Best Website Design Review Blog

I like to browse a lot of websites with the aim of learning from how others do things. I figure that this is part of my job as a freelance web designer/developer. However, sometimes it is difficult to know what went on during the design process of any website you look at. That’s why I particularly like blog posts, articles, and other case studies, where a website design is explained. Normally, this will deconstruct the website in question and I find these really useful. Here are a few case study ‘design stories’ that I have been reading recently:

• Simon Collison recently redesigned his personal website and in this blog post called Redesigning the Undesigned he explains the design process, including the eventual idea to base the design on a miscellany/journal approach, why he chose Times New Roman (brave choice?) as the main font, and the use of black and white animal illustrations. I must say that I love the design of this website and it’s great to see it explained.
• CoffeePowered is Paul Stanton’s personal website and he describes the redesign process in this post. I like the description of the font choices, the colour palette, the use of Modernizr, and the description of the sketching and design approach that was used.
• In the new second edition of CSS Mastery (» Amazon USA · Amazon UK) by Andy Budd, there are two case studies by Cameron Moll and Simon Collison (him again) that are well worth reading. For example, these studies (Roma and Climb The Mountains, linked from the CSS Mastery website) include explanations of new CSS methods, the grid structure, style sheet organisation, and the typographic choices.
• Jeremy Keith explains the design and build of Workshops for the Web including why he ditched the initial design idea and the use of HTML5 and microformats.

All these chaps are talented designers and more than likely they will also do things differently to you. It makes sense to try and learn from them….

As a freelance web designer/developer, deciding on your pricing structure is pretty important. Get this right and your business has a much better chance of survival… and you might even be able to go on holiday now and again! I think it’s important to review your business regularly and pricing is one part of that. Here are a few tips about pricing from my own experience as a freelancer in the UK.

Comparing and setting your prices

How do you know if your prices/rates are too much or not enough? A comparison with other designers or companies could be a good way of answering this question (at least in part). However, this can be difficult because many other web design freelancers, companies, or agencies do not publish their prices and/or it’s difficult to know if you are comparing like with like.

My prices were roughly in the middle of the range

I confess that (occasionally) I have posed as a potential customer with other local web design companies in order to get an estimate of what they charge. It’s a standard business practice to study your competitors and this subterfuge was suggested to me by a business consultant. That’s my excuse anyway! The results showed that my web design prices were roughly in the middle of the range.

Another way to make a price comparison is to take part in, and browse the results of, web design industry surveys, like this recent survey of web design prices by Phil Matthews or the Web Design Survey by A List Apart. The results of this type of survey may give you just the answer you want. Additionally, by talking to other designers/developers at conferences or on Twitter, you can often get a good idea of the ‘going rate’ (although the figures can be quite variable).

It may be tempting to set your prices lower in the belief that this will attract more work

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to come up with a figure (perhaps an hourly or daily rate or a range of website prices) that represents the value of the work you do, the cost of running your business, and the marketplace that you are in … and enables you to make a living. It may be tempting to set your prices lower in the belief that this will attract more work. Don’t do it! I learnt from experience that this does not work (cheap is sometimes associated with lower quality in the client’s eyes) and often means that you end up working all hours for very little money. That’s not good for you or the client because the job quality is often compromised under these circumstances.

Prices don’t have to stay the same

Don’t be afraid to raise your prices! Your business costs will increase every year and you have to cover these. I know that I learn more every year and I like to think that I am better at what I do now than when I started. If you are the same, this means you are offering a better quality job and this is worth more. Clearly, you need to be reasonable about increasing your rates (and give your clients some warning) but there is some justification for raising your prices every year in my opinion.

You know what the job is worth

My final piece of advice is to stick to the prices you set and not be tempted into a ‘bidding war’ with other designers who (the potential client says) are willing to work for less. Yes, it’s possible to be flexible with any price to a small degree but not when it means that you grossly undercharge for something. For web design jobs, when the potential client asks about the price, my policy is to explain what the price includes, what the website build process involves, and how it will benefit the client’s business. If they ask if the price is negotiable, I say No. I explain that I can reduce the price only if the job specification is reduced. This may sound like a tough approach but I believe that it will not benefit either the customer or me if the price is less than the job is worth.

