How much would you charge?

For this site…

http://www.thegourmetdog.com

Just got finished.

FYI, I deal in measly dollars. :wink:


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Well done, Andrew. My firm would typically charge anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500 for a site like that, mostly because of the e-commerce element.

  • Stephen

freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Beyond fixing a few graphical errors and visual adjustments, I’d agree with “inkspot” due to the e-commerce element. It’s hard these days whether or not to set a package price or do an hourly rate.

I always do hourly and I get mixed reactions, but it works.


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Hi Mitchell and inkspot.

Thanks for the feedback. By the way, what are the graphical errors and visual adjustments you’d make? Just curious.

Andrew.


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Nice job Andrew - tell me - did you take the photographs of the products as well ? If so that would be an extra charge ! especially as they look so good and are a very important part of the site (who would buy if the product didn’t look good)? Roger


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Things I see right away:

  1. The shadow that is on the white background container isn’t transparent (at least in Safari 3.1.1.) Instead you get a white background behind your shadow and some parts of the shadow look black and the other parts look “teal-ish.”

  2. I would have put the footer info under the white container and then added a bottom margin and padding to give it some breathing space.

  3. I’d set the container height to be undefined in the following pages; “Our Philosophy”, “Contact Us”, “Bark It Up” to alleviate the use of empty white space.

  4. I’d set my code to “More Readable” because I went cross-eyed looking at the source code.

  5. The image for the container background could have been handled differently. I see you pre-made the dimensions of the background and placed in the big graphic and the two small pictures. Then saved it as a JPEG which disables the transparency. You’d need to save it as an interlaced GIF or chance it with a PNG (interlaced) (which IE6 doesn’t care for even though PNGBehavior.htc says it’ll be fine.)

  6. A quick run through the W3C validator shows 18 errors, but those look to be things you can’t necessarily control via Freeway. (http://validator.w3.org/)

I’m not trying to cause a stir here. I rather enjoy the look and feel of the site. The photos are great, the colors are great, and the slideshow’s are great. Lots of great things. I’d see my “sightings” to be miniscual fixes and mean them purely constructively.


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

On 27 May 2008, at 04:56, Andrew Macris wrote:

Thanks for the feedback. By the way, what are the graphical errors
and visual adjustments you’d make? Just curious.

Nice site, nice photography. One thing: go to your home page in a
browser, hit Apple+ once or twice and watch what happens …

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Hit the Apple+ key - just wondering, what would you do to prevent this from occurring within FW?

Tony.

On 27 May 2008, at 04:56, Andrew Macris wrote:

Thanks for the feedback. By the way, what are the graphical errors
and visual adjustments you’d make? Just curious.

Nice site, nice photography. One thing: go to your home page in a
browser, hit Apple+ once or twice and watch what happens …

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

On 27 May 2008, at 11:57, Tonsils wrote:

Hit the Apple+ key - just wondering, what would you do to prevent
this from occurring within FW?

Make sure either that all the content was in one DIV with the height
turned off, or in separate inline DIVs also with the height turned
off. Then, when the text gets bigger, everything gets pushed down to
fit, automatically.

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

So Paul - forgive my ignorance but I think ‘div’ is code-speak and I’m not sure I quite understand - I have been messing around with code and dreamweaver for a while so I think I know that a ‘div’ is a div ‘tag’ and it’s a box (html). So are you saying that ALL (ie lots of little html boxes and graphic boxes) the content should be put into one big html box ? and is that the same as ‘nesting’ them. It’s just that i haven’t come across this in any of the Freeway tuts I’ve been working my way through. Thanks for your patience with a newbie. Roger


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

On 27 May 2008, at 12:44, Roger Burton wrote:

So Paul - forgive my ignorance but I think ‘div’ is code-speak and
I’m not sure I quite understand - I have been messing around with
code and dreamweaver for a while so I think I know that a ‘div’ is
a div ‘tag’ and it’s a box (html). So are you saying that ALL (ie
lots of little html boxes and graphic boxes) the content should be
put into one big html box ? and is that the same as ‘nesting’ them.
It’s just that i haven’t come across this in any of the Freeway
tuts I’ve been working my way through.

