My Client Revisions Process (for Web Developers)

good morning my name is Chris a Hughes owner founder of a nerds world calm and I'm motivated it's been about ten days since I shot my last video but today I have like three or four ideas and I'm gonna try my best to shoot video after video and edit and uploaded video after video and edit and upload to keep the story short one of my senior managers after three years at a nerds world decided web development is not for them any longer and quit so I've been working my wife's been working extra hard and all my staff has been extra hard work trying to maintain also one of our senior developers had a family illness back in Hong Kong and had to leave so we've all pulled together and been working with long days extra hard to keep up with our clients and that's where I've been no vacations 100% at work if you'd like to find out more and follow us on this journey of web development and entrepreneurship I'd recommend that you follow us or follow me at a nerds world on Instagram and if you're interested in looking a little bit into my personal life and my travels around the world and what not my personal Instagram now I understand these questions might not be the most exciting questions but I believe that these questions are very important in web development and when I was in the beginning stages of my career I really wish somebody would have told me the answer so I thought it was worthy of putting a video together I asked two questions I'm gonna add a third question to it which is relevant to the above two questions let's just jump into this hey Chris this is Shoji tour number one question is what is your revision process let's walk through this when somebody comes through the door we get hired meaning there's a contract signed and a minimum of 50% deposit that's non-refundable once that's put down and we're officially beginning the project the first step is we send a homework list to the client where we request everything this is like a pretty straightforward copy/paste you know we need links to all your social media accounts do you have a logo as a vector file are you gonna have a biography do you have photos and there's a long list of things that any website should have we also accompany that with a Dropbox link where there's individual folders based on how many website pages that the client has requested it paid for so if the client is paid for a 5 page website let's just say home about services blog contact will create a Dropbox folder with the clients name on it and there'll be 5 folders within each of them named what the page name is we share the link with them we also share a copy of the contract is in there as well a copy of the invoice copy of the statement of work if the website is over $5,000 and your homework list now we ask the client to go to work now we don't require absolutely all the content because we could be waiting a long time so we say give us 50 to 60 percent of the content even keeping in mind that text can change photos can change we just want to get started on the project client might take a little time or maybe they're not maybe they're prepared and they have the content to you right away when we receive the content we always say thank you for this content thank you we got it then we start building and so there'll be a project manager such as Ruth Orlando or my wife grace which will feed the content to a chosen developer now based on what the context of the website is we try to find somebody the intro that's interested in that topic or it's generally just good at building the functionality that the client is looking for now we feed that to the developer we ask them for an estimate as to how long it will take say the developer says Chris this is gonna take me seven days based on our current schedule how busy we are I'll tell the client that they will receive something within 14 days I always double up my estimate so that when I sneak in early that they're impressed so all I'll email the client right away thank you for all your homework and all your content if we have any questions we'll reach out to you by phone or email you can expect to see a first draft of your website in 14 days so next step is the developer starts building the he or she gets it to the point where they're really happy then they come to me physically and they sit beside me and say Chris look over everything I've done and similar to my audit videos that I have on this channel I'll go through and literally tell them all the things I want changed they take notes pen and paper or notepad they make the changes then they have to show it to me once again in the beginning stages we're only working off a desktop or laptop we're not working on mobile responsiveness that's the very end of the process once everything else is improved now once the developer is happy with it I'm happy with it I believe we have enough content if we don't have content for certain pages we just put lower absum or dummy photos we use unsplash or pixels com I'll leave links and below very free high-quality stock images just to give the clients an idea as to what its gonna look like and the general layout of the page now once it's passed me and I like it I'm happy with it I'll send out a personal email to the client say here's a link it's hidden on our server nobody else in the world can see this and in this email I let the client know that you have two rounds of revisions on this project and what does that mean it means that we request you to put a long list if if it is a long list a long list of revisions all in one email or one Google Doc and supply it back to us please do not send us one revision at a