We fully realize every project is different, which seemed to be the biggest contributing factor to pricing not being shared. It’s not fair to charge a one-size-fits-all price for every client or project, but sharing an average could be just fine and very helpful for potential clients.

With that in mind, we took take an average of a few recent projects and shared some data from them. Clients can look our pricing to quickly see if we’re going to work out for them. We just want to make it easier for everyone to judge whether we’re a good fit. We don’t want to waste your time if we’re not going to work out for you.

Since we’re on the subject, we’d prefer that you looked at our work, then our process, then our pricing. We say that because we believe price—while important—is a comparatively small part of considering who to hire. Yeah, you can find someone cheaper. You’ll be hard-pressed, however, to find someone with the right combination of:

• Having the skills to deliver what you need
• Understanding what you’re doing and how to tell your story
• Caring enough about your project to do it right the first time

As of this writing, theres no contest: ship mobile apps if you can afford it. Our usability studies with mobile devices clearly show that users perform better with apps than with mobile sites. Mobile sites have higher measured usability than desktop sites when used on a phone, but mobile apps score even higher.

via Mobile Sites vs. Apps: The Coming Strategy Shift Jakob Nielsens Alertbox

Not to mention that you still can’t quite do all the things on a mobile-optimized or responsive website. There are some fantastic things coming out of the CSS3 and HTML5, like being able to detect the tilt of your phone. Despite all that, the web still can’t match the mobile app experience yet.

Part of why I see mobile apps being the best choice right now is how familiar the UI can be for users if you create a native mobile app. Let’s use iOS as an example. It provides a lot for you: tabs and other easy ways of navigating, slick transitions, an already defined and easy to customize set of design elements that have been proven to work well.

You use these elements (and customize them so your app doesn’t look generic) and focus on presenting your app’s content in a pleasing way.

Of course, mobile geeks could quickly point out that you can make your site a mobile web app; while you can certainly do that, you’ll likely end up re-creating a lot of what the operating system can handle for you: back buttons, action buttons, page transitions, tabs, and the list goes on. You can certainly make a great-looking mobile app that works with multiple devices, no questions. You just have a little more work to do.

Nielsen also points out that this strategy is best for now, and will one day change. But for now, mobile apps beat mobile websites hands down. I agree.

Set up an LLC or S-Corp.

You can operate as a sole proprietorship if you’d like, but that leaves your personal assets open in case something goes south with your business. LLCs are nice, and pretty simple to set up. The forms, paperwork and fees vary by state. You can handle this yourself with a little searching on your state’s Secretary of State website. If you’d rather someone handle it, legalzoom.com or a lawyer can help you with this.

Get the paperwork out of the way.

You’ll need to file for your LLC in your state, and you may have to apply for other local permits in both your city and county.
You’ll also want to get:

• Federal Tax Number
• You’ll give this to people who hire you when you fill out a W9
• Here’s the link to the IRS’ site, where they’re free. There are companies who provide these for a fee, and you can safely avoid them.
• Employment Security number (if you’re setting up payroll)
• Where you go depends on your state
• Articles of Organization if you’re forming an LLC or other company
• Available from your state’s Secretary of State’s website

Get a bank account.

To set up a business banking account, you’ll need to have your LLC officially formed. You’ll want to keep your business’ funds separate from your own, else tax time will become nightmarish.

Get a lawyer.

They can help you with setting up your LLC, creating solid agreements, reviewing client agreements, and being there when things go south.

Get a CPA.

They’ll help you prepare for taxes, as well as find lots of ways to reduce your tax burden. They’ll also help prepare your tax returns, which gets tougher when you have a company and a personal return. They also help you understand what you can write off on your taxes.

Get an agreement.

This can’t be stressed enough. You’re asking for a lot of confusion, anger and stress if you don’t. Your lawyer can help you. Alternatively, you can use our Plain English, lawyer-vetted client agreement.

Find out how clients will pay you, and when.

This is more for your benefit. Usually half down and half upon delivery is acceptable on shorter projects.

For longer projects, it may make sense to bill when you hit certain milestones. For example, on a 6 month project, you may want to bill once at the outset, once when you deliver comps and once when you complete the project.

More than anything, get this figured out before you jump into a project with a client so that your expectations both match up.

Get some invoicing/bookkeeping software.

Billings for Mac, Harvest and FreshBooks are all great. Personal experience: things are a little hairier with Billings Pro if you have more than one person using your software, even if you pay for the extra seat. Using a good old spreadsheet is ok, but I saved a lot of time by switching to billing software.

If you find yourself away from your main workstation a lot and you’re an iOS person, check out Billings or Harvest. It has an iPhone app, which is pretty handy.

Get a website.

Even if it’s something simple, people need to know how to get in touch with you and what you do.

Get on Twitter or some other way to connect with people.

Talk about what you do, and connect with other people who do what you do. Also, connect with people who could hire you.

Plan for taxes.

If you’re not into the CPA idea, make sure you plan for (and pay) your quarterly taxes. In the past, I used 25% as the number I needed to save for taxes. We pay quarterly, and our CPA ended up getting us a slight refund. We dug that.

Pay yourself a salary.

