 Hey, everybody. Hi. How's word camp so far? Is it good? i know, right? that's about as much energy as i have. Just kidding. i actually did have caffeine Before my talk, so i am just good to go. So let's get started. Hi. i'm michelle. i design stuff. It's usually word press. This is my face. It looks a lot like me. i have a lot of experience Working with clients. Before i was a freelancer, I worked with clients at an agency. I've obviously worked with clients on my own as an individual. And i have worked with clients as part of a team. With other freelancers or with other companies. I work with designers. I work with developers. I work with project managers. And i have pretty much heard all The stories. And i have been a part of many of those stories. But this isn't about me. This is about you guys. And i want to talk about why we're here right now. So i want to know who in here is a, would consider Themselves a client of web services. So they want to have a website built, or someone is building Them a website, or you might want to have a website built At some point. Cool. How many of you guys are designers or developers? If you build websites, you work on stuff. Cool. How many of you guys are like Managing a team of people that do stuff? All right. So we've got everybody in here. And who in here, if you are, if you're getting a Website built, who has hired somebody to build a Website or part of a website for you before? Cool. All right. And who is this going to be their first time? Like, this is a brand new thing, and they are getting their First website now. Anybody? Awesome. I love that. For those of you that have hired somebody, like, was it a Good experience? Was it not so good? Maybe somewhere, like, wave your hands generally about your Emotions about it. Like, yeah. So, so, yeah. So what this presentation is going to do, I'm not going to necessarily give you, like, this is the best Way to do it and this is the worst way to do it. But what i want to be able to do for everybody is empower you To make informed decisions. And for those of you that do this For a living, i want to give you some empathy for the people On the other side of the equation, like the people that Are writing your checks, who are kind of important. And i want everybody to be able to work together. So this is going to give you a sense of the system and Teach you some vocabulary along the way. So, first of all, why even work with a professional? This is kind of an ironic presentation because we are at A word camp which is designed to let people learn word press. And i'm here to tell you first that you don't always have to Work with a professional because plenty of people learn to Code and tinker on their own. That's awesome. That's how i got started. I mean, granted, i was a designer, But i learned how to develop through going to word camps. So here's the times when you don't actually need help. We are at a word camp and you can learn about word press. And it's usually best to take it on yourself if your Work does not have a hard business or time constraint. Like, you are doing this for fun. You don't have to launch Any time. It's not mission critical to your Business. Go ahead and learn. That is a great way to learn is by building something for Yourself. But otherwise, you probably should Seek help. And i think there are four factors That are usually involved in thinking about whether or not It's a good idea to seek help building your website. First of all, customization. Does the solution not Currently exist out of the box? So if you have very Specific needs or specific requirements for your brand, And it doesn't, you can't just go out there and buy it. You should probably look for help. How complex is it? Maybe there are multiple partial solutions that exist, Like several different plugins that kind of do, But you might need someone to integrate them. Or there might be a third party service, Maybe a social service or a CRM or a database or Something else that you need to integrate with or talk to. Or maybe your website is just going to have a lot of traffic Or need special security procedures. It's complex and you Probably need to hire someone. Knowledge is another one. If you don't know what you don't know, i mean if you're so New that everything just seems overwhelming, you might need Somebody just to be able to provide best recommendations and Guidance for you so that you can find a good solution. And finally, is it mission critical? So does the timing, Performance or functionality of the site, is it crucial to The operation of your business? You definitely don't want to Be the one responsible for that if you don't know how to build A website yourself. So what i recommend for my Clients is rather than becoming a word press developer or Designer, become an expert word press user. Like you be the best administrator ever and you Learn the admin and you learn how to publish content and You learn how to do the thing that you want this Website for. Because web design and Development can be a full time job, right? I do it full time. Lots of you guys do it Full time. And your business, the person Who is building the website, it's a full time job. The person who is getting the website, they have a full Time job too. It's called running their Business. So you don't need to take on both. So now that you know that you want to hire somebody, What's going to be next? As a client, you want to do Project due diligence which i call know your project. So what does that involve? First, what are your wins? What is a win? A win is like, what does success Look like for you? What do you want people to do on Your website? Figure out what that is. Is that i want somebody to sign up for my form. I want somebody to purchase my project. I want somebody to go to my store. I want somebody to call me. Know what those Wins are. Know what those