Legal Forms.

You can find legal documents and get answers to legal questions on sites like LegalZoom.

There are also some free internet sources that provide contract templates and guidelines for designers, such as Docracy (full disclosure: I work at Docracy) and the AIGA.

Docracy provides socially-curated, free legal-agreement resources.

You can even take your chances by searching for design contract templates on Google.

2. Don’t Assign Rights to Your Work Before You’re Paid

This is one of the most common mistakes that people who provide creative services make: Giving up the rights to their work before they’ve been compensated.

How do you make sure that your design contract prevents this situation? Look for wording like this: "upon completion of the services and conditioned upon full payment…"

Here’s an example from the Website + Identity Design Contract template:

Upon completion of the Services and full payment of all invoices, the Designer shall assign IP rights to the Client. These IP rights include all ownership rights, including any copyrights, in any artwork, designs and software created by the Designer and incorporated into a Final Deliverable, except as otherwise noted in this Agreement.

3. Have a Kill Fee

You should have a fee for projects that are unexpectedly terminated or projects where your client changes their mind and no longer wishes to continue.

Temper your kill fee with clear milestones, making sure to have written proof of acceptance for each deliverable.

In a contract, the kill fee is usually covered in the "Cancellation" clause. Here’s an excerpt from the Designer sample contract template that outlines a kill fee:

In the event of cancellation of this assignment, ownership of all copyrights and the original artwork shall be retained by the Designer, and a cancellation fee for work completed, and expenses already incurred, shall be paid by the Client. Cancellation fee is based on the hours submitted, if the project is on an hourly basis or a percentage based on the time estimate for the entire job. A 100% cancellation fee is due once the project has been finished, whether delivered to the client or not. If the project is on an hourly basis and project is canceled by the client, the client agrees to pay no less than 100% of the hours already billed for the project at the time of cancellation plus a flat fee of $250 or 50% of the remaining hours that were expected to be completed on the project, whichever is greater.

4. Have a Good, Solid Statement of Work

If you’re starting from any decent contract template, it’s a bad idea to start modifying the legal clauses without the help of an attorney because altering the text might affect the goals, effectiveness and validity of the contract.

However, one of the parts that you have flexibility over is the statement of work. You need to modify this part so that it’s relevant to the project you’re about to embark on.

The statement of work helps avoid project scope creep by outlining what your deliverables are and what you’re required to do. A good statement of work should give you the basis to charge additional fees for work beyond what you’ve initially agreed to do.

If you’re afraid that your clients will keep trying to expand the scope of the project, be as specific as possible, so you then have grounds to charge extra for additional work. At other times (particularly in longer and more unpredictable projects), being vague may be preferable.

5. Make Your Contract Look Professional and Beautiful

Who said legal documents need to look boring? As long as your contract has all the essential parts, you’re free to improve it and turn into an actual object of design.

After all, it’s something coming from your desk and therefore contributes to your brand as much as a business card does. Additionally, a professional and beautiful contract can give the client more confidence about working with you.

Two pages from the AIGA standard form of agreement PDF.

Here are a few tips for improving the layout and typography of legal text (mostly focused on making text easier to read):

• Don’t use underlined text (it makes text harder to read)
• Avoid using too much italics and all-caps
• Colors are not a great idea (except on the personalized letterhead of your contracts)
• Prefer serif fonts for the body (but feel free to choose a modern sans serif for headings)
• Use ample white space in margins
• Have ample line spacing (ideally, 120–145% of the font size according to Typography for Lawyers)
• Page numbers are essential in longer contracts, and usually placed in the footer. Don’t forget them!

Legal stuff is not the most entertaining to read, so it needs all the help it can get!

6. Talk to a Lawyer

While sometimes it’s not financially viable to go to a lawyer, there are certain situations that would greatly benefit from consulting a lawyer.

For example, if the client starts making a lot of changes or starts saying stuff like "it’s standard" or "we do this all the time". Few things are non-negotiable in service contracts, and this is usually an excuse to throw in a provision that, invariably, will not benefit your side.

Designer contracts are pretty standardized, thanks to the work of AIGA. Don’t be afraid of pointing the client to this model contract to show what the standards of your industry are.

If the contract you’re signing is from the client and something doesn’t sound quite right, have your lawyer take a look at the contract before you sign. Read everything closely before signing, and compare the terms with designer-friendly contracts available on the Web (such as those mentioned above).

Conclusion

Keep in mind that this article is meant to share some tips on drafting contracts, but it’s not legal advice. All the legal documents cited should be used only as a starting point.

