Framing your design brand. How to Charge Higher Prices for Web Design Work - Web Design Pricing. When you're trying to set a fair price for a Web design project, there are a number of factors you need to keep in mind in order to get the client to agree to the price.
When it comes down to it, your clients are looking for the best possible design and designer to build it for the lowest possible price (free, is of course, best). What to Ask a Client Before You Start Their Project. We all know the importance of fact-finding before starting any web design project.
We can’t really get started on a project until we know exactly what’s needed, what the client wants, and who the site is aimed at. In fact, in most cases we can’t even create an effective proposal until we know those things. There are plenty of pages-long web design questionnaires out there. Some have forty, fifty, or even a hundred questions on them. The main problem with that, though, is that your clients or prospective clients are likely to rush through a questionnaire that long, leaving you with either inaccurate or incomplete answers. Build your design business by supplementing your design skills.
How to steal design business from your competitors. Portfolio Design Study: Design Patterns and Current Practices - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement In our recent study on Typographic Design Patterns and Best Practices, we asked our readers about case studies they would like us to conduct.
One of the most popular suggestions was a detailed case study of portfolio websites. Following the requests of our readers, we have carefully selected 55 design agencies and Web development agencies, analyzed their porfolio websites and identified popular design patterns. The main goal of the study was to provide freelancers and design agencies with useful pointers for designing their own portfolio. Web 2.0: Buzz-Monitoring and Tracking - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement You’d like to improve the link popularity of your site.
Or maybe to keep track on the latest web buzz. It would be nice to inform your readers about it the minute the news occured. Or maybe you just want to monitor the activities of your users and be able to find the best topics they might be interested in – quickly and efficiently. In these cases tracking tools can be extremely useful and improve your search enormously. Handy Tools and Tips for E-Commerce Websites - Smashing Magazine.
Advertisement Running an e-commerce website is a never-ending task, from trying to squeeze that extra bit of conversion rate out of the check-out page to figuring out which referrers give you the best traffic.
Content Strategy: Optimizing Your Efforts For Success - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement Content strategy is a beast with many heads, names and trajectories. To approach it is to be sucked in full force. Even so, as crucial as content strategy is, conveying its gravity to a big audience, or to key administrators, is often hard. Being so inherently complex, it’s often easiest to tackle by example. My first job as a Web content writer involved creating a campaign that promoted holiday spending and travel. Approaches to Content Strategy by Richard Ingram.
When I got to my boss’s office, she pulled up a page I had recently written and asked me what action I thought the content was encouraging. My boss then said something that has stuck with me and guided much of my work as a content specialist. Indeed, as I had not yet learned, when a consumer is on the Web, they are in a different mode than someone who is scanning a magazine or leafing through the mail. Know The Purpose Of Your Content. Planning And Implementing Website Navigation - Smashing Magazine. 8 Sure-Fire Ways Freelance Designers Can Earn Passive Income. Why wouldn’t you want to make some money on the side while you’re building your freelance business?
Got your attention yet? Good. As a freelance web designer, I can speak from the heart when I say that there are times in my business building process that I just wish I could work on things I liked all day long and not have worry about anything else. Passive income is the answer to that problem and since I’m sure that I am not the only one who has thoughts similar to this – you need to continue reading :) In this article I am going to list and discuss 8 different methods we can earn some passive income and build the ultimate side hustle.
If at the end of the article you come across some questions or would like to discuss things further, just drop a comment and let me know and I’ll answer any questions you may have. Stock Photography Imagine uploading 10 photos a week for an entire year. Vector/Graphic Files Reseller Hosting. Useful Resources, Tools and Services for Web Designers - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement Today, too many websites are still inaccessible.
In our new book Inclusive Design Patterns, we explore how to craft flexible front-end design patterns and make future-proof and accessible interfaces without extra effort. Hardcover, 312 pages. Get the book now! How To Estimate Time For A Project. Whether you bill clients hourly or on a per project basis, a necessary step of all projects is estimating the time it will take.
Not only does the client want to have an idea of how much money they will be spending, but they also need to plan around an estimated timeline. And you need to be able to ensure you have the time and resources necessary to complete the project. Depending on a number of factors, including how much experience you have with the type of work you’re doing, if you are using subcontractors, and the information you have from the client, estimating the time for a project can be difficult. Here is the process I use when scoping the time commitment for a new project. Identify Deliverables The first step is to identify the main project (i.e. Break It Down Next, I take the project and break it down into simple tasks separated by component – the more specific the better – that will get us to the deliverables. Freelance Jobs, Freelance Forum & Directory. The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer - Smashing Magazine.
Why Wait For The Opportunity? Create Your Own! - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement As many people who work in a creative field like design and development may already know, sometimes our clients just do not understand what it is that we are trying to achieve.
The boundaries that we are seeking to push are not ones they approve of for their project, so our creative ideas get backburnered until we can find an appropriate project as well as an agreeable client where you can flex these creative muscles freely. In fact, the standard business processes, especially the ones we allow ourselves to be strapped into, tend to work against us in this aspect. Allow me to elaborate. For most creatives, the most genuine and innovative ideas can often come without provocation.
Don’t just wait for the aces! How Many Ideas Do You Show Your Clients? - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement I read somewhere that showing your client the full range of your creative ideas during a project is important, the rationale being that the client is entitled to see the ideas coming from the creative professional who they have hired and invested in.
While this approach has some benefits, in some cases showing too many ideas is counter-productive to the natural flow of a project. Proof of how imaginative you are can be shown in other ways. Pricing Tables: Examples And Best Practices - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement Pricing tables play an important role for every company that offers products or services. They are a challenge from both a design and usability standpoint. They must be simple but at the same time clearly differentiate between features and prices of different products and services. A pricing table should help users pick the most appropriate plan for them. A company should carefully examine its product portfolio and pick the most important features to present in its pricing plans.
Once you have identified the most important features, go ahead and create a more detailed list of features for users who are interested in a particular plan. Self-employment advice for designers. This month brought with it my five-year anniversary as a self-employed graphic designer, so I’m taking the opportunity to offer 15 pieces of advice to those thinking of “going it alone.” Wood type photo credit 1. Look at the big picture Creating a modern business plan will help you think through the hard issues. 2.
Advice for design students. A get a lot of emails from students asking for help. I can’t reply to everyone unfortunately, but I spend a fair bit of time publishing blog posts that answer common questions. With 700+ pages on this site, here’s a selection of content I think’s most helpful.