How should I price my website design?

[neckdive]

Thanks for the reply. It's funny that you mentioned the stuff you did because the sites I have up and running were themes / templates that I gathered from the web and nothing that I created from the ground up. I'm really not that creative minded so starting from scratch might not be my cup of tea, but I would like to learn a lot more so I can spot those errors and prevent them from affecting future projects. I'm currently working toward a second Bachelor's Degree in IT (my first is in Business Administration). I originally chose a concentration in information management but just switched to a concentration in Web Development. The only class I've had thus far was an entry level html class so I'm really anxious to get into the core classes and expand my knowledge!

From now on, if you start with a template, only choose one that is responsive, no exceptions. Your current sites don't work well on devices other than desktop.

There is a big difference between a web developer and web designer so don't confuse the two. It's not a matter of semantics either. As a developer you are interested in performance, security, building the proper infrastructure so that the site can scale, etc. Designers make it pretty. UX is both design and development. So on a professional level, if a designer created a website in PhotoShop, you as the developer would have to make it function properly.

The learning curve is steeper than many professions because the speed at which the technology moves is much faster than most other fields. Whatever you learn in school will be vintage information when you finish. Build stuff from scratch in php, asp, html5, js and css. Learn what api's are and how to use them. Create a LAMP stack and learn MySQL. Figure out how to populate a database, read from it, then secure it from hackers. Take one of the sites, perhaps your own, and recreate it completely using Drupal and/or Ruby on Rails.

You'll learn faster if you build sites yourself. You won't learn anything just copying other people's code, changing the look of it, and reselling it.
Freelance web design and development is a tough business because everyone thinks they can do it. Customers with the least amount of money will give you the most amount of grief.

To use a bass analogy, forget gigging for now. You need to get in the shed and invest in yourself dramatically broadening your skillset.

Having said all of that, the web development field is currently a very crowded place with many people out of work that can code websites from scratch in their sleep. If I had to start all over and learn something new today that combined IT with design, it wouldn't be web development, it would be CAD and 3D printing. In other words, "don't skate to where the puck is, skate to where it is going to be." Wayne Gretsky

Food for thought.

 

[rydin4lifebass]

What certain things do you look for in a responsive web site? It seems like many of the things that people want or find "attractive" about a website don't translate to mobile devices. Do those of you who do this type of things look for certain criteria when creating a website or leave out certain features in order for a site to be more responsive to varying resolutions and mobile devices?

Also, is there a certain sites (or sites) that you recommend using to find good responsive templates/themes?

 

[Daniel109]

hover over menus don't work on mobile devices, because they are touch screen and don't have a mouse.
hover over menus generally are only good for links, not content
to make the site more attractive you might want to align things to a grid layout. for text you should generally use a sans serif type for the headings and serif type for larger bodies of text.
Keep it simple. don't be afraid to leave plenty of white space.

 

[neckdive]

What certain things do you look for in a responsive web site? It seems like many of the things that people want or find "attractive" about a website don't translate to mobile devices. Do those of you who do this type of things look for certain criteria when creating a website or leave out certain features in order for a site to be more responsive to varying resolutions and mobile devices?

There's a current philosophy among top designers that you should think mobile first. Think about how you want to convey the content properly on a small screen and a slow connection. It forces you to get rid of the extra nonsense that you might otherwise build into a desktop only design. So as a result, you end up with an efficient site with content that matches across devices.

A lot of it is also good ole fashioned salesmanship. You have to confidently explain that some of the things they may find attractive won't necessarily translate into more traffic or business. Try to take one of your current sites and redraw it out as a mobile site. How would YOU want to see it if you were coming there for the first time? Study other mobile sites and take note of the features, menus, etc that you hate or like. Why do you hate or like those features?

 

[rydin4lifebass]

Makes sense...thanks guys! When I look at examples of mobile sites or responsive sites, there are many things that seem similar and there definitely doesn't seem to be the variety that there is with sites designed for a desktop environment. Looking at the Google Analytics of the sites I have, the Windows OS far outweighs the Android and iOS environments, but that's not to say that Android and iOS aren't important so I definitely want to be aware of those viewers as well.

Do you think there's a large benefit to having one responsive website versus a desktop site along with a mobile optimized site? The obvious downfall is two designs, and seemingly duplicate work but it seems as though it would provide the best of both worlds, just curious to here your thoughts.

 

[tastybasslines]

Check out themforest.net hundreds of responsive sites that look just as good on desktop as they do mobile. Mostly incredible designs, for about 50 bucks.

 

[rydin4lifebass]

Will do tastybasslines ..thanks! Most of the ones I've seen looked very, very similar with little variety. That's not to say they weren't very nice and professional, just very similar. It made me think it would be better to have a completely different site just for smaller mobile devices. I suppose it's all subjective and there are probably times when one responsive site is great and others when two sites are the way to go. I guess it just depends on what features the business wants as well as how most of the clientele is using their site.

Also, when you go to a site like theme forest, are you basically searching for "responsive" to find just templates tagged as responsive or are you just looking for templates that you feel would work well on a mobile device...just trying to understand the best or most common way to approach it.