Don’t forget that legal stuff is important, and a good lawyer can help you review these examples and tailor them to your particular project and local laws.

Related Content

• Avoiding Unscoped Work from Unreasonable Clients
• How to Fire Bad Clients
• A Beginner’s Guide to the Business Side of Freelancing
• Related categories: Project Management and Resources

About the Author

Veronica Picciafuoco is the Director of Content for Docracy which provides free, open source legal documents that are socially curated by the communities that use them. She has a legal background and works closely with tech startups and freelance designers in Brooklyn, NY. You can find her on Twitter, Linkedin and Tumblr.

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Trust is an important component of any relationship. When it comes to freelance work, trust can encourage a client to want to work with you again.

My software firm has billed over 30,000 hours in the last 12 years. In that time span, I’ve had to learn how to earn and maintain the trust of our clients in order to keep them coming back.

I’m certainly not a business expert. I’ve made some horrific mistakes and have had my fair share of struggles. I write this article in the hopes of sharing some of my experiences with you.

Why Returning Clients Are Good

Maintaining your existing clients is great for many reasons.

Having already worked together, you now know more about each other, which helps in any sort of cooperative situation. You have a better understanding of what they’re looking for when it comes to project deliverables, you know what times they’ll likely be available or when they might be out of the office, and so on.

And, if you’ve decided to continue working with a client, chances are good that it’s because you enjoy working with them.

In addition, working with the same client enables you to bypass many one-time tasks (such as initial training and education on your project management system and development processes), thus saving you time and resources.

A long-term client relationship often starts with trust. A client will most likely want to continue working with you if they believe in your capability to deliver the product they need.

Tips for Building Trust with Your Clients

Now that we’ve discussed some of the benefits of keeping your existing clients, what follows are some of my tips for building trust with them. These tips have worked for me in the past, and I hope they work for you too.

Let Your Clients See Your Kitchen

When was the last time you’ve seen a restaurant’s kitchen? We can all guess why it’s not common practice to let restaurant patrons see the backend of a restaurant. What if there’s food on the floor, or a cook forgot to wear a hat or hairnet?

But imagine walking into a kitchen and seeing that it was spotless. You would most likely trust the quality of their food, right?

Being maximally transparent also keeps you on your toes, operating at the highest-quality capacity possible at all times, knowing that your customers can walk in at any time.

If you have an office, invite them over during work hours.

Screen-share with your clients. Show off your development tools and new hardware (if they’re interested).

You can use a project management system like Basecamp that lets clients view the tasks and milestones related to their projects.

Be as transparent as you possibly can with your operations. It builds trust with clients by showing them that you’re upfront about the work you do and that you take pride in your behind-the-scenes production process.

Show That You Care About Their Expenses

Establish a relationship where your clients see that you’re being a custodian of their expenses. Show them that you care about spending too much of their money.

Even if you stand to lose a bit of billable hours yourself, be vocal about something you think isn’t worth the development costs. If they request a feature that you know won’t move them forward with their goal, or might even be detrimental to it, tell them why and also recommend better options (even if the option is to scrap the feature).

Sacrificing billable hours for the benefit of your client’s project will go a long way to building trust. This will not only lead to a better product that you can proudly display in your company’s portfolio, but also says a lot about how much you care about the client’s success, which is a compelling reason to continue working with you.

Learn About Their Business

You want your clients to view your work relationship like a partnership. By knowing as much as possible about their business, you stand a better chance of creating a better product for them.

The more you know about their business, the more they’ll feel that you’re a part of it, and the more likely they’ll be encouraged to continue working with you.

You can ask them to walk you through a typical day in their office.

Ask them if there are any particular pain points that they think you can solve.

If possible, try out their company’s products or services to see how they work and to experience how it is being their customer.

Being knowledgeable about your client’s business will give them confidence in the products you build for them.

Substitute "We" for "I"

Another way to make your client feel that you’re part of their business is by using "We" instead of "I". It’s a simple substitution of a pronoun that displays your vested interest in their project.

• "Well, we could try that and see what happens."
• "If I recall, we wanted that call-to-action on the top right of the layout."
• "How many unique visitors did we get on the first week?"

Be Honest At All Times

If you play games, you’ll get caught.

For example: Don’t pad hours when you feel you’re working extra efficiently, and take away hours when you feel you aren’t at the top of your game. Be accurate when tracking your billable hours. You can use software like Billings, FreshBooks or EnterYourHours (Full disclosure: I’m a founder of EnterYourHours) to track your time (as well as invoice your clients) as accurately as possible.

