I've just built a wordpress website for a bloke I know (made NO money but learned a lot) If I want to be able to justify charging $ for others in future I need to be able to accurately understand what they actually NEED, and what they think they WANT (rarely the same). To do this some sort of 'Needs Analysis' form would be really handy that prospective clients can fill in, which can help me understand what will be needed and the complexity, and therefore 1. Whether I am capable of doing so, and if yes, then 2. What I could charge.... Anyway the short version of this question is - does anyone have a template (or link to a template) for such a thing that they are willing to share please?
You could use one of the two major form builder plugins for WordPress: 1. Ninja Forms - https://ninjaforms.com/ 2. Gravity Forms - https://www.gravityforms.com/ Both are commercial plugins, but are worth the purchase but offer differing feature sets for your money. I recommend you pick one and stick with it! I forgot to mention, they are yearly renewals and they do cost a bit of money.
Thanks but that's not what I am talking about (oh and Contact Form 7 is free and awesome) It not so much about the form (that' merely a means of collecting info) What I actually need is to develop a series of questions so I can tease out from them exactly what they want when they say "I want a website" Otherwise it becomes a rabbit-hole and everyone loses.... And I figured that there might already be ideas out there that would save me from reinventing the wheel.
Something like this? https://www.telligence.com.au/website-design-briefing-form Or this? https://thedma.com.au/website-design-brief-template/
If we are into engagement stage I tend to do a full function spec where it will outline exactly the customer expection down to the feature or button, and not deviate from it - then you quote time blocks per item (usually per feature/page) and then get them to sign off on it with a hours x $/hr quote, sure you may gain some time here, lose some there, but if they turn up with scope creep (oh can it also do this) you have a good reason to say thats an extra point of an hour hence adds $x amount to project
