Designer died - customer wants me to take over

[CraigAllen]

Its an odd situation. I have a client who had retained me in the past to maintain their existing website. Twice over the past couple of years they have asked me for a quote for a redesign, twice I've given them my quote and then not heard back from them, but that's not important for the purposes of this post.

Yesterday I got a call from them saying that the guy they had designing their new website died the night before and they would like me to finish the design he started. They sent me the url of the site he was developing, which is a subdomain of his own domain and of course I have no ftp access to. When it was completed it was to be uploaded to their own url, replacing their old site.

Having checked out the work he has done so far on their "new" website, I find that there are 68 main pages of content, 24 sub-pages (pages linked to from some of the main pages), and 30 main pages in the navigation structure that he had not yet started working on. It is reasonable to assume that most of those 30 pages will also contain several links to sub-pages that are also not yet created, so I come up with a minimum of 122 pages total for the finished site.

Additionally, he was designing the site in Go Live using Menumachine for generating the fly-out navigation menu, and I use Dreamweaver. Menumachine is not compatible, so I will have to re-create the navigation menu (which the client didn't totally like to begin with).

Since I can't access the development site, I suppose I will just have to do a save as webpage for each page of the site, which will of course take a lot of time and break the site's internal link structure.

This makes it very difficult for me to estimate how long this is going to take me, so I don't know about charging my usual hourly rate. I am to meet with them in two days with a proposal. Normally I price my work on a per-job basis, but in this situation since the pages are basically already done I am considering just give them a per-page price.

So I am torn between knowing they have probably already paid a lot to have the site designed, and I will be duplicating most of the work that has already been done by the late designer, yet there is still a lot of work for me to do as well.

Should I offer them a deep discount? I don't really want to, but they are in a special situation. I mean, my work is worth my rates, but since all I will be doing is copying someone else's work that seems a bit unfair.

What would YOU do?

[cw1865]

Originally Posted by CraigAllen

Should I offer them a deep discount?

No

Originally Posted by CraigAllen

I don't really want to, but they are in a special situation.

I understand, somebody passed on and now they're kind've in a bind. It seems that they have a problem and you're the solution.

Originally Posted by CraigAllen

I mean, my work is worth my rates, but since all I will be doing is copying someone else's work that seems a bit unfair.

Time is time.

Originally Posted by CraigAllen

What would YOU do?

For all you know they could've taken your previous two proposals and beaten down somebody else's price with them. On what basis are you giving them a discount? - because of all the work they haven't given you in the past? The death is unfortunate, but you didn't kill the person and your bills are still going to come this month, aren't they? Being fair means being fair to yourself too.....

[DaveSawers]

Because of the uncertainties, I would do this particular job at an hourly rate. It doesn't seem to me from your description that you owe them any favours so I wouldn't discount it either.

[CraigAllen]

Thanks for the replies... and I certainly agree I don't owe them any favors... and actually the more I consider this project the more I (A) don't really want to do it, or (B) think that taking over someone else's design that does not follow my own practices will ultimately be more complicated than starting a project from scratch.

[ohiowebpro]

Why don’t you use a CMS and set it up for them, using the existing design. Then they can add the content to the pages. That way you get paid for some work, and they can save some money doing it themselves. Even at a hundred plus pages I don’t think it would take me a week using the CMS I use. I'm sure there would be some functionalities you would have to integrate, and budget some time there, depending on the type of site.

If you’re not interested in doing it, send them my way. I don’t mind cutting a little off the price for a new customer.

[danlefree]

I would:

• Use wget to recursively retrieve the files (automated, max time less than an hour)
• Use a sed find/replace to change the URL's (if the prior designer was no good at relative URI's)
• Charge full price for my work

But that's me.

[weegillis]

Originally Posted by danlefree

...

• ... recursively retrieve the files
• ... find/replace to change the URL's
• Charge full price ...

Exactly. Retrieve so that what they've paid for already is not lost. The links are a given. Since the design will need revamping to bring it into your scope, your design expertise will be called upon. Full price. You are doing them a favor by taking the job and delivering a finished site, that is enough.

[CraigAllen]

It has been drawn to my attention off list that there may be copyright issues involved here -- since they probably have not paid for the entire site prior to his death the previous designer's estate would still hold copyright to his work thus far.

The plot thickens.

[CraigAllen]

Originally Posted by ohiowebpro

Why don’t you use a CMS and set it up for them, using the existing design. Then they can add the content to the pages. That way you get paid for some work, and they can save some money doing it themselves. Even at a hundred plus pages I don’t think it would take me a week using the CMS I use. I'm sure there would be some functionalities you would have to integrate, and budget some time there, depending on the type of site.

Having little experience with CMSs, i.e I have a couple of basic DNN sites for clients but I'm not sure that's the way to go, what do you recommend?

[CraigAllen]

Well this is a moot post now - I presented my proposal, the client balked. My proposal was over $3,000 (211 pages of content, by the way), and his reply was that he had been expecting to pay $300 - $400 since he had just paid the other designer $500 and "Most of the work has already been done!"

Needless to say, we have no contract!

[MrGamm]

taking over someone else's design that does not follow my own practices will ultimately be more complicated than starting a project from scratch.

It usually is when the design aspect was outside of your control...

Needless to say, we have no contract!

It's a new era of scabs...

What can take one person XX hours another can do in fewer but there will be genuine sacrifices made along the way...

CMS's can shave hours of a project... but someone slicing and reusing the stylesheets loses no advantage...

There are some people who demand "Agency Quality Design" and then some are happy "Whatever is Cheap" after they decide they can live with a loose and sloppy overall look... but try and find someone who can bid low on a "tight design" while offering a CMS underlying framework... no chance... jmo...

Having little experience with CMSs, i.e I have a couple of basic DNN sites for clients but I'm not sure that's the way to go, what do you recommend?

It really depends if your interested in doing one off disposable projects for clients which many people are doing... They grab a joomla, or a drupal, expression engine, cms made simple, wordpress, ect... My hunch is that the majority of these installs will break beyond repair within a year, get hacked, or pose such an incredible amount of maintenance for development that long term it's just not worth it. I don't think clients really understand the difference or have had any experience dealing with CMS installs which are prone to fall out of date with security standards and whose development is not directly in thier hands...

Take a look at wordpress as a prime example... in the few years it's been out... it's broken compatibility with hundreds, if not millions of websites because the template layer is embedded in the logic layer... the other option is to not upgrade and pray that no one takes your site out or injects it with spam and porn links...

A quick install gets the client up and running with a free generic template and a copy paste logo from someone else's website, however that's basically where it ends... and the costs shoot through the roof thereafter...

I think alot of people are moving towards providing SaaS services... Cloud Hosting, Mashups, ect are new marketing terms being introduced into the mix... charging the client from the point of view that the websites content, design, and development is managed, included in hosting... the development costs reduced...

These are just my opinions... I am sure others have different methods...

[weegillis]

Originally Posted by CraigAllen

Well this is a moot post now - I presented my proposal, the client balked. My proposal was over $3,000 (211 pages of content, by the way), and his reply was that he had been expecting to pay $300 - $400 since he had just paid the other designer $500 and "Most of the work has already been done!"

Needless to say, we have no contract!

Saved by the bell. Move on.

Even the most amateur of us who have reached the production level are producing sites worth $3000 or more. Their marketing message can not be had on the cheap, and they know it. Better not to pursue it. Let them come back with a cheque.