A client will see genuine honesty. They’ll also see if there’s something fishy going on.

What Are Your Tips for Building Trust?

If you have tips on building trust with your clients, please share them in the comments.

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About the Author

Aaron Korff is the president and founder of Vazkor Technologies, a custom software development firm. He’s also the co-owner and founder of EnterYourHours.com, a commercial time and billing software system. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

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Based on my experience, when you’re developing apps for multiple mobile device platforms, there is a huge advantage to having your HTML5 mobile web developer lead the production effort as opposed to your native app developer (e.g., iOS, Android, etc.)

In this article, I’ll share my thoughts and opinions on why building mobile web apps first is a good strategy.

A Bicycle Racing Analogy

In team-based bicycle racing, riders from the same team often form a group called a peloton to protect the team leader from wind resistance.

Image credit: "New Zealand Team Pursuit" by Velo Steve

A well-formed peloton uses domestiques (supporting team members) to protect its leader from wind drag, thereby saving him energy and giving him a better chance of winning the race.

Product managers tasked with delivering both mobile web and native apps will be able to work most optimally by arranging their teams into pelotons that can move products forward more quickly and efficiently. (Read about the differences between mobile web and native apps.)

Positioning your HTML5 mobile web developer as the primary domestique (flanked by UX design and UI design) is the best way to cut through the "wind resistance" of developing for multiple mobile platforms.

Cycling in the Wind

Most startups engaged in the Mobile space are focused on developing apps that run natively on iOS, Android or both.

Expressing your idea as a native application gets you reliable access to push notifications, the user’s address book, precise geo-location, the device’s camera, etc.

For all of the success that can come from releasing a native app, they can be challenging to build.

For one, talented native iOS and Android developers are in relatively short supply right now. If you’re in a position where you must contract a native app developer, you’re probably spending a premium for each hour of development.

Native app development can also be particularly slow if you’re iterating on a product concept. Seemingly small customizations of a UI control can turn into an extended effort. Requesting new navigation paths or revisions to previous design decisions may have serious time implications and incite frustration within the team.

I’ve seen wind resistance in mobile app development from a variety of sources, both in our startup (Gliph) and in projects for Fortune 500 companies.

• Product managers iterate quickly and may shift between ideas for the user experience.
• User feedback on a production release may cause tasks to suddenly be reprioritized.
• Each change of plan may drive new backend requirements and redevelopment.

When your native app developers are leading your peloton, you risk tiring them out by exposing them directly to all of that wind drag.

If you want the native app experiences to be the centerpiece of your product, you need to conserve those riders’ energy.

Leverage Your Domestiques

The product manager, mobile web app developer, UX designer and UI designer work together as perfect domestiques for cutting through the wind resistance of multi-platform mobile app development.

Working together, these folks can rapidly prototype and refine features. They can play a crucial role in uncovering issues that would affect native app development.

For example, suppose you want to implement an app feature. This feature generally starts as a wireframe or a high-fidelity prototype. Typically, these flat images would be handed over to a native app developer. She would be expected to work directly with the UI designer and server-side web programmer to get the assets and services she needs. This may lead to loss of valuable native app development time.

A completed mobile web app serves as a practically complete, very concise specification for native mobile app developers. It acts as a living example of exactly how a feature set is supposed to work, and ensures services are hooked up and ready to go.

Bumps in the Road

Bicycle races vary by course, and so do mobile apps. HTML5 has come a long way in bringing smartphone functionality to mobile browsers. However, in some cases, it won’t be possible to fully prototype and realize your product in mobile web. For example, you may need to simulate the camera on desktop web by allowing Shockwave-assisted image uploads.

It may be hard to deliver a mobile web app that is similar to a native app experience. For example, native app SDKs usually include things that speed up development time, which you may have to build from scratch if you were to do the same thing in mobile web (though HTML5 mobile web app frameworks like Sencha Touch does even out the playing field quite a bit). As a result, there may be certain features your mobile web app developer is unable to build significantly faster or cheaper than your native app developers.

Communication between your team members is critical when moving from a feature created in mobile web, into a native app implementation.

Project managers must not only track the progress of the leading mobile web app effort, but also ensure the native app team is keeping pace.

Championing Mobile Web

For all of the hype around native app development, a robust mobile web app implementation has never been more important than it is today.

