Numerous ways you can remove blockers from your website creation processes and reduce timelines while creating quality product and happy clients. Topics to discuss include:
1. Combining the design and development phase into one efficient process, starting with a discussion and a sketch.
2. Presenting ONE design to the client, and how to get it in front of the client quickly.
3. Which meetings you need, why you need to present your designs (actually, design) in person, and how to schedule them ahead of time and include those dates and times in your Scope of Work / contract.
4. Holding yourself accountable and not taking on too many projects at once.
5. How having a good, WordPress specific hosting company (we use WPEngine) can save you time and stress.
6. Picking a well supported, constantly updated, super-powered theme (we use Divi, I know many use Genesis) that you use as a base for all client sites to save time with a) a learning curve, and b) unexpected issues like incompatibility with WooCommerce or limitations in design.
7. Do what’s best for your client in all cases – for us this often means allowing them more time to gather their content and even work with a copywriter before we begin charging them. At the same time we do offer the option to help them with that process, but it will cost them money. It is entirely up to them. Another way we do this is to give them 100% ownership of their site including domain name and hosting, as opposed to reselling that to them. This is something we’re considering changing but only for clients that opt into the service as part of a payment plan.
Other advice to be inserted throughout the talk includes: Holding your clients accountable just like you do yourself, never starting ‘immediately’ even if you technically can, and thoughts on billing (not to underprice, to consider weekly billing to avoid the damaging effects of scope creep to your income, and the idea of a long term payment plan which we are ourselves toying with).