Web Development For Clients

Proposed Designs

In this step you would design some layouts and hope they like one of them, but where does it stop? what if they don’t like any of 3 designs you do? what if they don’t like the next 3 designs you do either? This is where you need to have a proposed design limit built into the contract. My own contracts have the following clause:

3. Design Revisions
The client may have up to 2 major revisions and can choose up to 3 minor revisions (the total of the 3 minor revisions may count as a single major revision) during the design phase of the website. A major revision is changing 30% or more of the layout at a time. After 2 major revisions the client will pay for any changes to the layout at the Provider’s regular hourly fee.
If the website design approval has already been signed, any additional design changes beyond this will be charged at the Provider’s regular hourly fee.

The contract should also specify how quickly they need to get back to you with approval for the designs. Jobs which would have taken 1 week to complete can be stretched out for months if the client doesn’t get back to you quick enough. If my contracts I have the following clause:

The client must respond to the Provider within 1-2 days for any questions the Provider may need to ask and for approvals unless previously notified by the client that the client will not be able to respond within 2 days. In this event, the Provider reserves the right to adjust the project deadline accordingly.

Once the client agrees to a design, get them to sign their approval so it cannot be changed later in the project unless they pay extra.

One Page Development

Use this step as a “last chance to change anything” for your client. Make sure they are happy with the single page including the layout, fonts and pictures that were used. Be sure that they know that after this step it will cost extra to make any changes later down the track.

Create The Site

Hopefully by this stage if you steered your client enough they shouldn’t be dropping any “can we have…?” bombs on you. If they do, I hope you got that contract signed in the earlier stages so you can easily charge for any extra work.

When the site is completed you should get them to sign-off on the project saying that it is completed to their specification. The contract also needs to reflect this. In my contracts I use:

4. Project Completion
When the project is complete there will be a Project Signoff form where, once signed any additional work requested will require a new contract and additional payment.

If they contact me months after the project was finished to add their new idea to the site, I am not expected to do the work for free just because I was the person who created the site.

Setup and Hosting

This is the point where you would typically publish the website on the internet. However, you need to be careful about publishing before payment. If the website is static (that is, no database backend) or your client resides overseas you should never publish before payment. Its too easy for them to save the web page and make a run for it. For these clients, watermarked screenshots are best to prove the project has been finished.

As for hosting, you need to make sure you have a terms of service which outlines what they can and cant do on their hosting space. If you are reselling hosting space you need to make sure that you include their terms into your terms of service. Otherwise you may find yourself stuck in the middle when your terms of service don’t disallow something, but your upstream hosting provider does. Once they are signed up and settled in, hosting can be a great way to keep earning money off your client.