At our startup, we’ve found mobile web development not only protects native app development from headwind, but also gets out in front of the pack to explore the racecourse ahead.

Native app development for iOS and Android is currently the most expensive and difficult-to-recruit resource in the Mobile space, based on my experience.

That isn’t to say a great mobile web app developer is easy to find either. The critical role they can play in successful rapid mobile app development should not be overlooked.

Protecting native app developers from wind resistance can allow you to advance the most important parts of your mobile product faster and more efficiently. When directing the creation of a multi-platform mobile app project, cut through the drag by keeping track of your product leaders and forming a peloton to protect them.

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About the Author

Rob Banagale is Co-Founder and CEO of Portland, Oregon-based privacy startup, Gliph. He’s also a mobile strategist who specializes in mobile product development. If you’d like to connect with him, follow him on Twitter: @jetsetter.

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Content management systems are a wonderful tool for empowering website owners. Most of us have witnessed the power and ease of use of CMSs like Drupal and WordPress. They have changed the web development industry in a significant way.

Now, even average Internet users who have very little technical knowledge can have the ability to run and manage websites without any help from trained web developers.

Because of this CMS revolution, a major segment of the web development industry — dedicated to developing simple to complex CMSs for a broad set of users and premium themes for popular publishing platforms — has blossomed.

There are quite a few benefits to developing a site powered by a CMS. Chief among them is that the website owner is able to add and manage their website’s content, thus keeping visitors interested and search engines tuned in. And for the web professional, he has much less responsibility in maintaining the website.

But is empowering the business owner with a CMS always the way to go? Sometimes leaving tasks such as website maintenance and system upgrades to a professional leads to better results for the owner.

To explore the question of whether or not we should always deploy content management systems for our clients, let us first go through some types of clients who would not fully benefit from them.

Owners of Static Websites

Not all websites have content that constantly changes. Websites for small- to medium-sized businesses and brochure websites that provide relatively static information usually require only a few changes throughout the year, such as when featuring a new product or making an event announcement.

The brochure website of Pic Fresh (a catering company) has information that changes infrequently.

These websites just include an overview of the business, a presentation of its products and the company’s contact information. We see this with restaurants, small shops and local organizations (such as a non-profit animal shelter’s website).

Such business owners usually have a small budget, so the extra cost of a CMS might be unnecessary if they don’t use it to its full potential. Asking a professional to make a couple of changes per year could be easier and cheaper.

Owners Who Don’t Want to Be Empowered

When I entered the Web industry, I assumed that every business owner would absolutely want a CMS to manage their content. But then I had a string of clients who made it clear that they wanted absolutely no involvement in technical matters or that they would just rather a professional maintain their website after launch. This is when I decided to cater my services to this category of clients.

Some clients simply don’t want to be empowered for various reasons; whether it’s because they’re not the best of friends with technology or they just don’t want to add to their existing workload and responsibilities.

By hiring a professional, clients that fall in this category feel more confident in the changes being made to their website and they have one less thing to worry about.

Many of my clients have told me that it’s like hiring an accountant to manage their finances or a secretary to manage the office; the work is done more efficiently, and the owner has more time to focus on their field of expertise.

Owners of Websites with a Shelf Life

Some websites have an expiration date. These usually support an event, such as a conference, a cultural event or a promotion of a special deal on a product. The website promotes the event ahead of time, stays up during the event and a little while afterwards.

The single-page promotional site for a 2009 event, HDLive 9 (hdlive09.co.uk) would not fully benefit from a CMS.

Projects like these require heavy maintenance for a short period of time (several months to a year), and doing it efficiently is critical. The event’s organizers will be preoccupied with planning the event and reaching out to participants through newsletters, media, the website, email, etc.

Hiring a web professional, then, is much easier, if not essential. Empowering such a client with a CMS would do them little good.

Owners Who Rely on a Web Professional’s Expertise

We have all come across websites maintained by people who don’t follow any design or usability principles. And preventing a hapless owner from ruining their own website is difficult, which is why we so often see links in multiple colors, excessive use of bold and underlined text, mixed font families, body text the size of headings, images squeezed in here and there, navigation menus that pop out of their containers — the list goes on.

The truth is, when we let non-technical website owners maintain their own Web property, we can’t expect them to adhere to the rules of aesthetics and usability, simply because it’s not their job to know these rules.

The moment the owner takes over their CMS, we should expect that the beautiful and functional website we so painstakingly created will start to look a tiny bit (or a whole lot) less perfect. This isn’t a big problem for every website, but some websites rely a lot on detail and uniformity of content.

