Include mockups in estimates and/or price?
Good afternoon everyone,
This is not a question regarding actual prices simply whether or not when you do a project you charge for potential initial mockups. i.e. If you creat three different possible layouts for the client to get a feel of what they want, do you build that into the price? For all three or just the one they choose?
Thanks for any other info you could give me on this topic.
Have a good one,
.aaroncrunchie
Control your presentation
Quote:
"Maybe you could do a couple different ideas and I'll see what I like"
This is a great idea... but you are the designer. This is where it helps to have a pre established idea of what they SHOULD want. Not what they want. But what they NEED. Now you need to step out of your designing shoes and into your salesperson shoes.
It's perfectly okay to offer a few ideas to figure out what personal tastes they have. But doing an effective website may have anything to do with what they personally like.
When presenting design comps, you MUST sell the design. You need to provide reasoning behind the look, the useability, and the overall marketing appeal.
For example: You have three designs that you are going to show a client. List 5 good things about each one. List five bad things about each one. Compare all three. Which one is the highest scoring one? When you go to the client, present it just like you would if it was Ms America.
EXAMPLE:
"Here is our first design. You have probably alreayd noticed how colorful this one is. It would really appeal to the young adult visitors and feels very energetic."
"Here is our second design. The colors on this one are more subdued and would appeal to a slightly older crowd than our first design. It also has a wonderful sense of completeness by having the navigation integrated right into the wrap around design"
"Our third design. This is by far my favorite. When I finished this design I knew I had something that would really motivate your visitors. The color is great, it has some eye-catching graphics that really tie into your business, and it has the same wrap around navigation style that we had in the 2nd design."
Then wrap it up-
"Any of these three designs would be a great asset to your business. All three of these would put you a notch above your competition's websites, but I really feel that this 3rd design would raise the bar for the goals you are looking to meet."
You do have do be careful. You still want to meet all of the customer's needs and requests, but you need to voice your design and web-expert opinion to sell what you have made. If you present your designs with a hint of "second-guessing" then you will only invite your customer into second-guessing all of your designs as well.
~Barry