verbs are that You want people to do. And figure out what the Problems are that you want to solve without Necessarily prescribing what those solutions are. I have seen a lot of rfps that people have put together, And they're very thorough, but they're usually asking for Very specific solutions to be implemented. And i say step back from that. Figure out what your Problems are. What do you want people to be Doing? What kind of stuff don't you know? But don't try to figure out what the solution to that is. You're going to be hiring somebody to help you find a Good solution. So you don't need to Worry about finding the solution. Just really know what your Problems are. On the other side of that you Want to do business due diligence. And what i mean by that in This context is know your business as it relates to the Project. So especially if you're a one Person shop, you know like you are the person that's Involved and that's that. But if you're multiple people And there's going to be a lot of people touching this Project, figure out before it starts who's going to be Involved. Everybody that's going to have To have buy-in or is going to have to have an opinion Or is going to have to sign something, how much do they Need to influence that project and when do you need to Involve them. My general rule is Involve everybody at the beginning and then only Involve people as necessary as they're needed. But know who all of those people are because one thing That derails a project is people suddenly showing up And having opinions about stuff. It must be windy outside. Next, prepare your company for outside help. If you're a larger company and you're going to have In-house departments that are going to be working with People, prepare those departments and let them know That we have this outside contractor, this outside team Coming in and you're going to be working with them. Like especially if you have designer development teams That are going to have to either work alongside them Or are going to have to continue the work after This developer or designer is done. And if you have any decision makers within your Company, empower them. Give them the ability to Make the decisions. Don't tie their hands Because it's not good to have somebody who has to make Decisions but then has to go and wait for somebody else's Approval. All right. Next, so we know basically what we're going to be getting Into next. How do you pick somebody? Because there are lots of options out there and which One is the best fit for your project. So i'm going to talk a little bit about what each of These terms means. A freelancer and Independent, usually as a specific skill set. They could be a specialist or a generalist. They work on their own time and equipment. So they have their own time, they have their own stuff and They do it when they want to. They are self-managed so they Take direction from you but they run their own thing. They are usually managing multiple clients. So you are probably not their own client and you cannot Necessarily guarantee that for eight hours a day they'll Be working on your work. They will communicate Directly with you but it will be on their schedule Because again they probably have other clients and stuff. And their rates will vary based on experience. So that's kind of what you're getting when you're talking to A freelancer. And obviously experience is Different, what they specialize in or whether or not they do Multiple things depends on the freelancer. Now contrast that with a contractor. Contractors are pretty similar to freelancers in that they Are a single person but they are usually a lot more Specialized. Like you are usually bringing Them on to do one specific thing for you. And a contractor works on site so you need stuff for them. So they are going to come in and work on site for a Pre-determined time alongside you or your team. That means that they need equipment to be able to use While on site. They might be able to bring in their Own but usually you are providing them equipment while They are on site with you. And they need to be Managed. It's not that they are not smart. They are very smart but they are there to execute On the task. They are not there to run the Entire project so you are going to be managing them. But the upside is while they are on site they are 100% dedicated to you. You know that that eight Hours they are doing only your work. And again their rates will vary based on experience. So now what about working with a team or an agency? So that could be a group of independents or it could be A full service agency where they all work full time and They are dedicated to doing that thing. And it's usually a combination of experiences and Skill sets. Like that's one of the Appeals of a team is that there are lots of different People to work with. Which means that they have More resources and more flexibility to be able to Handle more aspects of the project that you are Working on. You are usually communicating at This point because there are many people they usually Have an account manager or project manager whose Job it is to talk to the clients. So you may not necessarily be talking directly at All times to the developer or the designer or Whoever that is working on your project. They are going to be more expensive though because You are paying for multiple people and possibly Overhead and possibly lots of other things. Aside from this stuff there is also a lot of different Word press titles out there. You might see designers, Developers, experts, contractors, seos, whatever. What does all this stuff actually mean? I'm going to go through some of those things and tell You what you probably can expect. So first of all a word press designer. Usually they are responsible for aesthetic decisions, The interface, the experience. Sometimes they might do Theme development. They might