Any design and development project can lead to a lot of assumptions. I had a debriefing yesterday with a client who wasn’t entirely happy with the way the overall project went though they were happy with the end product. After discussing with them at length where they felt it went wrong and how we could avoid making this same mistake in future we deduced that the main cause was based on initial assumptions. I assumed they would be happy organising their own photographs to go onto the site and offering a lot of input to keep control, they assumed my web design quote included a complete re-brand of their company logo and that their feedback wouldn’t be required and so on. The odd assumption I’m happy to fulfill, it’s my fault it wasn’t clarified in most cases, but there were enough to drastically increase the timescale and lead the client to feel I’m less organised than I am, even though I went beyond what was initially required to reach a final product.

Moving forward, we’ve taken their feedback on board and introduced a three-tiered pricing structure. Unless one tier is specifically asked for in terms of function and marketing, any quote we now issue will have three prices, one for each tier and potential clients can work within their budget and expectations to choose the right one before continuing:

Tier 1: Website Design

We provide the website design based on current branding to reflect you and your business, we provide the website editing platform to run the site and make any discussed functionality work. We can offer tips for successful content and search engines and it will be the responsibility of the website owner to copy their text and products into the pages. This is suitable for most businesses who want to retain control.

Tier 2: Website Complete

As with Tier 1 but we work with one of a number of copywriters to get content and sales copy which again reflects your business and build the website completely. You will then have the ability to make any changes to the copy directly through the editor.

Tier 3: Website Marketing

As with Tier 1 and 2 but we also provide search engine optimisation to help push your site up through Google and can optionally manage adword campaigns to really boost traffic to your site. This is definitely the most complete solution so comes at a cost, it does however mean you can step back from the website altogether and concentrate on your own business while we manage the site.

With this in place, potential clients will have more choice to balance requirements and budget and we can avoid making the same mistake in future.

I’ve taken on another client this week, yet another who’s web designer has just disappeared. When you are a new business or just want to save money, often one is tempted to hire a school leaver or someone without much experience to create your brand and/or website for you. It certainly saves money on the initial design, but what when they get a job, or just give up on web design entirely? It’s hard to reject people who have put all their time and energy into you and for a young man or woman, disappearing can be much easier than helping a client out of that mess.

Zako media has a number of options to spread payments or even cut costs, and we have backup systems in place. If we all died tomorrow, there are systems in place to ensure our clients are given an easy transition and don’t suffer because of it.

If you still want to use a cheaper alternative, please make sure the following are in place for your protection and to ensure things continue smoothly:

• Make sure your domain name is in your name and not that of your designer. Check on whois.net to find out. This means that your new designer/rescuer can easily walk you through the steps of regaining control.
• Make sure you know who your domain name is registered with. Even if your designer claims to host the site, often this is on reseller hosting and in his absence, we can go up the chain to the people who hold the actual hardware your website is stored on.
• Get control panel and/or FTP access to your site. This will enable your new web designer to get access to the code used on your site.
• If you can, backup your site regularly and store one each on and off-site for redundancy.

With these in place, it is usually much easier to regain control if the worse comes to the worse. Remember, your website is a business tool, a sales person and you should have control at all times.
If you do lose control of your site or your designer disappears, you can contact me directly on 0208 123 6609 or email me and we will go through the steps necessary to pull your site into somewhere you have access with or without the above information. We don’t usually charge for this process even if you don’t choose us to continue developing the site. This however depends on the size of the site and how easy it is to move. If it’s a large site and the details above are missing, it could take several hours to get something usable.

Alternatively, Derek Sorensen at Website Repairs can help, particularly if something on your site has stopped working.

Last night I attended an amazing Ecademy meeting in London. The meeting had over 200 attendees each one as fascinating as the last. I wanted to share the information we received from the guest speakers that night as already it has proven to be a valuable tool. I will continue using it in my every day life.

French-Burgess Six Step Belief Change System is designed to help you get out of your own way. It is needed by people who want to improve or completely re-invent themselves. It’s a system which helps with motivation, getting things done, and getting things done better than before.

