Why becoming full time freelancer is best? We re very lucky to have this flexibility, especially in this hard economic times when a swanky office doesn’t fit in our budgets. Even if you do have an office, chances are less as you will land a few clients who aren’t located around you. But you quickly discover that working remotely has its downsides. To collaborate with customers you never meet face to face has become normal for most people working in the web industry. This is an industry where working remotely poses very few real obstacles — nearly every part of the web design process can be done from the comfort of a home office.
Without face-to-face interaction it’s easy for major communication issues to develop… often without you knowing until it’s too late…here are a few tips to avoid a major meltdown:
1. Building the Trust
A customers’s trust will break or make any project that comes your way. Without it you will need to spend endless hours defending your ideas. It’s easy to build trust when you’re meeting once a week to present your work and report your progress, but how do you do it with someone 5,000 (or even more) miles away?
To establish trust early in the process is to make the client feel involved. Ask questions and brainstorm with your customer before you propose any solutions. If you’re short on meeting time, send out questionnaires for them to fill out. When it comes time to present work, make sure your solutions reflect at least a few of their ideas and explain to them how the idea was incorporated. Introduce yourself and dont hasitate to send them a link to your portfolio. Many designers skip this step all the time, but it’s essential…before you dive in to any work, schedule a quick kickoff meeting to clarify opinions and what are your plans about their project. Most comfortable way to do that is using IMs such as Skype or MSN, but dont hold it long, be specific whit your plans and keep it short.
2. Communication is the key to success
As you re not meeting face to face with your customer, the limited interactions you have are very important. Make sure you craft your emails and messages carefully…realize that every simgle word you write is amplified and your dry sense of humor isn’t going to come across very well….best is to be straightforward.
Ignore to inundate your customer with needless emails, but make sure you communicate enough to keep them feeling comfortable with your progress. Fats and regular check-ins help set everyone at ease. If you think your client is geting confused, pick up the phone and have a real conversation. You’ll be amazed how much can be cleared up in 2 minutes when you’re not trying to explain it over email…emails are best to keep track for records. Keep a copy of all your correspondence for future reference as you never know when you might need it.
3. Writing the contract
Tthere are too many freelancers accepting work without a contract because there is nothing fun about crafting up that type of documents. It’s stupid no matter what, but when you’re working remotely this is extremely dangerous. You might get away with it for years, but sooner or later you’ll run into a disaster that could have been avoided had you bothered to get sign-off on some points.
The general rule of thumb, if you estimate spending more than 10 hours on a project you better craft a contract and get a client signature before you start the work. It doesn’t have to be complex, but it should always include:
* A detailed scope of work. What exactly are you planning to provide the client? What isn’t included? Spend some time and make sure that it’s clear what they are paying for. When the client asks you where the forum is (you know, that one they forgot to mention they needed) you can simply show them that it was never part of the original scope they signed off on. Then you can add it on and charge accordingly.
* A list of deliverables. Will you be creating IA documents, wireframes, style guides, and user manuals for that slick new CMS? Will they get ownership of layered PSDs and all your original artwork or just the HTML, graphics and source files? Make a list to avoid miscommunications.
* A limit on revisions. When I first started freelancing, I failed to set a limit on revisions. 12 updates later it was clear what a big oversight this was. Clearly state how many revisions are included in your proposal and what your definition of “revision” is. (If, God forbid, they hate everything about the design and want you to start over, will you call it a revision?) Include an hourly rate for extra revision hours so that clients understand it doesn’t mean you won’t do them, it just means they’ll pay more.
* A plan for client delays. It’s not uncommon to finish a site completely on your end, then wait 4 months for the client to provide the content. If you’re contract says “final payment upon completion” you’re stuck in limbo until they get their act together. To avoid this, set deadlines on content and any other milestone that requires client approval or sign-off. State in the contract that if content (approval, etc.) hasn’t arrived by the deadline, the site will still be considered finished and payment is due.
* Payment terms. This one is a no-brainer! Half up front and half upon completion is common. If it’s a bigger project, tie payments to milestones so you’re not waiting months and months to collect a paycheck.
AIGA.ORG provides a Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services that you can customize for your needs.