have front end Experience. They might be doing Styling languages or javascript. So actually building stuff. They might have other Design field experience. They might be able to do Print or something else like that. These terms are related terms so you might hear of Like a UI UX designer which is a user interface User experience designer. You might hear of a Theme designer. Those are all kind of related in This field. So why would you want to Choose this person? You want to choose this Person if you know that your project requires a Very strong visual language. You might be choosing multiple people but keep That in mind. You definitely want a designer If you know that the visual language is extremely Important. Then there's a developer. What is a word press developer? Usually that means That they have experience with interactive programming Logic. Sometimes they might have Designer styling experience. They might be more front End. Sometimes they might have more Experience doing integrations or applications. Sometimes they might know other programming languages Besides just word presses flavor of php. These are some things that are related to that. So you might hear like a front end developer Which is mostly concerned with browser side stuff. Back end developer mostly concerned with database stuff. Theme developers. Plug in developers. These all fall under this category. You want to have a developer if your project has complex Functionality or integration requirements. Stuff that's very custom. Stuff that's going to Require more knowledge. What's a word press implementer? This is a new term that's kind of been circling Around. Basically this is a person who Combines existing solutions to solve problems. This is a legit thing. Not everybody needs a custom Solution. Some people might just need Somebody to help them combine plugins together and maybe Write a little bit of code to make them talk to each other And maybe set up a theme for them. Totally legitimate. Sometimes word press implementers might have Development experience, design experience. They might have good content writing experience. You might hear something like an integrator or a consultant. That usually falls under this umbrella. You want this person, if you know that you have some Recommended solutions that you want to use but you're not Sure where to look or you're not sure how to put them together. This might be a good person for you. And then we've got seo consultants. Usually what an seo consultant does is they can Recommend, optimize, implement and track your seo stuff. Like that is what they're good at. Sometimes that means that they have development experience Or design experience or content writing experience or all Of these other things. But usually mostly what It means is that they are focused on seo. You might hear something like an seo strategist or search engine Marketer or whatever. Mostly that just means that's What they're concerned with. And you want to bring this person on. I would recommend bringing on an seo once you have an existing Site or you're in the process of redeveloping a site. That's when you want to get the seo involved. Then we've got a word press expert. And what that means is nothing. There's no objective Criteria for being a word press expert. I've basically been told like if you call yourself an Expert, you probably aren't one. Let other people call you an Expert. So if you evaluate somebody based on The other criteria, don't look for this. There is no word press certification that is globally Accepted. There is nothing. So look at the other stuff they do. And don't forget that websites involve lots of other people. So you might need content. So you might need writers, Photographers, animators, videographers. You probably need outreach so people actually go to your Site once it's built. That's email campaigns, social Campaigns, newsletters and marketing. You probably need a lot of ongoing work like security and Maintenance. So now that we've got a sense of who is out there, Who do we hire? That's kind of the question. Like cool, you just told me all this stuff. Now that's a lot. What do I do? A larger or more complex project will probably be the most Successful if you've got a combination of experiences Available to you. So usually that's with a team Overlapping skill sets. It might be a couple freelancers that Both know a lot of things. It might be a much larger team for A very complex project. If you have a smaller project, Or a more specific project that maybe is only like solving part Of a problem or doing one thing, you probably will benefit More from a freelancer or a contractor due to a kind of Flexibility and rates that has the skills that you need to Solve the problem. Now I do want to make a note, There are projects that can be done by bringing multiple Freelancers together, but it's usually best to let the Freelancers pick each other rather than grabbing a bunch of People and telling them, hey, guys, work together. If you do do that before you start the project, make sure That they can see whether they're a good fit, make sure they Can always communicate directly with each other, don't Make them have to go through you. It's very important to be able to do that because you want Them to be able to function cohesively as a team. That's the whole point of bringing on multiple people. So now we've got people out of the way. We get to have the super Fun talk now. We talk about money. The first thing i want to say is this. This is the reaction i usually get from this when i say this Right up front. But it is important to know Generally what your budget is going to be right up front Because we want to know whether it's in line with the Scope. We don't want to know your budget Because we're like, sweet, i'm going to make 20 grand. No, that's not why. It's because i want to know What is the work