freelance client lifestyle

syntax episode

requirements gathering

• find out upfront who’s going to be doing the content updates.

quotes

• indicate how long a quote is valid for
• when presenting a quote, tell them what tech will be used, & why.
• what is being built, as well as what isn’t. ^65c817

timelines & deadlines

• have hard time lines - actual dates
• give clients dates/deadlines for content etc.
• state clearly that your timeline is dependent on their delivery on their deadlines
• assuming they give 24hr turn around time on any questions/feedback that you need from them.
• if you blow this timeline, I have to start another job and our project could just drag on forever.

underpromise, overdeliver

• when it comes to estimating time, add 20-30% of whatever you initially think it’ll take, because we tend to be too optimistic.
• on setting expectations - I do emails once a day

episode 2

link

design

• collect all assets - logo, brand guidelines
• inspiration from client
• at this point create initial look & feel
  • home page, typography, think global styles
  • be cautious about showing clients design that is too general & too skeleton. remember Scott’s example of the A/B testing at Ford, the design had just 3 cars, and one dude said hey, this has no Mustang, and I like the Mustang, therefore I hate everything about your design. clients generally have similar mindset.

development

• like design, don’t show progress too soon, you don’t want to be getting a huge laundry list of things you already know you need to do.
• give regular progress updates. establish these beforehand

do not give me feedback yet, I’m still working at it, I just thought I’d let you into the progress.

feedback & revisions

• 3 rounds of feedback. have your client go through & ask for one email with a list of feedback.

deployment

• get client to pay for domains & hosting.
• don’t use godaddy, lol. they were at some point injecting tracking scripts on top of all sites they were hosting.
• robots.txt so that the staging site doesn’t get indexed if its sensitive information.
• backup strategies, especially when there’s databases involved.

hand-off

• only teach them the things that are important for day to day usage.
• create a video detailing how to do each thing.

bug fixes & support

for the next year, if anything breaks because of my own doing, I will fix it for free. however if it’s outside of my control, it will be billed separately.

• emergency bugs require an emergency response if they are your fault.

what to do when things go to shit

• avoid ‘scatterbrains’ 😂