Stage of preparation for the development of the site. When to evaluate the budget and conclude a contract?

Question

Freelance

Good day, colleagues.
I've been building websites for a long time. Now I have come to the conclusion that I wanted to systematize and structure the site development process in terms of stages and draw up some kind of script instruction for the project manager. And everything would be fine if not for one question, the answer to which I never found. Share your experience, how to solve the problem?
Design, layout, development, testing - everything is debugged, there are no questions. Question about the approval process. As a rule, they always worked according to the scheme - initial discussion and briefing, research, technical specifications, prototypes - after that, an advance payment and already work. Here are the main problems I see:

1. It is quite difficult to make a TOR without prototypes, since we make detailed TOR with a description of the blocks and functionality. In fact, our prototype is part of the ToR and is attached to it.
   
2. It is also difficult to create a site prototype without preliminary research, during which we study competitors, select references, highlight useful features and blocks.
   
3. Taking an advance payment before the study is possible, but it greatly affects the likelihood of a successful sale. Presentation of the results of the niche analysis and ready-made technical specifications and prototypes with us are the key to a successful sale.
   
4. And finally, taking an advance payment at the very beginning is not an option, since the cost of the project may change during the approval stage.
   

What do you think about this? How do you solve the problem, if not a secret?

Answer 1

1. Always provide a potential customer with a plan of your actions - this can be a hierarchical list of works with various dependencies in the format of an Excel spreadsheet with formulas and conditions (to change the display: background, color, etc.) in the cells.
2. Where the price for this type of work is unknown (it will be known after the completion of the previous items of work) - we put zeros in labor costs.
3. Be sure to write a footnote under the table: "ATTENTION: works with zero cost will not be performed."
4. After that, you can prepare the project in GanttProject without adding work there with zero labor costs and export to PDF.
5. Two documents: xls+pdf - sent as a TCH for approval to the client and attached to the contract.
6. If necessary, we modify the contract with the help of add. agreements to carry out those stages, the cost of which has become known and which are necessary for the client.
By stages of website development: here .
In all other cases, there is no point in working with those who do not want to work.

Answer 2

Once upon a time, I also had the experience of creating sites according to TK and it was a pain - I had to make long-term estimates (which no one ever guessed), spend a lot of time on TK so as not to miss a single detail, shut up the customer with this TK when he is in a month changed his mind .... well, etc.
Since then, only sprints - at the beginning we approximately estimate the complexity of the project in order to determine the development tools and undertake to issue an MVP in N weeks. And then "any whim for your money" - new features == new sprints == pay. It makes no sense for the client to stop after the first sprint - he is interested in the finished product, and changing the contractor is an extra. spending. At the same time, both the client and the contractor have a chance not to continue cooperation after a certain sprint if the relationship suddenly deteriorates. The client himself calculates what he pays for and when to stop.
I will really clarify that lately I work in a large company and in my case "clients" are stakeholders who work in the same company. But in this case, they differ little from the "outsource" client, because they are the customers of the project, they have a certain budget and our cooperation looks exactly as I described above.

Answer 3

based on experience, estimate the approximate number of hours for development - multiply by your hourly rate - adjust according to the Bobuk formula and give such an estimate.
Or give accurate estimates for standard projects, based on previous work, and warn clients that the corrections are NOT bugs, but tastes are paid.

Answer 4

Charge for prototyping.

Answer 5

1) Immediately without delving very deeply, based on previous experience, you can give the customer an approximate price range from ... to ... and if the customer is satisfied with this range, then you can continue the conversation. Some fall off at this stage, these are vozdukhogonov who have no money, but walk around the bazaar and just ask the price. Or ask the customer for the budget of the project, how much he expects, then think only within the budget.
Those. the point is to weed out all the dummies at the very first stage so as not to waste your time on them.
2) For those who have not refused, you need to make a brief and a list of functions or modules and calculate the price tag more accurately. At this stage, you can negotiate with the customer Price +/- 10% for unforeseen situations. Usually sane customers understand that it is impossible to evaluate a project at the start to a penny. You can already make a contract and ask for an advance payment.
3) And when everything is already planned to the smallest detail, then you can already look, and if you made a big mistake not in your favor, then either talk with the customer and change the price (additional agreement to the contract), or refuse (you need to hammer a clause into the contract for retreat option).
For the customer, everything should be transparent and it is desirable not just to tell him the price, but to describe in detail the calculation of what is being done and how much it costs. So the customer will be sure that he is not being deceived, and if it is a pity for money, then he may not do certain items.

Answer 6

Everything that takes time must be paid for, if the payment for the foreplay creates the feeling that this is an order of assurance, then, as already said, include these hours in the cost after the foreplay. For typical tasks, this is clearly not a problem.
As one of the interesting options at the time of entering the development of technical specifications, analysis, prototypes, etc., sign documents stating that the customer will work with you, and if he suddenly decides to retire, then point to the paper. Thus, you can reinforce the feeling that if there is a breakdown, then there will be no big losses. Well, then, when they went beyond the paid (forward or included, read as distributed, in another part of the work) prelude, on the basis of paper 1, they proceed to deeds or sign a second paper that everything is OK and take payment.