that you're proposing in line with the budget That you've got and i want to be able to recommend. If your budget is super high, sweet, because then we maybe Don't have to spend all of it or maybe we can do more Ongoing stuff. If your budget maybe doesn't Quite cover it, that's fine because maybe we can say All right, maybe we can do this in phases. Maybe we can do less of that. Maybe we can do an mvp of Phase one. So basically it's kind of like The goldilocks chairs, right? Like is it going to be Too small, too big, or just right? That's what we want to know. And there are several Different payment terms that you might see. First of all is hourly. I usually recommend an hourly Rate for exploratory work or work where you don't really Know what the deadline is going to be or what the Outcome is going to be like we're trying to iterate on it. Hourly rates are usually billed after a set amount of Time that might be weekly, that might be monthly, that Might be after you reach a set amount of hours. There's also flat fee work, which basically is Charge in increments, including like usually that's how Most of my projects are, usually like an x amount of Upfront deposits and x amount of other payments, and then The final payment is paid before the product is Delivered, so final payment, then it's all yours. There's also a retainer, and that's basically paying Advance to keep someone on reserve. So a lot of maintenance contracts are ongoing Contracts are billed as a retainer, so you say Cool, i'm going to pay you $500 a month. I have unlimited access to five hours of your time. You're going to prioritize me if there's an emergency or Whatever. Some people will have that Rollover, so if you don't use your hours it goes to the Next month, some people say it's use it or lose it, but It's that peace of mind of having someone that will Always be on site because you already paid them. And next in terms of money, like you're going to be Getting bids, like people are going to be telling you How much stuff costs, and you have to know like How do I evaluate that? How do I know if it's good? Well, what i am going to say is that the type of site You're building does not necessarily on its own determine The cost, and so put another way, every type of site can Exist at every price point, but not every scope of site Can exist at every price point. You can have, if you Want a super, super cheap e-commerce site, you Could install like a free woo theme and use paypal And do nothing to it and just literally use it Right out of the box, and you have a super, super cheap E-commerce site, right? but if you want a super custom E-commerce site, it is not going to be super, super cheap. So what are some things that influence price? Those four factors we talked about earlier, right? The more of those you have and the more complex they are, The more the price is going to go up, right? Because it's going to be more complicated. The size, scale, and scope of the project. So basically how big is your project? How much content are we talking about? Is this like a university website or is this like a personal Blog? there's a big scope difference there. The timing and availability, how fast do you need it done? How many people are we going to have to put on that in Order to get it done? how available is the person that You're looking at super, super popular and booked up for The next eight weeks? they might charge more because They're in demand. the cost of doing business is a Factor. where are these people located? If they're located in san francisco versus Minneapolis, that's a big difference in their own life. So their cost of doing business is going to be higher. If they're a team, maybe they have to pay for an office. Maybe they have to pay for overhead. Maybe they have to pay for non-billable hour people like HR. the value of the final product Is also a big factor in bids. so is this a site that's Going to be worth several million dollars to the company? Or is this a site that's more of a personal or a side project? That's a big difference. And that also, another big one, Is the difficulty and ease of working with you. So nobody in here is going to have the bad client up Charge because we're all going to be awesome clients. But like in the previous presentation, if you're someone Who likes to talk a lot, there's probably going to be More project management built in because we have to Accommodate talking. there's nothing wrong with Talking a lot, but it is going to influence the price. If you're somebody that likes to change your mind. If you're somebody that only wants to know it when they see it And we have to do 50 lockups, fine. That's going to be built into the price. And so it's going to cost you more. The other thing that isn't done here is stuff like the risk That's involved and that ties into value. So is this a super critical e-commerce site that will cost Millions of dollars for every second that it's down? That's a very high risk and is going to probably cost a Lot more to build than something that isn't as crucial. So the biggest thing about evaluating bids is basically Ask a lot of questions. I am not giving you a talk on Why or how to price. If you want why or how to price, Go read chrislema.com. He writes a lot better on pricing Than i do. But what i want to do is be able to Empower you to ask questions and figure out whether the Price that you're being given matches the value that you Assigned to the project. The other thing to remember Is that bid costs are not always final. Sometimes when you get bids from people, you might Get a price range or sometimes you might get scope changes And why does this happen? Why don't you know up front how Much something is going to cost? so i like to think of quotes Kind of more like home inspection. So mike holmes, he's pretty Great. He's my favorite. And what he says is