Poorly styled text, for example, might not look so bad on a teacher’s blog where visitors mostly seek specific information, but it can be a disaster on the website for a new fashion line where users want to get a feel for the company before browsing the collection.

Empowering owners of websites that fall into the latter category is questionable.

By the way, some Web professionals worry that a deterioration of their work will reflect poorly on them when potential clients visit their portfolio. The potential client might be impressed with a screenshot in the designer’s portfolio, but then be surprised when they click through to the actual website. For this reason, mention whether you or the owner is currently maintaining a particular website, so that potential clients are not caught off guard.

Website Maintenance as a Service

Now that we’ve gone over some examples of business owners that wouldn’t benefit from a CMS-driven website, let’s now talk about what we can do to fulfill their needs.

For site owners that don’t need a CMS but would still like to have a site that’s taken cared of, we can offer them website maintenance as a service.

The following are some benefits that come with offering website maintenance as a service.

Extra Income

Maintenance is a paid task, and you can increase your income a little or a lot, depending on:

• The difficulty of tasks that are requested
• The frequency of updates
• The number of websites you’re maintaining

Keeps Existing Clients Close

Providing website maintenance as a service strengthens your relationships with clients. Not only will you be at the top of their mind by providing long-term quality service, but you’ll also get to follow their business as it evolves. This will make you a prime candidate when they have a new project.

Promoting your services also becomes easier, e.g., when creating a mobile version of the website, or redesigning for a small discount.

Easier Upgrades

As with every technology, websites get rusty over time. A client might want to add features down the line. Adding code and updating site features will be easier if the code and product are your own. If the client has meddled with it, upgrading could entail a lot more work.

Before You Offer Website Maintenance as a Service…

The main disadvantage of maintaining websites is that it can really fill up your schedule. In case you decide to add this to your roster of services, be clear about the following.

What You’re Charging

I suggest that you offer maintenance only to customers who have been pleasant to collaborate with and who don’t give you trouble with payments. You can charge by the hour or by the amount of work done.

Overcharging can scare clients out of requesting changes, so be careful with your pricing. A website maintenance plan is a sensible approach. For example, a customer could prepay for a three-hour maintenance plan, which could be spread out over several updates during the year, equaling three hours of work for you. Or it could be a casual maintenance plan; for example, one new page of text and five new photos per month.

Here’s an idea: You can bundle these website maintenance plans as part of a new project.

What the Deliverables and Terms of Services Are

Draw a line between maintenance and redesign. Be clear on the definition of website maintenance. You could allow for minor new features, such as new icons or a fancier photo-gallery script or a new color for links. But draw the line when a request looks like a big change. You wouldn’t want to end up doing a redesign by making hundreds of gradual little changes.

Expected Delivery Time

Website maintenance work should be scheduled so that you don’t fall behind on other commitments. Ask clients to inform you of requests ahead of time (for example, an email one week in advance).

Also, give yourself enough time to fill the request so that it doesn’t interfere with other projects. My current arrangement with clients is to fill casual requests within five working days and to perform urgent updates within 24 hours. This can vary according to your own capabilities and priorities.

To Empower or Not to Empower?

The answer to that question depends on the type of client and website you’re dealing with. Empowering the owner to maintain their website is great as long as it’s worth the cost of implementing the CMS, and as long as they feel comfortable doing it.

Present the client with both options, and explain the reasons for opting for one choice over the other. Some websites absolutely need to be maintained by the owner, while others are best left to professionals. Some websites can go either way, in which case the client’s preference could be the deciding factor.

Last but not least, if you’re not willing to maintain websites yourself or are not willing to let clients do it, let potential clients know this in advance. And don’t recommend one approach over the other merely because you don’t want to offer both solutions. You shouldn’t feel inadequate for preferring one method to the other. Rather, try to excel in the services you offer, focus on your target market, and keep your clients and the Web happy!

How do you handle website maintenance? Do you use one approach over the other? What are your clients’ preferences? Share your strategies and thoughts in the comments.

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• 6 Tips for Effectively Dealing with Client Demands
• Related categories: Project Management and Web Design

About the Author

Maria Malidaki loves creating and managing websites, focusing on clean and simple design primarily using semantic HTML/CSS. Planning to also work as a vet and researcher, she specializes in building the web presence of academic and scientific events. Keep in touch with her on Twitter @mthunderkit and at her professional website at thunderkit.net.