What should I ask for in a contract with a web designer?

[john]

We have come to terms on a price of 2400.00 for a website,social media,facebook page,and logo branding image, and business cards. This is a first for me in dealing with web designers. How can I protect myself in getting what I need in this contract. Any ideas that I could include in the contract will be appreciated. I am asking because I don't want to get ripprd off. Is the 2400.00 fee reasonable? The webiste is for a funeral business.

[Go with the flow]

Omy.
You don't know any high school kids that can get you started building a website?
Thos kids that are taking those AP math and science courses all know how to design web pages like experts.
And you could put an ad on a college newspaper.
A kid would do this on the cheap for a chance for you to use them as a reference.

Oh, you realy need to talk to people.
Time to ask friends and family.
Someone has to know one of those "bright and genious" kids.

Web desgin is not rocket science. I got a book and self-taught myself in a weekend.
All those kids know facebook.
Logo and business cards. You can do on your own.
----
I know a high school kid that found out his dentist did not have a website.
He designed one over one weekend just for the reference. For free.

[Sam]

Make sure before you pay him/ her you go over the details of EVERYTHING you are looking for in a website. I'm a graphic designer and I spend a lot of my time making websites for company's. One thing I notice a lot is they don't give me specifics and get mad when the final product is something they don't like. Give your designer specifics of what you're looking for, such as drop down menus, parent / child menus, give him a specific for the logo. all the way down to the tiniest detail you can think of. a facebook page isn't something that's really hard to make, you could honestly do that on your own. you could also print your own business cards (there are websites that do it for cheaper). The website takes a lot of time, and they can be extremely frustrating, same goes for logos. He / She will probably go through at least 10 ideas before finding the right one. Depending on what kind of website you are using depends on how much you should really pay this person. If you're using word press then it would be a little more expensive but if you're using something such as Joomla! it shouldn't be that hard at all.
In all honesty, put in the contract that you won't pay until the website is what you agree on. things like that. I always make sure my clients are 110% happy before I accept my pay. Then again not many artists are like me. His / Her price seems pretty steep for the fact that the only real work going into this, is a website and a logo. but like I said, depending on what you're asking for and what they're going to do it's probably reasonable. I've seen people charge over 4,000$ for just a website that had a few drop down menus and nothing else, super simple.

Just make sure you get everything you want out of the deal.

[Richard L]

Web site design and production and working to get a web presence has become a bit of a commodity. As others have said the web site part of this is something that you could find someone to do very reasonably but 2400 is not bad if this is a well experienced firm with good references and happy past customers.

The logo and branding pieces are going to take an artist to handle for you and so you need to be sure that you are getting both from any contract company you deal with. The best way to tell that is to get some references from other companies they have done this for and go out and look at those web sites and contact those businesses to check out their references. A good web site company I know charges $80-$100 per hour for their work so with your budget they would give you about 24-30 hours of work.

Here are some things that I would try to get listed in the contract:
High search engine placement.
Facebook page
Web page that can be easily maintained
A content management system so you can make regular page changes yourself?
Who is hosting site?
Domain name registration
E-mail addresses



Best wishes!