Last week I was asked by a prospect to back up the proposal I had put together with some design work (to help convince their board). Now this starts to potentially stray into the territory of speculative work (which is a touchy subject in the design field at the best of times!) so I had to politely inform the (potential) client as to my approach to such requests. And I thought I would share that with you.

As it was, my (potential) client was very understanding and they appreciated my logic but it got me thinking that this should be either spelt out very clearly on the Jojet website or as a PDF I could just send out in appropriate situations. On that basis, I wrote the following (which may be of help to you):

Hi,

Firstly, can I say a big thanks for the opportunity to work together. There are a lot of web companies out there and I’m over the moon that you have considered Jojet to help you with your online ambitions.

So, web projects can be very daunting things and it’s quite understandable that you would like a clear idea of what your finished website might look like (or perhaps you need to convince the boss!).

However, I try to avoid rushing towards the pencils & crayons for this specific reason:

How a website looks is the result of a studied research into things like your business, your clients, your brand, your services etc. Without this knowledge, any design mockup we put together would be a poor shadow of the real, final result. At best it would give you a general idea of the quality of work we do.  At worst though, it may mislead you & we could lose the job.

However, every client’s needs are different & if it makes sense to do a preliminary mockup for you, before we have put ink to paper & agreed that we both want to work together, then fine.

Any such design mockup work is billable and is extra to any project cost we may have already quoted.

Blah. Blah Blah.

So, that’s my approach. How do you go about it?

Joel