Juliette suggests a workshop on what time is marked billable versus not billable and how that fits with contracts, and how to get visibility to all the damn deals I’m making with people, etc.
This isn’t exactly a STWP topic, since all time on STWP projects are billable, however, since this is a knowledgebase, I want to capture the request and also to start a new tag called Workshops!
I’ve just attempted to move this to an unmoderated state. Hopefully your comments will appear in a flash and not be waiting on me!
Sent to me from Dave: (Note — this client wasn’t a STW client, but I think the convo is useful for other high maintenance clients!)
<Client name> is going to be a handful. She wants an overview of the Chameleon theme so she can understand all the possibilities. Not sure how to respond to that….
My answer:
Dave – I see that you’ve already had 3 1-hour calls with Susan on themes. Wow. Her SOW states that we’ll do 2 1/2-hour calls (total of 1 hour) discussing theme changes, etc. So… please let her know that we’re going to be billing her for the extra 2 hours of phone calls on themes. That will hopefully bring this issue to a head.
Re how to answer her question on the the chameleon theme — I’d show her some of the sites we’ve implemented with it, and tell her that these are our recommended page layouts — that we use them because they are best from a marketing perspective.
Sites include: thecouplesdoc.com, adam klein’s site (as you know). There may be more – you could ask Juliette.
If she wants to know more, she can look at the page templates on this page: http://www.elegantthemes.com/demo/?theme=Chameleon
But that we’re already charging extra for the time spent on the theme discussions and will keep charging as we factor only an hour into the price of the website for this as stated in her contract.
If she gets [nasty] and wants to end with us, I’m probably fine with that. I’m NOT willing to lose money on her.
We are totally willing to create sample pages for her and to have tons more discussions with her, but they’ll be billed at $xx/hour.
Free report recording here (skip to 3 minutes in): http://www.counselingwise.com/free-report
Advice:
Here is a sample free report: Jonathan Zalesne Report Final 11-15-2013
Per the bio, what should be used for group practices?
Great question!
I’d ask the practice owner. For Orenstein, for example, if you’re doing a report on Couples and Susan is the couples person there, I’d have the bio be about Susan.
Jan at BPS may want his bios to be about BPS, though, since he’ll want to use the report even if the therapist who helped with it leaves.
A Free Report should also include the following:
Titles and Subtitles ( try to keep the content under each subtitle fairly short, and I leave space before each subtitle)
Space on the page, and “chunks’ of content make a report much easier to read.
Page border (click Layout, then Borders, then Page Border)
A Cover (The cover of your report should: Be 3 Dimensional, have a large font for the title so it’s readable on a computer display, have colors that stand out on your site, yet don’t clash with your site.) – clients can create their own cover at http://fiverr.com for $5 or we can design one for them.
Titles: Said above that they need to be really strong. One addition — a negative slant typically works better than a Polyanna one.
Example:
Title: 3 Signs That Your Relationship is Heading in the Wrong Direction
is much more likely to get opt-ins than…
Title: 7 Keys to a Healthy Relationship
Good titles point out a problem or incite fear (just look at newspaper headlines, covers of magazines, etc.)
Note: Modification to Naming convention as of 11/18:
CHANGE OF PLANS!
Through further discussion, we’ve decided to change this naming convention. To keep with the current convention in use for the 80+ projects already in LGED, the project naming convention will now be:
Websitename.com – Firstname Lastname – STWP mmdd
(Original post) Posted for Jane:
Gang, as some of you know, for the new Smart Therapy Website Program will have its own type of billing, and other defining characteristics, such as the form clients have filled out prior to kickoff.
To define these clients as such, please adhere to a Naming Convention that should be used at every phase of the project, such as setting up clients in LGED, setting up folders in Google Docs, etc.
The convention is this:
denise barnes soulsavvy.net STWP 1113
That is… client name first then last / their current web site / STWP to denote their status as that type of client / the month and year, so that is Nov. 2013.
With lots of new clients and lots of new employees, please adhere to these standard naming conventions to make all of lives easier. Thanks! Jane
Project Coordinators: Please set up your projects in LGED prior to the first meeting with the client.
When setting up projects – we should have predetermined categories as I did with Joseph Weiss/Denise Barnes. Question for LGED – how do we copy categories from one project to another or does this require a template?
Hmmmm, Juliette, when I look at Joseph’s project, I don’t see any categories in use. http://stwproject.cwdevel.com/wp-login
The new template that we’re working on will copy categories over when used to create a new project.
Am I missing something?
Maybe you mean the grouping that was there in the old project template?
CHANGE OF PLANS!
Through further discussion, we’ve decided to change this naming convention. To keep with the current convention in use for the 80+ projects already in LGED, the project naming convention will now be:
Websitename.com – Firstname Lastname – STWP mmdd
Thanks, all!
What if your client is seeing different things that you are, because they are using a different browser, but you can’t replicate it or see what they’re seeing?
Usually if they can tell us the browser and whether they’re on a pc or mac, we can reproduce it.
In fact, there’s a tool that will display a site on different browsers: http://browsershots.org/
I need to come up with a new correlation for “this is the game we’re in and we’re spending this time on YOUR site, not on ours” so that no one can bitch about being charged time for stuff like this. If any of you can think of a good way to say that, let me know.
I set up an account at http://browsershots.org/
page1pros
page1234
Here is what you get back when you run it (it could take some time depending on how many browsers you’re checking out, and since we have a free account).
Check the one I use, browserstack.com. It supports real time and interactive tests, so you can test interactions/menues/overlays.
Awesome, Juan! This is EXACTLY the sharing between developers I want to have happen out here!
Hi Team!
Welcome to our new project area! I’ve been getting lots of questions in the last couple of days, and instead of just answering each person, privately, via email, I want to be able to start building a knowledge repository that we can all have access to.
This is the system that the WordPress.com company uses. I’d like for us to use it and see how it goes. Let’s experiment. If we use it, and we later change our minds, we can at least move the info we’ve capture here to a new environment.
Note that you can tag things so that you (and everyone else) can easily find answers later.
Can you tag replies or only original posts? New to this trying to figure it all out.
Hmmm, appears that from the main window, you can only tag the original post. But, do you have the ability to go to the dashboard? In there you should be able to add tags in quick edit mode.
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