Terms and Conditions
Summary
We’ll always do our best to fulfil your needs and meet your expectations, but it’s important to have things written down, so there is clarity about who should do what and when, plus what will happen if something goes wrong.
You won’t find any complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We’ve no desire to trick you into agreeing something that you might later regret. We want the best for both parties, now and in the future.
So in short; you the customer are hiring us to design and develop a web site for the estimated total price as outlined in our previous correspondence. Naturally, it’s a little more complicated, but we’ll get to that.
This page sets out the terms and conditions between you or your business and the web designer(s) (herein called “We” or “Us”). It forms an integral part of any existing or future proposal, written document or communication between yourself and us.
What Do Both Parties Agree To
You
You have the authority to enter into this contract on behalf of yourself, your company or your organisation. You’ll give us the assets and information we tell you we need to complete the project.
You’ll do this when we ask and provide it in the formats we ask for. You’ll review our work, provide feedback and approval in a timely manner as well. Deadlines work both ways, so you’ll also be bound by dates we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out near the end of this page.
Us:
We’ll have the experience and ability to do everything we’ve agreed with you in a professional and timely manner. We’ll endeavour to meet every deadline that’s set.
On top of that we’ll maintain the confidentiality of everything you give us, though sometimes we’ll need to pass on project related details to a web host for example, which may be necessary to carry out the work.
Design
We create look-and-feel designs with flexible layouts that adapt to the capabilities of many devices and screen sizes. We may use visuals to indicate a creative direction (colour, texture and typography etc.) We call that “atmosphere”.
The design work will be carried out on our computers and periodically checked online using a test domain and web server. This is hidden from search engines during the development phase by use of a robots.txt file to avoid showing up in web searches. This is understood and respected by major search engines, such as Google and Bing etc.
You’ll have lots of opportunities to review our work and provide feedback. We’ll either share a development website with you and have regular, possibly daily contact in order to complete the project successfully.
If at any stage, you change your mind about what you want delivered and not happy with the direction of our work, you’ll pay us in full for the time we’ve spent working with you until that point and terminate this contract. The same applies if you wish to cancel the project entirely or delay it for an extended period without our agreement.
Text content
We can provide copywriting and editing services, so if you’d like us to create new content, we can provide a separate estimate for that.
Unless otherwise specified, you provide us with the text needed to complete the project, though we are happy to make suggestions and offer feedback if we feel it will contribute to the success of the website.
N.B It is your responsibility to ensure that all legal text is correct and complies with applicable regulations.
Unless agreed separately, we’re not responsible for inputting text or images if your website uses a content management system.
Customers who choose a content management system do so, because they want to make changes themselves on a regular basis.
Graphics and Images
You should supply graphic files in an editable, vector digital format. You should supply photographs in a high resolution digital format. If you choose to buy stock photographs, we can suggest stock libraries. If you’d like us to search for photographs for you, we can provide a separate estimate for that.
If you would like to have some photography produced for your project, we can also provide a separate quote for this service. No matter where you source your text and images, it’s important that you have the right to use them and they do not breach copyright laws. Simply grabbing an image found on a Google search can be a costly mistake.
Browser testing
Browser testing no longer means attempting to make a website look the same in browsers of different capabilities or on devices with different size screens. It does mean ensuring that a person’s experience of a design should be appropriate to the capabilities of a browser or device.
We test our work in current versions of major desktop browsers including those made by Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), Microsoft (Edge), Mozilla and Firefox . It’s worth noting that less popular browsers generally use common rendering engines, such as webkit, so web pages will look the same as the main browsers.
We’ll also test to ensure that people who use Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 for Windows find an appropriate viewing experience. We won’t test in other older browsers unless we agreed separately.
Nearly everybody nowadays has automated browser updates and it’s just not sensible to compromise a modern website, merely to work on outdated or unsupported browsers, such as Internet Explorer 8 that are technically outdated and not safe for web browsing. This is standard industry practice nowadays.
Mobile browser testing
Mobile browser testing using popular smaller screen devices is essential in ensuring that a person’s viewing experience of a design is appropriate to the capabilities of the device they’re using. Indeed we take a mobile first approach to design.
We test our designs across a range of devices, either in-house or via emulation, but principally check iOS 10: Safari and Google Chrome Android.
We won’t test in Blackberry, Opera Mini/Mobile, specific Android devices, Windows or other mobile browsers, unless agreed separately. In all but very few situations the websites will look great on mobile devices, but individually testing every smartphone and tablet from the last ten years is not feasible.
From past experience, problems are few and far between on any recent web browser, whether on desktop, tablet or mobile. It should also be remembered that the vast majority of people are using the most common web browsers, which we do test.
Web Hosting
Unless you have very large volumes of traffic, we generally recommend hosting on our UK based servers, costing £10 a month.
In order to carry out the service, we will require access to your server’s web hosting control panel, so that we may configure and upload your website, along with any associated accounts as needed to complete the job.
Should you go elsewhere for hosting, we will also require your consent to speak with the web host’s support team if needed to resolve technical issues on your behalf during the setup stage, however we would not be responsible for any technical problems that might arise later on, such as email issues on your computer or server downtime and you should deal with your web host directly to resolve these.
In some instances we may also require access to the account of the domain registrar, where you registered your website. This is necessary, since your website can only be seen on the internet if the nameservers are pointing to your server. Most clients find this too complicated to manage themselves.
All of the above is strictly necessary to provide the intended service and the data will not be used for any other purpose. Furthermore it can be deleted upon written request in accordance with GDPR, however that would block us from carrying out any further work on your behalf.
Payment Schedule
We’re sure you understand how important it is for a small business that you pay the invoices that we send you promptly. As we’re also sure you’ll want to stay friends, you agree to stick to the following payment schedule:
1) A 50% deposit before work commences.
2) The remaining 50% is due at completion of the website development.
• We reserve the right to request interim payments on larger projects lasting several weeks or where extended delays occur beyond our control.
• We retain all rights on our work until the sum is paid in full.
• We also reserve the right to charge interest on overdue debts at the rate of 3% per month.
All proposals are quoted in GB Pounds Stirling and we issue invoices electronically. Our payment terms are seven days from the date of invoice by bank transfer.
In cases where third parties are involved in the delivery of your project, such as graphic designers or web hosts etc, it your responsibility to pay them in accordance with the agreements you reach.
Online Access Responsibilities
If you have online access to your site files it is a condition of this agreement that you are wholly responsible for the following:
1) Ensuring your User ID and passwords are stored in a secure place without divulging the details to third parties.
2) Not placing files or documents on the server that are not publishable to the public.
3) Backing up your site files.
4) We cannot be responsible for any changes made to website files, either by yourself or 3rd parties.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
We don’t guarantee improvements to your website’s search engine ranking, but the web pages we develop are accessible to search engines.
A fast, mobile friendly website that follows best practices in web design is likely to do well in search results, however certain factors are beyond our control, such as back links from other websites and indeed the ranking algorithms employed by various search engines.