time we greatly appreciate your time and thank you for the opportunity to work together most cases it's perfect they look at it and they do as I say and they put a long list of revisions together and when we receive it we make sure to change the subject name saying thank you for submitting your first round of revisions and in the email will clearly say you have one more round of revisions thereafter now you were being a hundred percent transparent and upfront there's no secrets as to how many rounds of revisions we were not hired to do this for the next 365 days for the basic sites we allow two rounds of revisions for the custom sites and greater we allow three or four rounds or visions depending on what the revisions are if the client strays the other way and decides Chris I don't want to follow the inerts world process I want to send you one email at a time with one new photo because that's the way I like to do business I'm quick to jump on the email and right away say I appreciate that email you just sent the three words that you put in order like fix my bio it looks nice but I apologize I'm gonna have to ask you to resend us a properly written list of revisions be very direct as to what you are we don't really understand what fixed my bio means so that's it and if it requires depends on the type of person it might require me to jump on the phone very nicely I'm never gonna be alpha male and just be like attacking you like why didn't you listen to me why don't you let no it's never like that what it is is like hey John I just wanted to call you I appreciate that email you're on the ball you're moving really quickly but what I really need you to do is you have to understand we get thousands of emails a week and I do not want to lose your revisions or your content so what I need you to do is to put all your ideas in one email is that okay John and John's gonna say yes that's great Chris and I'll say thank you John I look forward to your long list of revisions that's how my revision process works that was long-winded for a very short question but I wanted to go through the whole process number two is it okay to provide the WordPress admin panel details to the client if he asks during the construction of the site at any well it is going on because there are many things that can be stolen from the back end like exporting the data or theme downloads in some way or backend access to any of the framework before we get the full amount of money so your question is should you give the keys to the palace before you've received your fortune and the answer is hell no no no no I get I'd say one out of every 100 clients says Chris can I get the WordPress access while it's on your server I know you're still working on it I just want to look around the back and see I just want to see what you're doing my answer is no no you're not gonna see that you won't see that until you get full payment and until the websites on your server your hosts then you're free to do whatever you want and if they ask me why I'll be straightforward as outlined in our contract we need full payment before any access is given no secrets here at all and number two if something slips up and you mess up because you're not really very good at navigating through the backend of a WordPress website we're gonna be accountable for it's gonna make more time for us and unfortunately that means that will then have to charge you more money is that what you want Bob and Bob says no I understand for the most part now if the client is big I have some big clients and they call me nicely and say Chris we really want to see the backend of our new site because we're gonna need to know how to upload inventory immediately after this website launches and it's launching in seven days so we want to be prepared send us the access I will still say no I will say please send your IT person your interior whoever is gonna be responsible for inventory send them to our location we'll have a developer log you in we're not actually giving you access you can sit with them spend an hour two hours do a tutorial but that's the only way you're gonna see the backend if you're in front of us just to ensure that nothing slips and to go on this I have a horror story that I'd like to share with you because I learned that lesson in a very different manner let's jump back it was about 2014 two little old women sorry two elderly old women gray hair they look like the Golden Girls came into an arts world and said they have a website developed by a previous developer I have no idea who it is and they weren't able to accomplish certain elements on the website they'd like to hire a nerds world we said we can help and it's wonderful that these I'd say 70 to 80 year old women are in a ecommerce business I loved it I also impressed they were so nice like literally they were like the the grandmother that everyone wants it bring cookies to the office our estimate was 50 hours they wanted this ecommerce element where they were selling videos but the only way you could watch the second video is if you watch the full first video and you answered a short questionnaire and be in a certain percentage so we said 50 hours is our estimate we said we need 50% down we're gonna work on our server they said yes they gave us the 50% down we began working right away now as we got closer to our estimate of 50 hours we're at 40 hours we said you keep adding additional content this is gonna take additional time we need another 20 hours they said Chris no problem we love working with you thank you for everything let's do it an extra 20 hours so now we're up to 70 hours and we only have a 25 hour deposit what's next client