self employed web designer - steps you take for inital talks

[unwashed potato!]

i feel so guilty that i don't use this skill any more and it sucks as i'm starting to forget the basics. i do other things so it's not laziness but perhaps concentrating on other areas which i can see wont be as rewarding as this nor are they as enjoyable.

i've done work for family, friends, myself, and even real customers but a long time ago.

first what i'm struggling with is to understand how others deal with the initial starting process when someone approaches you. how do you get what the customer wants from a website. do you get them to fill out forms, questionnaires, just a phone conversation, and what do you ask? I know peopel have said before to meet up but as i'm new to this i'd feel more comfortable having the freedom to prepare my answers to questions they'd have

how then do you start planning what someone wants? with family i've literally had all the freedom i want so i just make a site i like, and the same for me i will design something i like, but with a customer (especially one i've never met) i'm hitting a blank of where i'd start.

then finally what's the normal procedure once the customer agrees to go ahead. do you send contract/invoice, get deposit (if so how much), agree to make say 3 designs. what if customer really dislikes them and would they be coded or photoshop?.

i think once i'd get going it'd get fine but i'm put off by a lack of preparation. i like to feel like i'm at least somewhat prepared even though this ends up holding me back from actually going out and doing it and learning from mistakes.

 

[UncleBob]

Discuss their requirements, but make sure you tie down exactly what they are after in writing and get them to commit to that in writing with a signature. It's also a good idea to tie them down to a progress and payment schedule, with part payment as each module is completed. If you don't pin them down you'll fall victim to the dreaded 'Spec Creep'.

You may quote for a 5 page brochure site but before you know it they will be expecting a CMS, e-commerce, a forum and god knows what else as part of the bundle and they won't expect to pay any extra for it.

As for the design, you'll almost certainly be designing for clueless muppets unless you happen to chance upon an established company with an existing brand identity. The latter are a doddle - they inevitably have a design bible covering every aspect of print such as fonts, layout and colour specs that can be easily adapted to suit the web identity.

The muppets however, will be asking for all sorts of crap such as animated flames, farty mouse pointers, stupid javascript water reflections and all that tat so you have to be pretty ruthless with them and be prepared to argue against some of their more hapless ideas - you are the web designer and should guide them accordingly. You want something you'd be proud to put in your portfolio, and they'd rather have an effective site at the end of the day.

Get a deposit - how much is up to you and may well vary from project to project.

Try to avoid 'European Development Agency' projects as they are inevitably poorly managed and will push clueless start-up clients at you with the lure of a 'free' website. Any SME start-up getting a website for 'free' will either muck you about or have a lemming-like tendency to go bust and these schemes usually only pay upon completion.

Spec designs should be image only. Rather than doing working HTML roughs, I'd sit the client down to look at a mock-up(s) in photoshop with layers to show rollovers, heading changes etc as it avoids wasting time knocking together spurious mark-up that will inevitably get redone later.

 

[FlyingPig]

I'm in the same boat as the OP. Mainly some design for friends with the occasional "real" project, and I'm also struggling a bit. I'm not a proper web designer and do it mainly as a hobby, using Joomla and some commercial templates, which is how I can do it quickly and cheaply.
A few weeks ago I had a friend who wanted a photography site. She doesn't have any idea about web design and about costs involved. I've stopped doing things for free and since I was busy with other (non-web) work, I told her she'd need to pay a bit. Then she comes up with the "offer" of 50GBP... I said that's not really going to be worth my time at all so in the end we agreed on 100GBP for a website I could set up very quickly. Turns out she really wanted a really ugly black design that looked right out of the 1990s, which I found out is not that easy to replicate in Joomla. In the end I got so frustrated with it all, especially because I was hardly going to earn anything on this, that I pulled out and said "sorry, I can't do this".
Now I have another guy approaching me and at least he's offering quite a bit more so let's see what we can do now. Still it's not easy trying to find out what the client wants. Been waiting ages now for some information in terms of layout, colours, content, etc. He paid for a previous website so I trust him but especially for us guys not doing this full-time, it's a bit tricky to do, I find anyway.