Pitching Advice?

[Rj-design]

Hey Guys,

Could do with a bit of advice. I work as a freelance designer for a small digital marketing agency. I put together a landing page for a client who contacted me away from the company about their site.

They want to improve user functionality and user journey, a good friend of mine works in that sector so I proposed working with him to really get the best visually and functionally. They agreed but asked for a presentation on all our suggested improvements.

Obviously pitching is a standard for our line of work, but web design is something I lack experience in as the majority of my time is spent on print and landing page visuals. I'm worried once they take the points they hand them over to a developer to undercut the price. Should I charge for the ideas?

Thanks

 

[Paul Murray]

I wouldn't give away everything until you have the job. I'd identify problem areas, highlight the negative results from these areas, but I would only suggest some topline ideas for how to solve it. For example a section with additional content off-screen with an unclear navigation would result in users missing that content. Possible options are to make the navigation and fact that there is content off-screen clearer, re-design the section so the content is no longer off-screen, or possibly even just remove that content completely.

UX isn't a simple "change this to this" process, it requires a lot of testing re-testing to optimise. Often you don't know if something will even work until you've A/B tested it. One idea might turn out to be worse than what they originally had when a real user gets their hands on it. Therefore I wouldn't suggest explicit changes in the presentation because you probably don't know if those are the best options at this stage. I'd suggest some ways you can improve these areas but I wouldn't give them anything too solid until they've agreed to hire you.