Comments on: Spec work for web developers

By: Joules

Joules — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:12:32 +0000

As a start-up web design company, in my ignorance, was delighted with an e-mail asking for a quote. Once I started to read through their ‘RFP’ I got steadily dispondant, surely they didn’t want me to spend hours answering all these questions…..they did! and yes, I had lots of ideas that would help them, and I am sure many other designers will too, but as you say, they could just gather all the best ideas and hey presto. Anyway I decided against it, and now I am reading your article and replies, this has confirmed that i am right not to waste any more time with this. Thank you all for an interesting read.

By: Edward Marno

Edward Marno — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:06:18 +0000

I am glad that we aren’t the only agency that has this problem! We often encounter this both from a design and from a development poiint of view. To give you an example a PR agency, who were ‘project managing’ the build of a client’s new website, brought us in to actually do all the work (for 40% of the total fee…). They wanted us to produce three or four initial designs and whn we refused, citing the design process we go through to get to that stage, they said it would harm our chances. A standalone freelancer was happy to do several days work for free and ended up getting the job ahead of us, this was 8 months ago and there still isn’t a new web site up. They still have their teletubby-esqe (I kid you not) web design up, I dread to think how much business the client is losing out on as a result. Very frustrating as we had put a lot of work into our intital proposal!

I do find Dave’s comment interesting, although projects are organic, we really liek to nail down the spec from the off as we hate scope creep!

By: Dave McCourt

Dave McCourt — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:01:53 +0000

This is a tricky area. We are a design company and we don’t free-pitch for creative work but we do web development as well and are often asked for in-depth proposals. We do usually do the proposal work but I have been thinking recently it is akin to free-pitching.

We are lucky in most of our work is repeat work with clients we have long-term relationships with, which is the ideal. I’m not sure how we would handle this if we didn’t have that back-up; working for free just isn’t sustainable.

I find a lot of RFPs are trying to jump the gun and clients want and need to know everything that might happen before it has even begun. This just shows a lack of trust and fuzzy thinking. Do clients have no idea what they are trying to achieve or what they will get? It appears that reputation and previous work don’t mean much — nothing can be left to chance. Which is ridiculous as I find most projects (creative to web development) tend to have an organic nature to them, changing and developing over the course of the project.

By: Sarah Parmenter

Sarah Parmenter — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:33:58 +0000

I had this problem a few weeks back, an individual approached me with a very sketchy design brief, cagey about budget and demanded to talk “everything through” on the telephone first. All the alarm bells were ringing so when it came to submitting the “RFP” (quotes intended as the budget no way reflected a proper RFP document) I simply put a breakdown of hours, what would be worked on and for how much, I left out all the ideas that I had for the site and basically ensured it wasn’t a consultancy in writing.

I didn’t get the job, which I was relieved about anyway, but when I followed up with the client, after the same old same old of not hearing from them then you following up yourself, he said that all I had provided him with was a “pricing document” and he wanted a run down of how to improve the site and what I would do to improve the homepage etc.

I politely explained that for the budget we were talking about, there was no way I was going to put in hours and hours of consulting time into a document that would then be taken to a design agency with lesser knowledge than myself and carefully worked through bullet point by bullet point.

He explained that 2 other design agencies he had approached had provided him with such a document and that I was the odd one out for not.

I can only assume the other companies that were able to take on the work within his (eventually) disclosed budget were start ups or off-shore dev companies, therefore – haven’t learnt not to do that yet and what it costs them by doing so.

By: Nathan Davis

Nathan Davis — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:24:07 +0000

I spoke to someone yesterday who was a project manager. He said the same thing especially for government bodies giving sketchy rfp’s lots of companies spending lots of time to respond then the proj would be put on hold more often than not.

The answer – qualify leads

@teedp
Nathaniel Davis

By: a work on process » Weekend Links

a work on process » Weekend Links — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:10:13 +0000

[...] about running a small business. I’m particularly intrigued to see what responses come in to her piece about responding to tenders/RFPs as that’s a topic I’ve been wondering about lately [...]