Collaborative working/support sessions can be a cost-effective way to get your website sorted with my professional expertise to ensure that you follow best practice, learn to perform tasks in the optimal manner, and take advantage of my design skills.
The total number of hours needed varies depending on a number of factors, including:
your goal for your website & how far away you are from that goal
how confident you are with technology/your website platform & how many questions you have
how many & what type of pages there are
and ultimately how much time you want to spend on it.
As every person, project and set of requirements is different, I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to cover X in Y amount of time, so it can help if you prioritise your list into Must Have and Nice-to-Have to ensure the time we do spend together is optimal.
As a rough guide:
One hour is usually enough time to do ONE of the following...
- Apply design/layout tweaks to 1 existing web page
- Fix 1-2 problems (something is broken or not displaying correctly)
- Show you how to perform a couple of site editing tasks
- Advise you on the best way to do something, including looking at examples and possible workarounds (if needed)
Two hours is usually enough time to do ONE of the following...
- Design & build 1 web page from scratch
- Refresh the aesthetics with multiple style tweaks, sometimes including basic CSS code overrides if needed
- Fully train you on how to manage & monitor your website
- Set up a new section, such as a blog, team page or event calendar – and train you on how to manage it
Additional tips are below…
Building a new site from scratch
For very small no-frills websites where the client has some Squarespace/website experience and comes fully prepared with everything ready to go, four 2-hour sessions are often enough to get the site framework in place, learn how to add/edit content, and apply some basic design touches.
For other situations, it can take five or more 2-hour sessions to get things the way clients want them to be.
And some clients prefer to meet in a 1:1 session to do some collaborative work, then brief me to go away and perform certain design/technical tasks outside the session while they also do some homework, and then we reconvene to cover questions/loose ends in one or two followup sessions.
As an alternative, if you prefer a concentrated chunk of time, have a look at my Expert for a Day service.
Updating, reworking or fixing a site you already have
In most cases, a minimum of 2 hours is needed to polish up a starter website with small design tweaks, as I’ll need time at the start of the session to go through your site and your checklist. Some clients prefer to do everything together in a collaboration session, other clients prefer to do some things together but have me price up doing other things separately outside the session (eg. writing code).
If you know your current site is pretty far from where you need it to be, or if you have lots of changes/pages, or pages with complex layouts or functions, then you should expect to spend a minimum of two 2-hour sessions, possibly more.
In some cases, if you or whoever built the website isn’t familiar with best practice or the Squarespace system, we may want to unravel some of your work and then re-knit things back up in a different way. This can be a good investment if it means setting you up for an easier workflow, better user experience and less time spent updating your website in the future.
Other redesign options:
If you’re set on making the best possible website, then you may want to consider my Site Audit service. It’s really popular with my DIY clients as it ensures that all the bases are covered from a usability & design perspective, there are no hidden problems, and you can feel confident that the important elements such as SEO settings are carried out properly. Sometimes you don’t necessarily know exactly what’s broken or needs improvement until you have someone cast a professional eye over everything.
If you like the idea of a fixed price, concentrated block of time spent on your redesign, have a look at my Expert for a Day service.
Still not sure?
Book a free briefing call to discuss your needs.