Don’t just take everything (remember, we’re planning for taxes), take a reasonable salary. You can set up payroll for your company, or just write yourself a check each week. Long-time Freelance tip: if you pay yourself via payroll, it’ll be easier for you to get a loan for a house.

There are lots more things to consider, too, and I’m sure you guys can add more. Tweet us and we’ll keep this updated with your ideas.

Photo via bumblebeelovesyou

I first got the idea from a post on 24Ways a few years ago where Andy Clarke shared his agreement. It wasn’t written or reviewed by an attorney and needed a few tweaks, but it got me started and I was thankful for it.

So, here’s the one our clients sign. I wanted to make it easy for you to plug in a few things and get rolling, so you’ll find that there are a few spots where you can just drop in some information, like who you are, the project’s cost, etc. It’s also been attorney-vetted, so that’s always a plus.

This agreement covers about everything you’d need when designing a website or app:

1. Who’s who in the agreement
2. What you’re doing for them, and what you’re delivering
• This also covers what browsers you’re going to test in, and I’ve updated it in light of Mozilla and Google’s auto-updating browsers.
3. The scope of the project
• How long the project will last
• How changes are handled
4. What the project costs and when you get paid
5. The client’s responsibilities
6. Who owns what at the end and who has publishing rights
7. How support is handled
8. Canceling the contact
• This covers who owes what, and what’s expected of both parties
• It also keeps the rest of the agreement’s protections in place
9. Other miscellaneous things
• That you’re working as an independent contractor, and not an employee
• This contract can’t be moved over to anyone else without both parties’ consent
• If one part of this agreement isn’t enforceable, the rest stays in place
• Where the contract is governed (usually your state)

That said, I’m happy to share it with you. Please adapt it, remix it and redistribute it.

Get the agreement →

Right now, I use media queries to do that; it’s fun and pretty, but adds a a little weight to the site. That’s why I was especially stoked to see that someone put some icons together in a font. This lets you put in one icon and not have to worry about exporting a larger duplicate.

They’re free, too. So grab them. I’m itching to try them out myself.

Modern Pictograms – The Design Office.

Why not? Because each browser handles displaying elements differently; often it isn’t the best use of your client’s money to give users the same pixel-for-pixel experience on every browser.

What’s important is something called graceful degradation, because it focuses on letting users access what’s important—the content—regardless of what their browser supports. The best browsers get to display the best features like drop shadows, rounded corners, sweet CSS-based animations and other goodies. Browsers that can’t support those still get the best experience they can afford; sometimes that means no rounded corners on your buttons (hi, Internet Explorer 7 and 8 users).

Of course, it’s possible to add these things after the fact with jQuery and the like, but I’ve found it really just makes things cumbersome when you go to update something a year or so down the road.

You also need to ask yourself if supporting an older browser is right for your site. Take a look at your Google Analytics reports (you do have that, right?) and see what percentage of your visitors use Internet Explorer, and what percentage of them use older browsers like Internet Explorer 7 (or 6 even). Depending on the size of your site, 3% may be the magic number for dropping IE6 support. Other sites it may be 15%. It really all depends on how many visits and page views you get per month from that browser.

It’s nice to know that since Microsoft, Chrome and Firefox (Apple, you out there?) are turning on auto-updates, since discussions like this will one day be irrelevant. Seriously, thank you, Redmond.

While it’s important to consider your users, you also need to make sure you’re using looking forward and using the best technology possible for your site. If you keep looking back to support older browsers, your site’s current version won’t stay as fresh as it could.

First up: making it simple for clients to send you any size file, without having to use things like YouSendIt or FTP.

We found a great WordPress plugin called Front End Upload, and I can’t wait to make this work for our clients. Thanks, Monday By Noon!

Some people still like shit work. They can spend an hour moving Twitter accounts to special Lists, and then at the end of it look back and say “Boy, I spent an hour doing this. I really accomplished a lot today!” You didn’t. You did shit work.

It’s great that Facebook finally got user lists right: they’re smart, useful and respectful of users’ time. Google+ makes it tough for users to get started by requiring them to add friends to circles. I don’t want to do that (and definitely not at first), I just want it to work. Which is why I’m still not really active on Google+. Twitter’s implementation of lists is ok, in that I can still follow people I want and not be forced to think about making a list.

While the article references how social networks integrate lists, there are so many other ways users get stuck with menial tasks. Filling out forms, categorizing information, phone trees, etc. etc. It’s boring and I’d rather be doing more interesting things (read: checking out funny photos of cats).

Things are looking up though. Our mobile devices are handling organizing our music, photos and documents, so we don’t have to worry about where/how we store all our little things if we don’t want to. We need more things trending in this direction.

How can we help this, as it relates to building apps and websites? Build things with the user in mind. They’re busy and don’t appreciate their time being wasted. They just want to get in and get out, so help them along the way as best you can.

So many forms are poorly thought out on websites, and some just need a little more love; I think forms are as important as typography for sites and apps which rely on them as big way to get information from visitors.

UX Movement posted a great article, Another Case for Using Top Aligned Form Labels, which reinforces my why forms should have top-aligned labels.

In short:

1. It’s simpler for mobile users, especially when they zoom in on a page. (See the above graphic)
2. International users who translate your site labels may break your design when viewing it in another language.
3. Top-aligned labels (when the form is designed correctly) are quicker to read than left-aligned labels