Help! I haven't a clue.
- Thread starter Buds
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GarfieldLeChat
fucking awesome but wrong
t0bytoo said:
you don't need to spend loads in fact i'd advise against it but on the other hand you can't get it on the cheap...
you pay the value of it like anything else in business. you don't try and make your own toner cartidges (well you get those refill packs that are usless but you still need the orginal toner cartridges to refill)
growth will or at least as good business practice should always include your website...
A question for the web site developers:
A small business owner comes to you. He wants a small website built for his business. He hands you a paper tri fold brochure that has a few paragraphs of information. This is currently the extent of his marketing materials. It contains the following information
About Me
What I do
How much I charge
When I do it
How to get in touch with me
Assuming that you had the time, liked the guy and wanted to working for him. What questions would you ask him to learn more about what he needs and what would you proposal comprise of ?
A small business owner comes to you. He wants a small website built for his business. He hands you a paper tri fold brochure that has a few paragraphs of information. This is currently the extent of his marketing materials. It contains the following information
About Me
What I do
How much I charge
When I do it
How to get in touch with me
Assuming that you had the time, liked the guy and wanted to working for him. What questions would you ask him to learn more about what he needs and what would you proposal comprise of ?
pk
drink flounce rinse repeat
GarfieldLeChat said:another 'pk or tobyjug fact'
actually thinking about it this thread is called i haven't a clue pk should continue posting on it ... it's the best place for him...
There's a world of difference between making websites and making TV programmes - making websites takes a fraction of the skill and expense compared to broadcast TV, but then you'd know nothing about that eh flakey-boy?
GarfieldLeChat
fucking awesome but wrong
do you intend to carry on this infantile spat over several other threads pk that's against the faq i'd becareful if i were you why don't you send me a pm telling me when and where we can meet up to sort this out once and for all coward boy and you can cease this stupid disruptive and petutlant behaviour, except you won't turn up will you ...pk said:There's a world of difference between making websites and making TV programmes - making websites takes a fraction of the skill and expense compared to broadcast TV, but then you'd know nothing about that eh flakey-boy?
so anytime you are ready ...
GarfieldLeChat said:do you intend to carry on this infantile spat over several other threads pk that's against the faq i'd becareful if i were you why don't you send me a pm telling me when and where we can meet up to sort this out once and for all coward boy and you can cease this stupid disruptive and petutlant behaviour, except you won't turn up will you ...
so anytime you are ready ...
Wow. I'd love to have you build my website.
mhendo
Aussie in San Francisco
Are you actually calling him out? Is this an invitation to a fight?GarfieldLeChat said:do you intend to carry on this infantile spat over several other threads pk that's against the faq i'd becareful if i were you why don't you send me a pm telling me when and where we can meet up to sort this out once and for all coward boy and you can cease this stupid disruptive and petutlant behaviour, except you won't turn up will you ...
so anytime you are ready ...
Have i just time-warped back to the fourth grade?
Buddy Bradley
Pantheistic solipsist
Ignoring Garf and PK's spat, here's what I (as a professional web designer) would discuss with the potential client (requirements gathering prior to preparing a proposal and quote):t0bytoo said:
- Who are your customers?
- What do they want?
- Specifically from you?
- What are they likely to want from your website?
- What sort of people are they? (i.e. can they be easily segmented into age/ACORN/MOSAIC socio-economic groups; for example a company might be selling medical equipment only of interest to medical professionals, or installing loft insulation for pensioners)
- What do you (the client) see as the purpose of the website?
- Do you really need a website? (I've occasionally encouraged businesses to not bother with a website but instead use a different more suitable form of marketing)
- Can the website offer something that you don't currently offer by other means (e.g. out-of-hours appointment booking, expert advice articles for visitors to read, interactive problem diagnosis, etc.)
- Would you like a full rebrand, business cards, brochures, new logo and anything else?
Plus probably some stuff about colour preferences, existing branding requirements, that sort of thing.
As Garf correctly stated, the primary audience of any website is not the site owner, it is their customers, so most of those questions are designed to elicit an opinion on (and get the owner to think about) what his potential users might want from a website.
Assuming he still wants a site, my proposal would then consist of a summary of his requirements, including what we had agreed about his potential userbase, and a breakdown of what I was providing.
I always recommend that the site is built on a reliable Content Management System so that the client can then take on the management of the site themselves without having any technical skills; I use free CMSes so no cost is passed onto the client for technology they don't really need.
The cost is broken down by all the elements we discussed, so if the client later decides he doesn't really need the email newsletter tool he originally wanted, he knows how much to deduct from the final price.
No spec work is done - no designs are done until the contract is agreed. My terms are 50% up front, 50% on completion.
I don't charge any extra for being an expert in modern, accessible web design, they just get that stuff done as part of the normal design process.
jæd said:Obviously you know nothing about modern web design... Everyone is using css for presentation now...!
It's not exaclty rocket science though. IMO html/css are the easiest jobs in building websites.
In a few years people will be seperating their data as well as their presentation and structure (rss+xml+css) and people will be saying the same about css+html sites. Does that invalidate all the sites people are building at the mo?
robotsimon
New Member
Buddy Bradley said:
What free CMS do you recommend?
pk
drink flounce rinse repeat
GarfieldLeChat said:do you intend to carry on this infantile spat over several other threads pk that's against the faq i'd becareful if i were you why don't you send me a pm telling me when and where we can meet up to sort this out once and for all coward boy and you can cease this stupid disruptive and petutlant behaviour, except you won't turn up will you ...
so anytime you are ready ...
Saved for posterity. I do like a chuckle now and then.
UPDATE: Oh and Garf has now said via PM that he's going to appoint a lawyer to deal with me, because apparently I've been "stalking" him with threats...
I can picture the scene in court when the flakey cunt reads list of grievances...
And the jury...
Oh man this is too funny for words!
Buddy Bradley
Pantheistic solipsist
I use Textpattern, which was originally a blogging platform but is very easy to adapt for pretty much any sort of site.robotsimon said:
Uh, RSS is just another markup language, and so is XML. If you're talking about separating data out then you're talking databases - which is exactly what I'm talking about.memespring said:
oops forgot I posted this
Thanks to everyone (or most anyway) for being helpful. I have a friend of a friend helping me now but its difficult directing by email.
I would learn HTML, CSS and all the other stuff but the simple fact is I don't have enough time in the day, I'm already being bogged down with financial and tax issues which I don't understand so to put that on top of it I wouldn't have time for the art.
Cheers anyway
Thanks to everyone (or most anyway) for being helpful. I have a friend of a friend helping me now but its difficult directing by email.
I would learn HTML, CSS and all the other stuff but the simple fact is I don't have enough time in the day, I'm already being bogged down with financial and tax issues which I don't understand so to put that on top of it I wouldn't have time for the art.
Cheers anyway
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