How do you judge how much time something will take?

(and other small questions, cheers guys)

[Elliot_Coad]

First off, hello! This forum looks perfect for me to gander over for lots of useful information, so thanks.

Back to work: I'm about to start doing work for a small financial consultancy partnership, and they want a site, which is cool. I know the people, so it's very informal. But they ask how long it will take... that's possibly one of the only questions I couldn't answer for sure. How do you estimate how long it will take? They want about 5 pages of information, they have all the basic graphics and text, any pointers?

Also, is it their company that needs to get the domain name and hosting package? Or do I have to do it?

Another quick question, submitting the website to them, do I give them the website via email/CD or do I FTP it directly on to their webspace?

Last question, payment, I've read a fair bit on these forums, but I can't nail it down. Is the 'going' practise to quote them an upfront price, rather than pay per hour? And if it is a single fee, then do you receive it all on delivery, or do you get some of it at the beginning?

Last last question (I promise), do any of you know of any good websites that give tutorials or guides to starting out in the world of web design for a business?

Any constructive response to my questions is massively appreciated! Thanks in advance,
Elliot :D

*carries on reading the forum*

[benihana]

estimating time is always a tricky one - especcially as we know nothing about your skills experience etc, so ill leave that for someone else, other than to say, if its just 5 simple pages, and they are supplying all the text , i could probably turn it round in a day (assuming theres not rounds and rounds of amendments to the design)

is it their company that needs to get the domain name and hosting package

i normally point them in the right direction (i.e. a host i trust) and let them sort it out - with instruction in exactly which package etc they should go fo. that way if anything happens to me, the domain is still under their control.

website via email/CD or do I FTP

ftp to their site and make live with their approval. supplying a cd to them as a backup might be a good idea.

to quote them an upfront price

for a small project like this i would quote them a price upfront, detailing how many lots of amends they can have to the original design, and how many updates are included, and tell them the site goes live when the cash is in my hand.

tutorials

have a look throught the business issues forum here..

welcome to WebmasterWorld :)

[Elliot_Coad]

Excellent, that's answered a lot of my questions, thankyou!

Also, to help get a benchmark on prices, how much would you personally charge for this website? It's 6 pages, I have all the content and basic graphics they want to use. And also they want me to add pages some time in the future, to expand. Should I charge a maintenance fee or do another standing charge when it comes to the time?

Input greatly appreciated.

[raywood]

One little hint. I have dealt with clients who had all the graphics. When I received the graphics they were very good quality, designed for printing at 1200 dpi. Giant files that you can't put on a web page. Trying to explain to the client the differences between print graphics and screen graphics has caused me heartburn. Make sure the graphics are suitable for a web page, or you'll end up spending a lot of time working with them.
This has happened me more than once.
ray

[benihana]

Trying to explain to the client the differences between print graphics and screen graphics

the client probably wont, and shouldnt have to know about reolutions and the difference between web and print.

when i get images like that, i fire up photoshop, create an appropriate action, and process them as a batch while i have a coffee.

re: pricing.

its been discussed many times here and elsewhere.
ultimately its down to how much your skills, experience and time are worth.

[Elliot_Coad]

Photoshop can do batch processing? *shock* Endless times I've had to convert like 100 images to 25% size manually... oh mannn lol, right I'm gonna do some research there.

[shinyblue]

when i get images like that, i fire up photoshop, create an appropriate action, and process them as a batch while i have a coffee.

This works great...except when their pictures all have an uneven border on them, or they've scanned them in themselves and they all need a bit of cropping. Any solution for that situation? Cropping individual pictures takes forever (longer cause it's boring).

[benihana]

Cropping individual pictures takes forever (longer cause it's boring).

agreed. :(

if they all require a similar amount of cropping (and you dont mind losing a bit at the edges), you can just create an action with the crop command. (assuming they are the same size to start with). Alternatively you could try using the canvas size option with a percentage to cut the edges off for different size images.

if they have a border that is a constant color, you could try playing with the trim command when you set up the action.

just have to experiment really..

[alain_bonaf]

Clearly you have no experience at all: I wonder how they can give you that stuff but if you're lucky guy it's great :)

If they are in a hurry (want the site for yesterday) beware if you can't cope with the work fully: there are many little details that are not complicated when everything is planed by the client and the process is a routine for the provider but that can cumulate badly if it is not the case - and I suspect it is not the case. I don't want to frighten you: considering risk is part of managing a business. If you want to do business you must do everything to lower risk.

If you want I can give more practical advices all the more so that I have already designed financial sites.