Background

 

When you have more than a few successful projects behind you, new clients usually come easy. The most common way I’ve got my projects was word-to-mouth recommendation, and let me tell you – it’s not unusual for these clients to be very very vague, i.e. they don’t have a clue what they want. Based on the experience I had so far, I’d like to give you few hints about the things you need to be careful about.

Every client will ask you 3 simple questions during your initial meeting, and those will be:

1. Can you make my website better?
2. How much would it cost?
3. When can you get it done?

You would probably end up having a very simple answer on all of those three questions, and it would be: “Depends!”, right?

Depends on what do you want to do to make your website better. Price and deadline also depend on that, of course! So, “Depends!” would be your final answer, am I right?

Well, I must say that this is not a something what the other side would expect to hear, and most likely you’ll leave them with a big mess in their head.

In next few sentences, I’ll try to help you with your answers:

1. How can I make your website better? What do you want on your website?

Ask your client some specific questions in order to get specific answers (you don’t want incomplete answers)! Do they want:

• more leads,
• more traffic,
• more ebook downloads they recently published on their website,
• more enquiries,
• etc..

Depending on this, you will know what to do and what tools you’ll use to make more user friendly website.

2. How much would it cost? Well, that’s an easy one! Formula for the pricing would look like this:

(client goals <- services + effort) x Hourly rate = Total Cost

(source: HubSpot Academy, Growth-Driven-Design aka GDD)

In other words, that would mean: You will make an offer depending on what the goal is. And depending on what the goal is, you will determine what services you will use and how much effort you are going to put in this project.

Next step is converting those services and efforts into hours, meaning that you have to provide the number of hours you will spend working on this project.

NOTE!

• If you choose a Traditional Web Design, your rate would be a one-time value. You will do it just once, so be careful and provide your client with as much information as you can!
• On the other hand, if you decide to do a Growth Driven Design, your rate should be monthly. This means that your project isn’t over in one or few months, your project will last as long as your client is satisfied with your work and outcome!

3. When can you get it done?

Well, a good project is never done! There is no such thing as perfection, and a key to the success is always learning and continuously working on your projects! Keep planing, analysing, doing research and importing new assets on your site!

It is recommended although that you provide exact information about launching a website to your client, let’s say in 6 weeks, but that doesn’t mean that your work stops there. After the launch date, you’ll constantly be working on improving your website and making it easier to use.

For example, let’s say I choose a Grown Driven Design method. My personal answer on this question would be:

“Your Launch Pad Website will be done and online in ex. 4 weeks, but I will continuously make improvements on your website!

Improvement will start with:

• Boosting conversions on website,
• Improving user experience,
• Adapting the site to the user and doing personalisation in general,
• Updating the website (constantly).”

I wrote about the difference between Traditional Web Design and Growth Driven Design in one of my next posts. There will be a lot of useful material about UX design in general, so keep following me and keep me informed about certain things in my posts you agree or disagree on.