[Ralph Media]

There are some great articles out there which describe in detail 'The Web Design Process', and most of them roughly agree on the same principal steps of...

1. Planning
2. Design
3. Development
4. Launch
5. Post-Launch

...for instance, take a look at Luke Reimer's great article on this topic (thanks Luke, this is a nice resource!).

However, where in 'The Web Design Process' should we provide a project costing for the client, so that they can approve those costs and actually agree for the project to go ahead?

Do we provide costs and agree the project with the client before or after the planning phase? Surely you can't cost a project accurately until you've done the initial planning? But also, you don't want to waste lots of time planning a job if the client doesn't approve your costs at the end of it and walks away.

I'd be very grateful if anyone has ideas or suggestions for how to approach this?

[brightonmike]

Where's your research?

[Ralph Media]

In Luke Reimer's article it falls within the planning stage (requirement analysis)

[roothost]

In short, meet with client - discuss - go away and research the clients business/competitors - price the job - send out proposal - receive the ok/amend proposal etc - send out contract - receive contract back along with deposit - start work

Edit, as much as we all hate it, some element of planning needs to be done before you send out a proposal as yeah you dont want to get it wrong!

This post has been edited by roothost: 26 October 2011 - 02:40 PM

[rallport]

Ralph Media, on 26 October 2011 - 01:37 PM, said:

However, where in 'The Web Design Process' should we provide a project costing for the client, so that they can approve those costs and actually agree for the project to go ahead?

Do we provide costs and agree the project with the client before or after the planning phase? Surely you can't cost a project accurately until you've done the initial planning? But also, you don't want to waste lots of time planning a job if the client doesn't approve your costs at the end of it and walks away.

Nar, that's a good point and it's quite hard.

Only advice I can give is that costing jobs out comes from experience with what clients actually in general and what tools you use.

In all my briefs I describe everything basically - everything the system will do, won;t do, what is out of scope etc. and give a price for each area. That alone, forms part of the planning stage as you need to plan everything out. For me, this brief comes after an initial meeting - in this meeting I'll always give a very rough price. Some clients will say fine. Some will say it's too much as their budget is something silly like £300

[Ralph Media]

Thanks folks, and I agree that creating proposals/estimates definately gets easier and more accurate with experience!!