Thread

Cost of living represents a different slice of the pie, even in the U.S. - New York city vs. Podunk, Michigan for example, not to pick on anyone from Michigan.

I spent a week one night in Podunk, Michigan. Or, was it Traverse City, Michigan. Same thing, no?

.. and back to the regularly scheduled programming.  How else do you guys decide on what you’re going to quote for a design?

Hey I didn’t mean to be brisk here. A discussion of the recipe of everything that goes into divining a price quote is great. It’s really hourly rate vs. project or a variable of both. It’s impossible to know the hours involved ahead of time, imo. Scope of the project is good to define. I’m trying to broaden the scope of projects for additional income, since times are tough now. Checking out freelanceswitch.com for some of their articles on the subject, might help.

A discussion of the recipe of everything that goes into divining a price quote is great.

It truly is as there are so many variables; from expectations to delivery, from experience and skill to location, from methodology to the need to eat.

It’s really hourly rate vs. project or a variable of both. It’s impossible to know the hours involved ahead of time, imo.

I agree, though with experience a developer gets a good idea of about how much time is required for certain specifics of a web site. That requires a good and complete understanding of all project elements.

Scope of the project is good to define.

I like a healthy list of features and requirements (functional and esoteric), wire frames where ever possible, and a completed design (I don’t do design). After that, add it all up, add 50% and see what happens.

.. and back to the regularly scheduled programming.  How else do you guys decide on what you’re going to quote for a design?

Quoting for a site is a lot more about the “design” - that’s probably not what you meant though 😊

The build of a site involves a lot of things which have to be assessed when writing up a quote.

Software required for the project
Custom coding, additional 3rd party addons
Meetings/consultation, time plus travel costs
Planning site architecture/structure
Design of graphical elements/layouts/presentation
Server side stuff, hosting, email, database setup
Configuring CMS or other site applications
Writing HTML/CSS + integrating design/presentational stuff
Adding (initial) content
Copywriting, spell checking
Testing
Client training
Handover
Maintainance contracts

That’s what I can think of off the top of my head at this late hour, there’s bound to be a few missing 😊

The single most valuable thing to come of this discussion may be those listed items.

Good stuff Ronnie, as a designer first, I didn’t take the design variable out of the equation. You maybe can lock it down a little more and get a better guess of the hours involved. Separating the design from the coding makes good sense, and is part of what I meant by a spreadsheet full of appropriate charges that are applied.

Every client I get I struggle with the quote. I’m actually going to be writing one after I finish my morning coffee and I still don’t know how much I’m going to charge or if I will have effectively accounted for all the necessary variables.

Most of my firm’s contracts have terms which allow for flexibility (I’m fairly lax in my freelance stuff…they’re usually very small projects).  The stated quote is a guideline of cost.  It’s not a complete bill of what it will cost.  We tend to bill a flat rate up till a certain point and then do hourly after that.  So, for example, we might quote $X for a certain portion of the project up till 10 hours of work.  If it takes more then 10 hours, we charge extra.

We always pad the hourly estimates so we know we can 100% finish within that time.  If for some reason, we cannot, we usually don’t charge.  But if the client decides to ask for a feature not previously discussed, we charge extra. 

I think it’s important to discuss those things at the beginning of the project.  We always make it very clear to the client that the statement of work is the primary documented related to scope of the project.  If it’s not listed there, it’ll cost extra to implement.

The number of revisions are also strictly enumerated in the contracts.  We go to great lengths in meeting with clients, discussing what they’re looking for, so usually we don’t need more than 2 or 3 designs.  If you are someone who doesn’t do go to through the process of long discussions with clients, it might be more appropriate to supply a greater number of designs. 

I think the key is not necessarily to anticipate the changes to the initial scope that are going to happen.  I think that’s a futile exercise.  More important is to have procedures and contingencies when those changes occur.  And the client should be made aware early on what these procedures and policies are.

I like the idea of a spreadsheet with all the variables.

Most sites end up with a fungus of feature creep (scope creep) which adds new features and elements, often expected by the client to fall within the original project scope. That’s why getting all the pieces down on paper first (expectations and requirements) to come up with an accurate bid is important. Additional features that get added by the client (never had it not happen) can be treated as extra work with a formal Change Order.

For me, the design variable has always been the most difficult. Clients don’t always know what they want, but are often sure of what they don’t want, too often after I’ve already done some of what they thought they wanted, only to have the scope change. Again. So, design is segregated (as well as highly overrated) from the process, though my preference is that the design and features be completed prior to making anything more than a ball park quote.

This is awesome, someone just twittered this Drupal set of worksheets/spreasheets, it looks immensely useful. I don’t see it being that Drupal specific to any website project. It opened for me with OpenOffice Calc program. It’s timely like someone was reading this thread. I’ll have to share this one at work.
http://civicactions.com/estimating-worksheet

A great starting set of cost estimating spreadsheets.
Have to admit I’m terrible on spreadsheets, I’ll probably wreck it trying to customize this one.

After some heavy thinking on this (and after listening to all this great advise) I think I’m going to try the following for quoting a design:

Flat rate of x for the first mockup, a flat rate of y for each mockup beyond that and an hourly rate of z for each revision on a mockup (probably billed in 15 minute increments to account for small but time draining changes).

I believe (and hope) that if this is communicated well enough to the client ahead of time, it will behoove them to give me as much info as possible to build their design.  If they give me next to nothing to work from, it’s only fair to assume that we’ll have to go through multiple versions and revisions to their design.

That sounds like a plan! Let us know if it works

Just a guess: The forum moderator probably edited out actual pricing because it could be construed as an antitrust violation. I noticed that many who posted are in the U.K. Here in the States, any time a group of professionals in a given industry get together and discuss pricing on the record, they are inviting scrutiny from the Justice Department. Such a discussion on a site run by the developer of the software on which they rely (EE) could be especially problematic.

Again, this only my best guess—but a policy against discussing prices would be both pragmatic and consistent with similar companies in the U.S.

I see! Very interesting…

That sounded so sarcastic, but I was being sincere!