How do I quote time for a design project?

Quoting for time when you are bidding on web design projects is very important to actually getting the web design project.  Even if a potential client seeks you out, if you are not able to give them a quick and accurate quote for your services they may choose to go elsewhere.  In the business of web design you need to move fast and for some customers’, time and cost is always a “deal breaker”.  You have to support the clients that you currently have and work to attract new business outside of staying up to date on the latest trends, going to meetings with clients, scoping out projects and running your portfolio online.  There are many ways to quote for your work and depending on your style of quoting almost all web design projects involve consideration of the following areas…

• Time spent planning and researching
• Time spent on design
• Time spent implementing
• Time spent maintaining

Planning and Researching

So you’ve just come from a meeting with a client and you now have a clear idea of what your client is looking to do.  You are confident in your skills and know that you can meet their deadlines easily but you need to plan and research what they are attempting to do further and the client is fine with this.  One of the first questions is “How do I bill for this service?”  After all it is a service that you are providing to your clients.  Do you skip quoting for this and include it as the “cost of doing business”, do you charge the client your regular full rate or charge a deflated rate?  The real answer to this is as individual as the web design business that you are running and has many possible answers depending on how you look at it.  Planning and researching takes up your personal time and as the saying goes “Time is money”.  The only question is how do I charge for this and should I charge for this?

Design, Design and Design a little more

As a web design professional most of your work comes out of the design process.  Showing the client mock-ups, concepts and eventually a prototype is important to “nail” the initial design of the site.  It cuts down on the number of revisions, shows the client the unfinished goods and can sometimes cause more meetings and push back going live with a new website design.  This particular type of billable time can change depending on the shifting needs of the client, your ability to finish the work because of personal issues and any number of other “unforeseen” things that occur over the life of a web design projects.

The proof is in the Implementation

The part at which a website is ready to go live is an exciting and sometimes stressful time.  Did your client choose to develop the system in house or do they use a pre-built platform that you designed for specifically?  If you are one of those gifted web designers who also does web development then the question can be a little easier because chances are you know how you built the system.

Regardless of this, depending on how you and your client chose to setup the system and implement the design for the website you can clearly over-quote and also under quote your time on this phase of a web design project.  Perhaps this is where you choose to offer a flat hourly rate or perhaps you quote for so much time that you know it will definitely take to completely implement based on past experiences and projects.

Maintaining the project

This is an area that most clients do not want to hear about until after the initial design has completely rolled live but it can be very important to discuss before it ever gets to that point for the following reasons:

Your clients may feel like you’ve lied to them even if you are only omitting the information to “lessen the blow” of the overall cost of running a website

• They may blame you for the new problems and ask you to fix them for fix free of charge
• They may no longer want to be your clients
• Stranger things have happened in the course of a web design project.

For those seasoned vets of web design you’ve probably seen some of these scenarios already and depending on how you choose to deal with these requests can have an effect on your web design business whether you are a freelance web designer with a few years on the job or a more seasoned web designer.

Luc