I have a client who want to include some weird specification for site speed which he is wording in a very awkward way and I am looking for a sensible way to rephrase it so that it does not set unclear expectations, and I am not even sure I should even leave it in the contract.
Here is the what he asked:
"The upload time of the site should be fast no matter where it is opened from (globally fast) "
So of course I could try to set up a loading time in sec that we can agree to meet, but even this is kind of unpleasant type of commitment, as we all know these things can vary depending on so many different parameters.
Anyway, looking forward to read your opinion on this.
You’re right. This is nonsense, and you should resist it, for several reasons.
First, what does he mean by the “upload time”? It’s the page load time that he should be interested in.
Also, the wording is vague and imprecise. And - most importantly - it is impossible to measure page load times in an objective way.The times will enormously according to the location, hardware, amount of network traffic, etc.
Personally, I would go for something like this:
The developer will use his best endeavours to ensure that pages on the site load in a reasonable time, but cannot make any guarantees in this respect.
If anything, you could limit total weight and the number of HTTP requests, but you certainly can’t control external factors like server uptime or network issues.
It might be too late in this case, but I would always prefer to write the contract myself, and then have the client agree it (or otherwise), rather than the other way round. The point is that it is the freelancer who understands the issues involved, and therefore it is the freelancer who is in the better position to formulate the contract terms.
Thanks, I actually use my own contracts - based on the AIGA standard agreements, but the requirements for each projects are the subject of a negociation with the client, and he will be formulating things the way he understand them.