Yep, got it in one. Sorry for the ‘DIV speak’; I meant an HTML box in
Freeway. If you make a big main one, and call it something like
‘maincontent’, you can then insert, (not draw inside) new boxes in
the main one. You can insert them in the ‘Insert’ menu in Freeway. I
did a little screenshot:

http://www.paulbradforth.com/personalpics//ZZ0B9B3C72.jpg

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

I wrote:

If you make a big main one, and call it something like
‘maincontent’, you can then insert, (not draw inside) new boxes in
the main one. You can insert them in the ‘Insert’ menu in Freeway

Here’s another screenshot with additions:

http://www.paulbradforth.com/personalpics//ZZ2F880CB9.jpg

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Jeez Paul that is so good - I totally understand now thanks to your excellent explanation and screen shots and what a powerful way of keeping the content tidy - it also solved a problem I had (and posted earlier) where the Transition Effect wouldn’t work but “inserting” the html boxed sorted it perfectly. I’m stunned and thanks again. Roger


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

On 27 May 2008, at 13:44, Roger Burton wrote:

Jeez Paul that is so good - I totally understand now thanks to your
excellent explanation and screen shots and what a powerful way of
keeping the content tidy - it also solved a problem I had (and
posted earlier) where the Transition Effect wouldn’t work but
“inserting” the html boxed sorted it perfectly. I’m stunned and
thanks again.

I’m stunned until about 10.30am, you just caught me at a good time :slight_smile:

Rather than mess around with screenshots, I’ve uploaded that little
thing I made in Freeway so you can see it work:

http://www.paulbradforth.com/fwtest/

I’ve added a little picture so you can see it move with the text as
you enlarge the text in the browser.

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

As my main job, I’m a creative director at an ad agency. Came up from the copy side of things though. I hired an up-and-coming photographer for dirt cheap ($100) to do the photos. She actually is my hair stylist! Client had crap to begin with, and I knew they had to be top-notch or no one would buy.

I couldn’t figure out why the shadow wasn’t transparent. Although, I guess I got used to the look. And the client didn’t mind. I probably spent about 70 hours on the site, and I only charged 'em $640. So I guess it’s “good enough”. There was a big learning curve on the e-commerce side of things. The next one will go much, much faster.

As to the text issue, I’m going to keep that in mind for the next job. It seems big enough for me. How many “apple-+'s” do you guys typically allow for? I figure if someone’s legally blind, they should be pretty used to sites getting all jacked up on them. :stuck_out_tongue:


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

On 27 May 2008, at 14:29, Andrew Macris wrote:

As my main job, I’m a creative director at an ad agency. Came up
from the copy side of things though. I hired an up-and-coming
photographer for dirt cheap ($100) to do the photos. She actually
is my hair stylist! Client had crap to begin with, and I knew they
had to be top-notch or no one would buy.

As a professional photographer who has seen his industry decimated (I
don’t exaggerate) by the ‘photography is free’ ethos, I’m dumbfounded
by all this. I’m not really blaming you Andrew, because although you
got your pictures for as close to free as makes no difference, you
got good ones, and I fear for what it portends for the industry;
what’s left of it, anyway. Good job I’m a Web designer too …

As to the text issue, I’m going to keep that in mind for the next
job. It seems big enough for me. How many “apple-+'s” do you guys
typically allow for? I figure if someone’s legally blind, they
should be pretty used to sites getting all jacked up on them. :stuck_out_tongue:

The only real answer to your ‘how many’ question is: none. Sure, you
can get away with one, but why bother? Don’t quote me on this, but I
think a blind person in the UK can sue you if your site is not
accessible to them, if it’s a commercial site.

best wishes

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Andrew

I’m being very picky here but as a sympathetic fellow ex-Agency CD I’ve spotted a very small thing on the home page: the Featured products images are not level with each other. Nanner Nutters looks about 1px higher up than its neighbour. Most people won’t even spot it, but you did ask for feedback. :>)


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

I’ll add one more thing that concerns me. On a 20" display, your default page size is still to large to fit into a fully expanded browser window in Safari (and most IE configs will have even a smaller viewing area).

I think it a safe assumption that many users in your target audience will not have the screen real estate to display much more than 50-60% of the height of your pages.


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options

Hello again folks,

Well, thanks again for everyone’s comments. Seems like I ruffled a few feathers here. Definitely not my intent.

To put some perspective on the photo issue. Client has no $. Hairdresser never had a commercial shoot. Think of it like practice for her. She was more than happy to do it. I, too, was pleasantly surprised at the “value” I got for my money. I would definitely recommend her charging much more on the next job.

Andrew.


freewaytalk mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options