Freelance project support: fixing issues

Project Daisy – Part 6: fixing issues with shopping cart and shipping cost calculations

Project Daisy is over: I have received the final payment and feedback, and the client says that she is happy with the final result.

That’s what I wrote in my last post.

However, it turned out that the project wasn’t over. There were shortcomings in the shopping cart’s settings and its correspondence with the client’s PayPal account that required re-setting and guidance.

Daisy preferred to meet and ‘walk through’ the issues and new settings together, so we met Yesterday in a cafe in the city.

I’ll take it as an opportunity to cover one more aspect of freelance project work: after-service/support – the extra work that comes on (unpaid, usually) to make adjustments, fix issues and provide guidance.

Freelance project wrap-up

Project Daisy – Part 5: good and bad project management (at once)

Project Daisy is over: I have received the final payment and feedback, and the client says that she is happy with the final result. This is a brief self-evaluation of what went well and not so well with the project.

 

 
Good

What I think I did best was the quality of the outcome, and the professional communication.

The original website content was verbose, looked messy, was heavy loading (lots of photos loading on each page), poorly written, and had no e-commerce function.

The new website content is concise, visually neat*, consistent and orderly. There is much less text and fewer photos, and the size and resolution of the new photos is browser -friendly. There is no duplicate text, no grammar mistakes or clumsy English (I hope;-), and the spelling is all-Australian. The website now has a shopping cart implemented and tested.

The meetings went well (albeit stressing for me – but I think not for the client). They were well organised and had clear, actionable outputs. The quality of the email correspondence was good: well organised and concise with some extras, e.g. print screens and well organised how-to instructions following-up on some questions. The communication also included SMS and phone calls, which went OK, except I was a bit slow to reply to some SMS.

The work organisation was good too. I converted the (quite detailed) quote into the contract, and the contract into my to-do list for the project to structure the work and make sure to meet all the requirements.

 
Bad

The weak point was my time management. Daisy did not give me a deadline so I didn’t technically deliver too late, but the project took much longer than I expected.

 

 

Non-verbal communication in a business meeting

Project Daisy – Part 4: non-verbal communication challenges when meeting a client

I met with Daisy for the second and last time a few days ago. There is still work to do, but now I know exactly how to do it, and I expect the project to be finalised this week.

 

 
The meeting lasted almost two hours again, but otherwise went well. I explained what I have done and why, what can’t been done (one desired function is not an option in the shopping cart), and which solution I’ve made to achieve that function in a different way.

The agenda was to get feedback on all the web pages and the layout of the shopping cart, activate the shopping cart, and make a detailed list over desired adjustments to each web page so I can action them and finalise the job. I strove to time-manage the meeting professionally while also allowing the client to be human. Daisy is a good client: rational, reliable, to-the-point, and flexible. I felt professional, competent and in charge all the time and went from the meeting with good actionable notes and quick drawings so I know precisely what to do.

 
Post-meeting management

After the meeting, I rewrote my notes into a structured summary/to-do list for the final adjustments to-be-done, which I emailed to Daisy. It sums up what we discussed and agreed on, so that it is clear to Daisy what I think she wants me to do. That way she can correct me if I misunderstood anything.

The summary’s ‘Deliverables’ section with due dates serves as my to-do list for the adjustment work, and reminds Daisy about things she’ll need to action first. I think all that works well.

 
In the meanwhile, under the surface: non-verbal aspects of a meeting

This post is about the non-verbal aspects of communication in a business meeting. I will in a moment switch from the rational business track of the experience to the underlying non-verbal communications track to explain why I find it challenging.

Non-verbal aspects of communication include face expressions, eye contact, timing, silence, tone of voice, gestures, distance, posture, moves, clothing, and showing and demonstrating things, for example. Ambience* (space, smells, sounds, light… ‘vibe’) also impact and blend into communication; although it is not necessarily an actively controlled element of it.

Guides about non-verbal communication usually focus on how to ‘talk right’ with body language to please others.

New online store prospect: ‘Project Daisy’

Project Daisy – Part 1

A business acquaintance of ‘Max’* called and asked if I could redesign her online store. Max is the client I set up an online store for last year (the whole business is now for sale). The lady who called sells her products in a small store close to Max’s and wants to sell online as well. She said that she likes Max’s online store because it looks clean, neat and well organised.

I had to tell her that I am not a web designer and that the graphic designer I ‘usually work with’ is overseas.

However, Max’s online store doesn’t have a customised design anyway. I picked Max’s store front design from a selection of free templates which was part of the ecommerce hosting package. I customised it with photos and neat copy writing, a map for the contact form and so on.

A decent selection of neat design templates were one of the selection criteria when I chose the ecommerce host. Max didn’t want to spend a cent on the storefront design, and I don’t want to spend my time on an ugly online store that screams ‘We Are Unprofessional!’ to the visitors. The template was a decent compromise.

So I told the lady that if she is happy with a template design, I can help her set it up and we agreed on a time to have a chat about it.

 

I’ll nick name this prospect ‘Project Daisy’**

 
Yay! Does that mean I’ve got a new project? I am cautiously optimistic and trying to work out what to do.