launch date goes from like a Friday to a Monday Chris I'm sorry time is up we got ads out there we're generating traffic we need to put this up right now let's go I call and I say I'm sorry I need the remaining money or I can't give you the website they said Chris we trusted you you know we appreciate you you know we're not gonna do anything wrong Chris I need you to trust me this one time and upload the website and I said yes we'll upload the website I'm still hurt by this I uploaded the website without money my heart is racing right now I remember the mall website goes up the whole week goes by they're not answering any of my emails any of my calls by the fifth day I asked a developer log into the backend they said Chris the passwords are changed now I get it I've been scammed again it I tried everything they wouldn't respond so I came in with the email explaining that I'm a young entrepreneur and I know this money might not be a great deal to them but it means a lot to me and I need to pay my staff and my rent so I really appreciate it if they were honest with their promise and they came through and paid the remaining time the woman said her sales weren't as great as projected right and she actually lost money on the first week I said I'm sorry but that's the business your business and not my business she said I want you to apologize for my lack of sales I said ma'am we just built the functionality that you required we didn't it's not our product it's not our video it's not our traffic we weren't hired for marketing she said apologize now or you get nothing so so I'm hungry for money I need the money I said sorry I'm sorry that you're not happy with the website that we built I could have come back and said your product stunk your videos were horrible and nobody wants to watch you or pay for what you're doing but I didn't I said I'm sorry I'm sorry she said I know I know I owe you whatever the amount is $6,000 I've talked about it with my family we're gonna pay you $2,000 take it or leave it we're not gonna pay the remaining and she knew that I knew passwords were changed so I took $2,000 that was an expensive lesson I will never give anyone back-end access within a full payment lastly there are people that come back out in the Woodworks some after days some after weeks some after months and after years of you launching their website and they want free revisions so for my question number three which wasn't a part of this subscriber or Watchers questions I'm gonna add a part three question three is what do you do when these old clients come back requesting free revisions so I received this email Thursday January 24th at five fifty five from Google the subject was just received this from Google and good day I just received this from Google REE their website basically was an attachment that said Google is alerting them that two of the words on their mobile responsive website could be smaller because they're sort of exceeding what do you want to call it the width of a telephone now this gentleman sends us a lot of emails and they're always like very itty-bitty emails I love my clients but we weren't hired for all inclusive for everyone this is not a buffet where you get to eat forever so that was the actual question that we get asked and I just want to show you how I responded maybe this will help you for those clients that just want endless revisions this is my actual email response to that client and remember you're always speaking in a manner that's professional you're always speaking in a manner that is appreciative for that client ever choosing you I appreciate the email our policy and our contract for that matter states that you have seven days to review your website from the date of launch to provide any mistakes or errors that we might have missed any future revisions would be billed at our hourly rate of $120 per hour your website will require regular maintenance revisions updates tweaks and modifications they're not included in the original price of building a website at a nerds world text edits adding new sections and changing photographs are very easy to do on your hand and if you're in the neighborhood we can offer you a free mini tutorial to teach you how that being said I will have these items mentioned in your previous email fixed 100% free every time a new update comes out for an iPhone Android or various browsers you will see a slight change to your website this is the nature of what development and websites are always changing for the better I will email you once these two issues are fixed today thank you and have a great day Chris client says thanks understood so I think the issue with development is not that clients are all crazy and just want endless revisions although some are I think the problem is just communication a lot of developers fear losing the relationship with the client by simply being honest and upfront as to what your responsibility is based on the pay that you've taken from that client so the lesson learned from all three questions should be just transparency let the client know this is what you want this is how you want it this is how many of these things that you get revisions and keep the relationship positive speak nicely be passionate that's it my name is Chrissy Hughes owner founder of an arts world stay tuned I'll shoot a couple more videos today and we'll talk soon goodbye

Channel: A Nerd's World

Views: 6,080

Keywords: client revisions website design, web developers revisions process, how to deal with client revisons, web developer revisions from clients, web dev client revisions

Id: dZEubzpud3U

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 26 2019