Excellent advice! I intend to link to it from our website, and to point all potential clients to this article.
I do agree with adwebs - rather than 100% money back guarantee, we tell our clients that we won’t stop working until they’re happy. Of course, we back it up with telling them that 50% of the cost isn’t due until implementation, so that probably helps.
IMNSHO, the most important question a client can ask themself is “what is my measure of success?” Most have no clue. They dream about “#1 in Google” without having anything for a visitor to do (no less ever come back). It all stems from not having a business plan to guide STRATEGY. The value a professional brings is to help build, or stick to, a strategy. This blows away “are the pages short?” That’s nonsense. The most important thing a “designer” can do is ask “Why” and force the client to THINK. It’s a lot tougher than it sounds 
I tried posting this comment once already, but apparently it didn’t appear.
I offered my thoughts on the article here:
What can I say, great article and she is incredibly good looking. What more can you ask for!
Yeah, I’m not too sure that a money back guarantee for a service is ever a good idea, it’s not like a book or DVD which can be returned without too much loss to anyone. Brendan recommends this in the WDBT, and in theory if the client signs approval sheets for each stage of the project, the worse that can happen is you have to refund the last unapproved stage, but…the idea of having to refund an awkward client for say, 15 hours of my life is not someting I look forward to. 
We offer a guarantee on our work, but not a ‘money back’ one - i.e. if there’s a bug/error in the scripts we created, we’ll set about fixing it straight away and free of charge, although this is null and void if any third party starts messing with the site.
There’s quite a few threads on this subject knocking about these forums, worth a read.
I’m with shadowbox on the guarantee thing. I promise my clients that I’ll fix any errors, but they have to approve everything in stages – so it would be difficult to assess just where their dissatisfaction came in…or were they just dissatisfied with having to make that final payment?
And then you have that one client who will never understand the internet and web design, that one who thinks a website should fit on the 8-1/2 X 11 sheet of paper that they’ve held up to their monitor…(yes that really happened to me, and no I don’t work with them anymore.)
Re: money back guarantee
Sorry, I meant for it to be a general remark about services but the editor had made a few changes and I just noticed it now. I agree that a full money back guarantee does not work well with services such as web design. However, your contract should state some kind of policy to protect your client in the event that they want to cancel their service or are dissatisfied with the work. It has also been suggested to me to collect payments after reaching an approved milestone in the project and this way the client would only be paying you up to the point that they were dissatisfied… if it didn’t work out. It’s similar to what shadowbox had mentioned. However, if clients are careful in choosing their designer to start with, they wouldn’t have to care much about money back guarantees
This is the third time I’ve tried to post a comment here, pointed to my blog. Apparently you don’t support URLs, or don’t care for my opinion. Hopefully it’s the former (and you ought to state the lack of URL support somewhere), so here are my thoughts:
It’s a decent article, and I only have one complaint. She offers two long lists of questions you should ask about your requirements and the designer’s portfolio. However, she never suggests that you should ask “do you want an attractive site?” or “do you the designer’s sites appear artful?”
This isn’t surprising, given that the writer is a Web designer. In the designer/client relationship, I guess the former is supposed to be the purveyor and connoisseur of the art. While all that practical information is useful, I’d like to read an article called “What Makes Websites Attractive?” or “From Toulouse-Lautrec to HTML—An Artful Website Primer”.
This is a good article that I will direct my clients to, to help them decide which way to go when they want a website. But I do take issue with the point about “do links open in the same page”…how in the world is that a sign of good web design? I mean, we all know excessive popups are not user-friendly, but I certainly would not consider this a measure of a quality website. There are several valid uses for opening links in new windows, and I would hope a client who can’t tell the difference isn’t confused by this remark.
I had the same thought as rachelm, there are situations when a link should not open in the same browser.
The item “Are the pages short, so that it’s not necessary to scroll horizontally, and there’s little or no vertical scrolling?” isn’t necissarily valid either. Many sites with text articles require vertical scrolling, and some people prefer a long page to many short pages - I hate having to load a new page after reading 3 paragraphs of a story. Hopefully readers of this article will realize there are exceptions to that rule, unless they believe Susan Villecroze thinks this site was poorly designed.
I don’t think links should pop up automatically. If people want them in a separate window, they can choose to do so with a right click.
By saying little or no vertical scrolling… what is really meant is no excessive vertical scrolling. An article that is too long should be split into several pages. Little and excessive is interpreted differently by everyone though. Also keep in mind that although this article may look fine on a desktop, it will be too long on a handheld device. More and more people are using smart phones and PDAs to get at web content these days.
What to say about the vertical scrolling here?
(lol)
This article is a lot like a condensed version of my book “How To Build A Website And Stay Sane”, which I wrote as an educational resource aimed at business owners wanting to hire a web developer. The book is available for download free from http://www.stay-sane.com/download/ and covers the issues raised by Susan in more depth.
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Sensible advice, all of it. I wish more shops would listen to it.
I was recently passed over for a webmaster job in favor of another graphic artist (who uses Dreamweaver and doesn’t know how to code), because the potential employer did not want a designer coding PHP/MySQL/HTML for fear that the secretaries couldn’t edit copy. (The secretaries know how to use Dreamweaver, you see.)
Talk about lack of education in a subject causing the delivery of inferior results!
I’ll be refering potential clients to this article so they have a basic understanding of what to look for before hiring me. It’s not too long and is easy to take in yet covers all the points to look out for. It also promted me to ad some more info to my site.
This is a good article form the perspective of the freelancer as well. It helps to know my strengths and the potential weakness of larger firms when making a proposal or bid
“This is a good article form the perspective of the freelancer as well. It helps to know my strengths and the potential weakness of larger firms when making a proposal or bid”
Totally agree with that. Very nice. i’m even thinking of putting a link to this article on my website as an advice to future clients.
I don’t agree with the 100% money back guarantee. what are you thinking? so basically if you’ve put 30+ hrs in on a website and he client states they aren’t happy, you’re left with nothing. you wouldn’t get an architect to draw up and build a house and then have him start and half way through decide you don’t like it.
QUOTE:
"I don’t agree with the 100% money back guarantee. what are you thinking? so basically if you’ve put 30+ hrs in on a website and he client states they aren’t happy, you’re left with nothing. you wouldn’t get an architect to draw up and build a house and then have him start and half way through decide you don’t like it.
Posted by: nick Oct 4th, 2005 @ 6:14 AM EDT"
RESPONSE:
Actually, this would not happen. Most development is fed back to the buy due to the fact that the developer doesn’t want to waste his time, nor does the buyer. Everything is checked and if things aren’t liked then they are changed. This was very helpful and pretty accurate.