Step 1 - Choose what it is you want.

In my business, I want to become a better networker, I want to be able to approach strangers more easily and talk to them as I do my own friends.

Focus on what it is you want, not what you don’t want. When you focus on what you don’t want, you tend to get it. I don’t want to run out of money and have to ration food, but for this example, I will rephrase it as: I want to keep making money and clear £xxxx per month to ensure I can buy what I want, when I want.

Step 2 - Audit your thoughts.

Take a piece of paper, head it with the choice above and draw two columns below. Head each column: ‘Helpful Thoughts’ and ‘Unhelpful Thoughts’

Now write down all the thoughts you have about the above goal and put them into one of the columns. Helpful comments are positive comments: ‘I need take on new clients’, ‘I could speak to x about distributing’. Unhelpful comments are negative comments: ‘I haven’t got the money to pay for ….’, ‘I’m no good at talking to strangers’, ‘what if it doesn’t work?’

Step 3 - What iffing.

Look through your helpful and unhelpful thoughts and get to know them and understand where they’re coming from. Now take each unhelpful comment in turn, and convert it into a positive ‘What if’ and write these in the helpful comments box.

i.e.
I am no good at talking to strangers.
becomes:-
I do have a skill for talking to strangers.

What if it doesn’t work
becomes:-
What if it does work?
What if it works very well?

Step 4 - Provide Evidence.

When you use ‘What if ….’ negatively, you provide evidence reinforcing the many reasons why you shouldn’t do something. ‘I always mess up conversations with people’, ‘I always end up being stuck talking to the one person no-one else wants to talk to.’

So do the same with the positive ‘what ifs’ you wrote above. Continue each ‘What if…’ with ‘…because…’

i.e.
I do have a skill for talking to strangers because I do sometimes meet some very interesting and powerful people, I have developed contacts that I know I can rely on and talk to whenever I need help. I have received business from some of these contacts, and have made new contacts because of it.

What if it does work? Because I have worked on projects more complicated than this before, and they worked beautifully. I have helped others with similar projects, and they worked fine. I have had a few people literally throwing money at me for other projects they are interested in.

Step 5 - Experience the new situation.

When you think about negative outcomes, do you envisage them? do you imagine being there, imagine the complaining phone calls, imagine the shame, and imagine people saying negative things about you?

Does that really happen? You’ve seen it so many times, you believe it will actually happen, you almost implant a false memory and provide more reasons not to do something.

Again, in reverse, imagine this ‘what if…’ imagine what would happen if it did work, imagine the congratulations and smiles you get from important people. Imagine those phone calls out of the blue ‘Hi, I’ve been speaking to a client of mine and he said that you are fantastic at …. can we arrange a meeting, I have a job for you.’

Mentally rehearse this scenario, what you see, feel, how you walk, how you stand, how you speak to people. Keep rehearsing this in your head over and over.

You now have a goal, you have an emotional connection with the outcome, one which will help drive you to perform better and achieve more.

Step 6 - Imaginary friends.

Would you normally be more relaxed talking to a one-man-band company face to face or the CEO of a multi-national company?

Which scenario would you perform better in? Which would you present to more effectively? Which would you spend more time preparing for?

Would you perform better if your spouse was there? When your business partner or member of staff is present, would you feel more comfortable or confident?

Would you feel more confident talking to high powered business executives if you were one yourself?

If you’re not something you need to be, imagine you are. Don’t say it, else you’ll be lying and could be locked up. Just imagine it. I feel absolutely comfortable talking to this woman because my business has been around for as long as hers and is doing as well as hers. (Don’t use this one if you are offering you’re about to defend them in a criminal case, or specialise in business rescue loans!)

With these pointers in mind, change your mindset, decide that you can do it and provide evidence for this. Visualise the outcome and keep the feeling in memory. Be who you want to be in any situation and achieve all those things you put off until tomorrow.

6 Step Belief Change Official Document from French and Burgess