All the elements are on a transparent background so you should be able to drag and drop them straight onto your own designs.

You can download my web design elements psd right here.

The simple answer is work out how many hours you think the project will take and multiply by your hourly rate, but how accurate can you be when estimating the total number of hours a project will take?

You may estimate that a project will take 80 hours to complete but as everyone knows in this industry, things don’t always run as smooth as you’d like. What if your initial design gets rejected after spending 14 hours on it? What happens when you hit a stumbling block when accessing a clients server that throws you a couple of days behind?

There are freelancers out there that won’t give fixed price quotes for that very reason, they’re not comfortable with it. This approach will actually end up costing them money, as more likely than not the client has a budget in mind and they want to know the project can be completed within that budget. An hourly rate doesn’t give the client confidence the project won’t overrun and end up costing them more than they can afford.

The reality is, there is no simple method to providing a fixed price quote, the more experience you have with web project, the more likely you are to be able to give an accurate quote. The method I use is to work out the hours I think the project will take and then factoring in a certain amount of time (depending on the size and complexity of the project and also equally as importantly the relationship with the client) to allow for any potential issues. In most cases it works, but it doesn’t always go to plan.

I’m a big advocate of the brilliant online accounting software FreeAgent (review and discount code here) to manage all the financial aspects of my business and I’ve recently started using their time tracking facility on fixed price projects to work out project profitability. Over time this will help me to make my quotes as accurate as possible and highlight any areas where I may or may not be over running with time. As with all things digital, it’s a constantly evolving process.

The problem I have with a lot of these systems is that they’re very bulky. Sometimes you need a solution that is much smaller and won’t be daunting for your client the first time they log in to the admin area to edit their website. That’s where Perch steps in. Perch ‘the really little content management system’ is aimed at sites that don’t need a huge CMS. It’s quick to install, very designer friendly and has a nice price too (£35+VAT).

There are a couple of reason why I like Perch so much. Firstly, it’s very quick to install and setup – I recently converted a small 6 page static html website to being fully content managed in an afternoon (and that was the first time I’d ever used it!). Secondly, the admin area is a breath of fresh air. It’s simple, intuitive, brandable and very user friendly, there’s no need to give clients a walk through of the system which makes my job that little bit easier.

Of course, there is room for improvement with Perch. At the moment, as it’s fairly new to the market the support is still growing and it doesn’t have the large community that some of the larger CMS’s have. That said, the responses I’ve had from the support team have always been very quick and helpful. It would be great to see some more tutorials on the Perch site to see how far it can be pushed.

All in all, I would definitely recommend Perch to anyone looking for a simple content management system to add to a small website!

http://grabaperch.com/

Use a generic email

I appreciate that clients will look around to get the best deal, but I also appreciate it when emails contain at least some personalisation, even if it’s just the inclusion of a name.

CC everyone into the same email

Ok this one doesn’t happen all that often but when it does it’s shocking. You receive an email and see 20+ other designers cc’d in. I like gambling, but not that much.

Make lots of spelling mistakes

Everyone makes mistakes when they type and I can forgive a few errors, but when the majority of the words you write are spelled wrong I lose confidence in you.

Explain your idea badly

The less information I get the more dubious I am. If you really want an amazing website creating, talk about your project with the enthusiasm and detail that it deserves.

Ask for prices without any project information

I really hate this one, an email with no introduction, no project details but requesting prices. It immediately makes me think you’re just a competitor doing a bit of price research.

Tell me that you haven’t got much money to spend

Quite simply, if you’re not prepared to invest the money then I’m not prepared to invest the time.

Have you got any particular irks when receiving new business emails? I’d love to hear them!

Should you want to pick up a copy of CS5 Master Collection in the UK then you can expect to pay £2,706.02GBP. Now I know that the pound isn’t particularly strong against the dollar at the moment but I have to say that is completely ridiculous. A quick conversion (using Google’s current exchange rate) of the US price to pounds comes out at £1767.32, which means that UK customers are paying almost £1,000 more than customers in the US. Am I the only one that finds this a little bit unfair?

After a few days of testing it quickly became apparent that FreeAgent was a great fit for my business. I’m not going to have an in depth look at every feature that FreeAgent offers, the trial can do a better job of that than I ever will, but what I will try and do is explain why I rate it so highly.

First and foremost, FreeAgent is a UK based business. The software understands UK business and tax better than any of it’s competitors, it’s all very straightforward and intuitive. Right from the off it really feels like it’s tailored to your business, you’re prompted to choose your business type: Sole Trader, Partnership or Limited Company after which the interface changes to meet your requirements.

FreeAgent’s dashboard provides you a great overview of all that’s happening with your business – open/overdue invoices, projects with unbilled time, profit and loss for the year so far, recent timeslips, and open/recently approved estimates. If that doesn’t float your boat, you can customise the overview page to meet your needs.

Another great feature is the ability to import your electronic bank statements and explain transactions as money in or money out. As you begin to use this feature you really notice it’s worth as FreeAgent learns from your explanations and starts to save you the time, while at the same time building a picture of the money coming in and going out of your account.

Finally, FreeAgent offers all the usual features that you would expect from an online accounting service – estimates, expenses, invoices, reminders, time tracking and contact management. And it does them all very well.

Pricing & Discount Code

Take a look at FreeAgent, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed – FreeAgent starts at £15/month with a free 30 day trial and you can get a 10% discount by clicking this link or by entering this code into your FreeAgent trial account – 362gj3oe.

The general feeling on this one from the world’s web designers is that the fold doesn’t exist and to a degree they’re right. Obviously computer screens and monitors don’t fold, the terminology has been adopted from the graphic design world where newspapers were folded for display purposes – hence the important information being displayed above the fold.

Another reason why the fold is considered not to exist in web design is the various different screen resolutions that monitors can display information at, because of this there is no one cut off point after which users have to scroll, it varies from screen to screen.

So while the actual fold doesn’t exist, the concept of the fold does and it has an important place in web design. Not every user that visits your site is going to scroll, that’s a fact, so in general it makes sense to place your most important information at the top of the page where it will be seen by the most eyes. Take a look around a few sites, where is the navigation placed? where is the shopping basket? the logo? All important pieces of information and all at the top of the page.

Obviously you can’t have all your information at the top of the page, you need to prioritise the information that appears on your site and arrange it accordingly, but make no mistake the top of the page remains the most important area on a website.

I love to read design blogs and there are some very good ones out there. There are an awful lot of that offer all kinds of advice and ideas to people in the industry. I respect that, it’s great to give something back. Unfortunately there seems to be little separation between designing and blogging about design.

Most of the prominent web designers out there, the ones who I see appearing in the industry magazines on a regular basis have what I consider to be average portfolios. I’m not going to name names as this post isn’t about that, it’s about looking beyond the best design bloggers, it’s about really finding the best designers out there. The truth is, most of the designers I really respect, those that consistently produce excellent work aren’t blogging about design, they’re creating it and for that very reason they’re often overlooked.

So finally, along comes Adobe Browserlab and I love it! It’s fast, gives you multiple browsers to choose from (all the major players), allows you to compare screenshots from different browsers side by side or even use a very slick onion skin method to overlay them.

So far so good!

For those of you that aren’t familiar with the series, it offers an insight into the applications that designers use on a regular basis and a little bit of info about why they use them.

So if you’re a bit of an app junkie like me, read the interview!