a good home inspector, a really good Home inspector who's been doing it for years. He knows how to or she knows how to ask the right Questions. They know how to see the Right signs. They know what something Generally will lead to. If you see this thing, it Probably means that this other thing is happening, right? But like his show demonstrated, you still don't know for Sure what's going on until you open up walls, right? And you can't open up walls until you get started on the Project. So there was one episode that I remember watching where they were doing electrical Inspections and they opened up the outlets and looked Behind them and they were like, cool, the wires look great. But there was a bunch of other problems so they started Tearing open the walls and it turns out that they had only The previous contractor had only redone the electrical Like two feet in and the rest of it was all old knob and Tube wiring. So like you wouldn't know from A home inspection even if you're a really good home Inspector that there's a knob and tube wiring behind These walls. But as soon as you open up the Walls you're like, wow, that is vastly different than What i was expecting. That's a huge scope Change on this home improvement project. That's kind of what happens with quotes. And that's why i recommend paid discovery phases for more Complex projects and i started doing this with my clients. I actually have a separate project that's built for a set amount Of hours where i go in, i get full access to everything They are paying me and the deliverable of this project is Basically a full scope document, my full recommendations, like A big content map and the quote for the actual Development work. That's part of the scope. The nice thing is if the client decides they don't want To work with me they own all of that stuff and they Can't take it to someone else and there's no hard feelings. Usually they want to work with me. Sometimes timing doesn't Work out but either way i have been paid for my time and i have Done a much more thorough job of quoting so there are a lot Fewer surprises. Also as a client an important Thing to remember is being able to give quality feedback and This is important because you're going to be talking a Lot. You don't just go away as soon as The project starts. There's a lot of feedback. So i've got some recommendations here for being able to Give good feedback. You want to start with Evaluating the look and feel of something if you're giving Design feedback. So the questions you are Asking yourself if you are looking at designs is does it Communicate well and is it understandable. Design decisions are not about your personal taste. Like if you are not the target audience for your site i Don't care. I mean i care about you but I don't care whether you like blue or not. I do want a personal level because like i like you and I think you're cool but does your audience like blue? So it's not necessarily about your personal taste but it is About do you feel like it makes sense. Do you feel like it's Communicating well. What you want to do with design is Remember that with a content management system we're not Necessarily designing pages. We're not designing the about Page and the home page and the product page. Like we are designing systems for you. So we want to look at okay how does this part of the System fit into everything else. How does this part of the system Fit into everything else. Is this going to make sense with Content that you're going to be put in there. And obviously the biggest thing is ask questions. Because good designers can always answer why. Why did they do something. And then we can have a Conversation. When you're giving development Feedback you want to focus on how it's working. What that means is does it do what it's supposed to do. It's broken is not good feedback and i'll tell you Why. It can mean a lot of different things. Like we don't know if you say it's broken whether it's an Actual bug meaning it is not performing the way it is Intended. We don't know if it's just Like a bad user experience. It is performing the way it's Intended but it's really hard to be able to tell. We don't know if it was a miscommunication like it Actually is working exactly as we built it but it's not What you expected us to build. So what you should do when you are giving development Feedback is you should say what did i do. What happened. What did i expect to happen. That did not happen. That is all very helpful. So that's pretty much all the major content. I have i actually turned this into a six part blog entry on My website. This is like a super great Screenshot on my website. Where i go into like a whole Lot more detail about all of those things if you want to Learn about it. I will have these slides up Online so like totally take a picture of this great Screen if you want to but you will be able to see it later. I'm changing slides now. Hurry up. Okay. More resources to get this Cameras back out and i'm kidding. A couple of articles that are pretty great and this book is amazing. Mike montero is a wonderful writer and this book is pretty fabulous. Here's my info. There's a link to my slides. There's my email. There's my twitter. Tweet at me, et cetera, et cetera. And i am here for any questions for the next however long this goes for. All right. So questions, comments. Yes. So the question for the at-home Players was basically who owns the final product and basically There's been disputes over that. So yesterday in the freelancer Track, if any of you were there, there was basically Steve zenget basically made a statement saying that at his Company he explicitly states that clients own the work That they pay for like straight up. I mean, they own that iteration of that work that they paid for. So i usually spell out i have in my contract like there are Different levels of