How to Work with A Blog Designer or Us
March 13, 2007
As Nathan and I work more and more with clients seeking custom WordPress design work or other design needs, I thought it’d be good to lay out some “things to consider” when working with a web designer (such as us).
Most of this will be tailored to us — RockinThemes — but I hope it’s of value also to those who work with others designers too.
1. Getting a quote or estimate for your project
Currently, our starting prices for custom themes is $200. For modifications, work starts at $100.
These are our base prices.
I need to stress again that these are our “starting” prices for simple themes and modifications. Depending upon the complexity and scope of your project, prices will vary, naturally. Much like if you go to an automotive dealership and request the luxury edition, more bells and whistles equals more in terms of price.
BUT … saying that … we strive to offer a great product (i.e. design) at a good price. And I think if you checked other WordPress designers, we’re very competitive and in fact, affordable.
Thus, to better understand your needs, we have a design questionnaire (shown at the bottom of this post) that we ask everyone to complete in order to give our clients the most accurate quote.
Once we receive your questionnaire, we might send you a couple of questions to make sure we are on the same page, but this is a great starting point for getting you a rockin’ quote.
2. Understanding design work in terms of hours.
Although we’ll bid your project with a flat, standard price, included in that estimate is also the estimated time (by hours) that we anticipate your project taking.
Frankly, this is to protect us from our clients infinitely changing and tweaking themes that are outside of our project estimates. Along the design process, we’ll keep you abreast of where you are on hours used so we can manage the design process effectively. But knowing that we are designing your theme based on a number of anticipated hours will help us manage expectations better.
Currently, we are charging $50 an hour for design work, so all our bids and quotes are made with this number in mind.
3. How long does it take?
Based on our client workload, we strive to get your theme to you as fast as possible with quality in mind.
Simple themes and work, obviously, take the least amount of time. Generally, themes can be turned around in 3-5 days.
4. How is payment handled?
Depending on the project, we typically require at least half of your project’s estimated cost to be paid in advance through PayPal.
This is standard practice for design work.
5. How we communicate with you during the process.
Our preferred method of communication is through email and Gmail Talk (chat).
Although we are glad to schedule phone appointments with you also, but again, our preferred method — that takes the least amount of time away from your design work — is through email and chat.
Well, so far that’s it.
For some excellent advice about working with web designers, see Penelope Trunk’s post on how to work well with your blog redesigner.
***
Get Email Updates on New Themes
Comments
Got something to say?
-
Recent Posts
- Ecommerce Themes
-
- Web Developer's Package
-
- Deep Order Series
-
- Essence Series
-
- Biz Card Series
-
- Photo Gallery Series
-
- Revolution Series
-
-
Links