Quoting Low
Tue, 5 June, 2007 – 6:10 pm
When my business was still picking up and I was a bit naive and scared to frighten a customer off, I quoted far too low. Of course after doing this and starting the job I would sit and moan about having to do it, but I guess it paid the bills, just. However a couple of years ago I had my eyes opened after getting my quote turned down which was for around £1500. I even felt it was a little too high. The accepted quote was £2500 and my contact informed me that the company had decided the higher cost would supply a better job. I was a bit unhappy but it made me realise that perhaps I could get away with charging a little bit more. Around the same time I was working on a site which had been quoted for at around £1000. However £500 was going to the designer, which I don't begrudge before I go any further here, and the other £500 was mine. However the designer knocked up the shell of the site, the top and side nav. I coded an entire CMS plus recruitment vacancy section into the site, and broke the site down for the XHTML/CSS (well I paid Dave to do it but I would have done otherwise). So as you can probably tell, I felt a bit like I was short changing myself by paying a designer the same amount of money to do a lot less work.
I then turned my quoting methods around. I pretty much doubled most of my prices (which I still don't think cover the time spent on jobs) and still had quotes accepted. However there were a few older sites with the low quotes that were being finished off. I have to say, today is the final landmark in low quotes as I've just finished a custom built eCommerce site plus CMS for a completely pathetic amount of money! In case you wonder why it's just been finished, the site was delayed for almost a year by the client, then further months on and off, and it's just had to be done around my other work, mostly at nights and weekends, which is even more frustrating when I think I've maybe made £300 from it after paying Dave for work he's done to help get it finished and over with. That's a lot of hours at £300 cost, perhaps £2-3 an hour? It doesn't help when the client pushes for more features when they were only quoted for a basic admin, however back then my quotes were not as good as they are now and even now I'm still not happy with so am writing up a lot more to ensure everything I agree to is water tight.
So yes, the final low cost site is done. It's ready for launch on Thursday. Gotta say, I'm so fed up of seeing it!
4 Responses to “Quoting Low”
Yep, I've been there too with sites that kept getting stuff added to by the client and I've been in no position to say "nope, can't do that unless you pay more". I now get the client to sign things off before progressing.
They have to sign off the initial proposal listing everything (in a fair level of detail) in the site, then sign off every milestone of the project, and then at the very end before they get it delivered to them. It is made very clear in lots of places that additional features will be charged extra.
So far this seems to be going well - I've used it for the first time on my latest project and there've been no complaints from anyone yet.
One of the problems I've encountered a lot is people underestimating how much stuff costs. It seems this whole building complex websites thing is quite trivial and so the client expects to pay £200 for something worth about £800!!
By David Salisbury on Jun 5, 2007
My quote back then probably did stress that additional work that wasn't listed would be paid for but I hate having to actually ask for more money!
Plus it wasn't as detailed as I do them now so it is grey area really. I'm hoping to spend the summer writing up a lot of legal stuff for my site and to give to clients. Letters covering accessibility once the site is finished etc.
I guess it's a developing set of documents that you just add more to as you learn.
By Sarah on Jun 6, 2007
That's exactly it, I think. Having all your documentation gradually evolve as you gain experience. I like your idea about having stuff covering accessibility - that seems like a good thing to do.
By David Salisbury on Jun 6, 2007
Well despite doing our best, sometimes clients won't budge on an issue which breaks a WAI II rule. Even if the site is accessible, if a client can edit it themselves they can also change that, so I'm going to draft up various templates and when we finish a site we just use the right one eg 'Your site is accessible and conforms to the DDA however because you have the functionality to update your site yourself we cannot take responsibility for this after todays date blah blah.
Alternatively it states what breaks the law, that we've informed them of this and that we are not held responsible.
It's just to cover us. Whilst no UK site has been taken to court yet I'm sure it's only a matter of time and I don't want to have the finger pointed at us. So call it an 'after agreement'. Make sure they sign it too
By Sarah on Jun 6, 2007