hamd01

Really bad idea. Yes, you will gain some likes, but are those people actually interested in buying your services? Theres a blog post here on the topic of this type of Facebook like, which outlines the dangers. 1. Your organic reach on Facebook will be watered down 2. When you pay to BOOST your posts, it is going to cost you more because of the fake likes i.e the non customer likes are, in the long run, going to cost you money if you get serious about Facebook marketing.

Im sure this is going to be a very long thread.... but I'll get things started; "There isn't much money in this job, but after this one I'm going to be able to offer much more work". As a one man band I used to fall for this every time.... and I can guarantee pretty much every single time a customer says this, they are going to be hard work....and you are never going to get any serious work from them. Nowadays I have a standard reply... "great news... because on your second project we will be able to give you a loyalty discount".

Thank you for all the feedback which has been really interesting to read this morning. In terms of fine tuning the process, it does sound as though the area where we are perhaps over-complicating things is by providing our clients with designs (for approval) for each inner design of the site. I notice a couple of people say they no longer do this. Could I ask a question on this point.... If you are for example designing an e-commerce site... surely the product page design is critical, and one the client would want to have input to. How do you handle this? There was one comment I also wanted to come back on; We don't get a lot of re-design requests (not sure what gave you that impression). Generally our designs are approved within a couple of drafts and re-drafts. There were a couple of comments about the design process. One mentioned that we should have the entire team involved in the initial consultation phase before the designs begins. The obvious implication I see with this is time; At the moment are designs are brainstormed between 2 people (project manager and designer). If I was to introduce the copywriter, SEO, and just a front end/back end developer.... it would probably add in the region of 12 man hours onto each project...which equates to £600. Our projects range between £1,200 and £5,000 on average...so an additional 12 hours is quite significant and is going to make us significantly more expensive. I do understand the benefits, and it is one I am going to have to think about. Thanks again all.

To be honest I feel a little sorry I haven't found this forum until now... but heyho. I run a small website design and development company, and we have 10 staff in total. Obviously I always want us to improve, and get faster and better at what we do. To give some background, I have never worked in another web design business. I set this one up 6 years ago, and we have grown from there. Given that I have never worked in another web business, it might be that there are some things we could do better.....hence my question here. For most projects, we use either Wordpress or Magento...depending if it is a content or commerce based site. Step 1. Our designer does the branding and graphic design work, mocking up the home-page only. This is sent to the client for approval. If they are unhappy we alter/re-do it until they are happy. Once they are happy, the designer works on the sub-page design(s), whilst the homepage is passed to the coders to begin coding. Step 2. We have one coder who concentrates purely on html/css. Once he has coded each design in html/css, he passes it to the Wordpress or Magento coder who will then code it into Wordpress/Magento. Step 3. Once the coding is done, our copywriter puts all the text and images in place on the site and does testing. Sometimes this content comes via the customer, and sometimes she writes it depending on the contract. Step 4. Handover As you will gather...everything we do is bespoke designed from the ground up. To give an idea of timescales....a 5 page Wordpress site (with 5 unique designs) will take us around 4 hours to design/brainstorm, and around 35 hours to code/test. So around 40 hours total. Tools we use...basecamp.... timedoctor.....teamgant. I would love to hear any feedback on the above process. Thanks guys, and look forward to playing an active role in the forums.