creative licensing that you can do. 99% of the stuff i do is straight transfer rights upon Final payment or upon payment of phases. And actually if you see Steve zenget, you should Definitely talk to him about this because he's got some Super smart thoughts and he's here this weekend. But basically i spell out personally that i transfer rights Over of stuff to the client. With design, i know there are Different kinds of licensing you can do for creative work, Especially like illustration and photography where you might be Licensing a thing for a specific amount of time. But for web development, it's generally spelling out Direct transfer and look for that in the contract and if You don't see it before the project starts ask about it. It's good to know up front. Yes. Yes. So the question was how do you deal With clients that are looking at a cashed copy of something. I mean usually with that it's a matter of kind of explaining It like here's how you clear your cash. Let me walk you through it and et cetera, et cetera. I mean that's just one of those things where you kind of Have to do some hand holding because it's not expected Behavior if you don't know that caching is a thing. Why wouldn't the internet be the thing that's on the Internet that doesn't make any sense? Right? So i usually at that point would be like What are you seeing? Have you tried doing this? Let me explain how to do it, blah, blah, blah. I might even like do a screen share and show them how So they know how. But i mean it's education because Like i don't expect my clients to know everything about the Internet and part of my job is to teach them what they Need to know to be able to be my client. So talk about it again except dumber. What would you like? Like okay. So how so? The question was basically how do you deal With clients? Stuff like they're seeing so caching Basically is a thing that kind of saves. I'm going to do a horrible job explaining this. Okay. It basically kind of saves a Version of the site so it doesn't have to constantly reload it. So what could happen is that you make some changes but Because it hasn't dumped all that cash out. It hasn't loaded up the changes. They're seeing an old site. Sometimes on the server side you can dump cache. Sometimes in your browser you can get rid of it. It basically says ignore all that stuff we saw last time. Let's see the new thing. That's basically dumping your Cash. Does that help? Okay. No problem. Yes. So question was about online resources for sample contracts. So because i come from a design background, i based my Contract and i customized it but i based mine off of the Resources that the graphic artist guild has put out. Which is the pricing and ethical guidelines. They have a book. They also have digital versions. The a-i-g-a also has a really good boilerplate contract. I'm pretty sure there's also some really good resources on Like the freelancers union. They've got some pretty sweet Resources about all that stuff and actually if you're An independent i suggest checking out what the Freelancers union is doing because it's pretty cool. Those are the ones i can think of off the top of my head. Like, yeah. Yes. So the question was about what do you do if a client Brings you a theme and they want you to change it. At this point i no longer take themes clients bring me. I just tell them that's not how i work if they want to work With somebody who changes the theme they pick out. They can find another designer. That's not to say that i Don't start with pre-done themes ever. But i pick them from marketplaces that i have worked With before and i'm familiar with. Because i've done that. I've gone through the route. And basically i have to spend half my time learning what This theme developer did or whatever and how to even do Things. It's not a good use of my time. It's not a good use of my client's money. So i tell people if we are a lower budget project, if we are Starting with an existing theme, i will help you pick out that theme And then we will go from there and it will be from a Marketplace that i have worked with before. So i just kind of hold my ground on that one. Oh, proofing the design like if you're tweaking Something that exists already. Yeah, so for that it kind of Depends on the client and i'm happy. I'm going to go to the happiness bar after this if you want to Ask more in-depth questions about stuff. But my design process for that would basically probably be if It's a theme that has psds and the client needs to see psds, I might modify those. If it's a quick enough change, I might just do the change in the browser. If it's something where we're going to sort of relay stuff Out, i might do some wire frames. If it's something where i'm literally taking the theme but Putting a new scan on it, but it's going to stay Structurally the same, i might do style tiles so they can see What the new look and feel is and then do the work in the browser. But it's usually very iterative and back and forth. Like, i don't do mock-ups very much anymore for anything. So, yes. Yep, so the question was about Dealing with plugin updates. Usually that would be covered Under like an ongoing maintenance like retainer. I mean, if something breaks for x amount of time, i will Be happy to answer questions. I've had clients that have Paid me for maintenance. I've had clients that come back A little later and are like, hey, can we pay you for a few Hours to update everything and make sure everything works When you update it. I've also taught clients about Like how to do updating themselves for certain clients. It depends on the client. But, yeah. How are we doing on, i don't even know when we're Supposed to be done. Okay, so it's probably, I'll do one more and then you guys can go to your Next thing. That's awesome. Thank you. All right, we'll have fun at your Next thing. I'll be around.