I have been trying to use some different CSS properties in recent style sheets and one of these is the opacity property. It’s quite easy to use and can give you a sophisticated effect where one element shows through another. Hey, what’s not to like!? Unfortunately, we need to apply a few Internet Explorer fixes but they are also relatively easy to implement (even if they look a bit complicated).

In most browsers, you can change the opacity value of an element with a simple style rule in your style sheet like this:

.myclass {
      opacity: .5;}

Here, we are using a value of .5. The values for opacity are from 0 to 1 where 0 is completely transparent. Somewhere in between is what we are aiming for but the opacity level will depend on other colours in the element that you apply the opacity to. One thing to note is that if you apply the opacity value to a specific element, all elements within will inherit the same opacity value. In some circumstances, this can make text difficult to read but there’s usually a compromise that can be reached.

Note: Using the opacity property is one approach for achieving transparency in your web designs but the use of alpha transparent PNG images and RGBa transparency are alternative methods. See also Is CSS3 RGBa ready to rock?

For Internet Explorer, we need to use a couple of proprietary filters to achieve the opacity effect. So, our style sheet rule becomes:

.myclass {
opacity: .5;
-ms-filter:"progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=50)";
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=50);
}

The rather complicated looking filters are for IE8 (second) and IE7 (third line). See the IE Blog for more explanation. There’s a slightly shorter version of the IE7 filter available (for example, see opacity described here) but I’ve used the longer version.

Following on from a previous article about placing text over an image, I have created another example using opacity which shows the effect of an opacity value of .5 and a black background on the text paragraph.

Last year I tried out coworking at Lewes Werks on a couple of occasions and, even though I did not do this as often as I would have liked, I plan to do more of this in 2010. I have been thinking about this for a few days so I thought I would write down a few of the advantages of coworking (as I see it, from a newbie’s perspective).

Firstly, what is coworking? You may have read about it before but here’s the Wikipedia definition:

Coworking is the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space.

Wikipedia

Basically, this means working in a shared or open office with a group of other freelancers. The others might be remote workers who normally work from a home office or they could be coworking aficionados. Either way, here are five advantages of coworking for freelancers.

New ideas come from breaking out of your comfort zone

The opportunity to work across a desk from someone with a different skill set can provide a source of new ideas. Equally, I often find that a new working environment causes my brain to work slightly differently (perhaps it’s just me) and in these situations I have come up with new ideas for existing problems. Either way, more ideas can only be beneficial if you are working for yourself.

Networking, collaborating, and making friends

Yes, yes. We all know that we should be doing more networking, or meeting new people as I like to call it, but many of us don’t do this as much as we could. Well, coworking can give you the impetus to do more and promote yourself and your business. And perhaps make a few new friends while you are at it?! Equally, coworking can easily lead to new business collaborations.

… you get a sense of their honesty, background and profession

People tend to do work with people they trust. It’s a hard and often risky process to hire someone you don’t really know. By getting to know other people first you get a sense of their honesty, background and profession. When the time comes that you do need their skills then it is really easy and stress free to make a decision. Or another situation may be that you refer some work to your coworker. It’s a two-way thing. Others help you. You help others.

Put effort into relationships and in time your business can easily grow. That’s how it generally works, not overnight because real relationships don’t work like that.

Get away from clients to work on your own projects

I work from home but I confess that this is not always so great when you have to keep answering the telephone. Often I need to devote a few hours to something without interruptions and clients sometimes ring at the most inconvenient moments don’t they?! Getting out of your normal (home?) office into a new place can be a great way of isolating yourself from this. I hope to use coworking to do more work on my own projects/websites. Of course, my clients can still email or call my mobile (cell) phone if they really want!

Avoid home office loneliness

Working from a home office has several advantages, for example the rent is low, you can create your own workspace, and it gives you the flexibility to stop and start work when you want. In contrast, some people find that working from home is a lonely, solitary environment. Coworking is a great way to alleviate the loneliness that can sometimes arise from home working.

Coworking can be great for your budget

If you are a freelancer with your own office outside of the home, you will be paying an office rent that will often be a significant part of your budget. If you do not need to rent an office yourself, why not consider coworking? Most coworking spaces will charge for using their facilities but this will often be less than commercial rent because the costs are shared.

If you can find a coworking space near you, why not try it out? I think you might find it beneficial for the reasons above.