4. Setting the deadlines
This is one of the most important part of a project for both sides. You already know you need deadlines to keep yourself on track, but you need to set them for the client as well. Asking for timely feedback keeps the project moving forward. Every time you produce something that requires feedback or sign-off, set a short-term deadline and make sure it’s documented in writing somewhere. If the customer lets the deadlines slip repeatedly, they can’t complain when the project is delivered. Having deadlines motivates clients to focus on your work, which may be one of the many projects sitting on their desk needing attention. It is also a subtle way of asking for (and getting) respect.
5. Be Accessible
When you are miles away, being accessible is incredibly important to maintain healthy business relations with your customers. Make sure you’re quick to respond to emails and let your client know that they are welcome to contact you anytime to discuss any questions or concerns they have. If you take days to respond to email or never answer their calls, they will start to wonder how far down they are on your priority list. Being accessible makes it obvious that the work you’re doing for them is one of your top priorities.
6. Avoid Assumptions
With meetings few and far between and communication somewhat limited, it’s very easy to assume you “know” what your client expects or wants without actually asking. We as designers or developers, are trained to believe that we know what is best. While this is often true when it comes to design decisions, it’s not always true about other parts of the web design process. If at any point you feel you don’t have enough information or experience to make an right decision about a part of the project, resist the urge to make assumptions. Instead, stop and ask for feedback, you will save yourself countless hours.
7. Use Documentation
As you move through the design process, think about the many ways documentation can help to get you and your customer on the same page. Although documentation takes time up front to create, it can save you endless hours in unnecessary revisions caused by miscommunications. These documents also become natural check-points for approval and sign-off. Below are the web design documents as most helpful:
* Creative briefs. A concise overview of the project that outlines the strategy around which you will design and develop the website. This should answer high-level questions such as why you are designing the site, who you are designing for, what the motivation behind the design will be, and what you hope to accomplish with the final product. It will act as a guide for all decision-making during the project, both for you and the client. Though you and your client may have talked at length about these issues, putting them on paper is always helpful. Any discrepancies between what they said and what you heard can then be cleared up before work starts.
* Sitemaps. Sometimes, a client comes to you with a very clear idea of what pages they want. It may be a small site with 5 pages, in which case a sitemap can be agreed upon without further documentation. For anything larger, a sitemap can help the client to visualize what pages are going to get created and how they will relate to each other. Many freelance clients will bring a sitemap they created on their own. While this is a nice starting point, taking a few minutes to review what they have produced and suggest any improvements you think will help the site. Your client is likely too close to the content to develop the most usable information architecture. To get started there is an great article – it includes a number of great ideas for quickly producing sitemap documents.
* Content matrix. Getting content is often one of the toughest hurdles to getting a website launched. A content matrix, usually an Excel spreadsheet, can greatly simplify the process of producing and migrating content for both you and the client. It should list each page of content and additional “micro-content” that might be needed such as taglines, related links, images, etc. As the content trickles in, you can check off each piece in the matrix and know at a glance what you’re missing. Keep this handy and refer to it during check-ins to remind clients what they need to provide in order to be ready for a timely launch.
* Wireframes. A wireframe is a simple visual representation of a web page. Geometric shapes are used to represent fundamental content chunks such as the navigation, content, feature areas, ads, etc. They help to show the relationship between content pieces – for instance, what piece will be most prominent on the page – without bringing aesthetic decisions like color and font style into the mix. This helps to keep the client from getting hung up on design issues too early in the process.
* Notes on mockups. Your design deliverables no doubt include a set of mockups. But how can you be sure that your client remembers (and translates to other parties) the ideas behind them? Adding an area for notes to each mockup – perhaps in a sidebar on the left or right – gives you a place to outline the thinking behind your design decisions.
8. Be Honest to your customers
During the course of any project, it doesnt matter how great the communication is, there are bound to be a few things that go wrong or don’t meet client expectations. Most customers understand that setbacks are a natural part of the process. While your first reaction may be to cover up or make excuses for the mistake, it pays to be honest and carefully review the error (and the subsequent solution, which of course you took care of right away!) with your customer. You will continue to build trust and show that you can pinpoint and fix problems as they arise. Depending on the nature of the mistake, it might make sense to add more check-ins to avoid future problems.
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