The published terms on this page serve as the basis of a contract between me and my clients. They are published with the intention of being open & transparent, and doing what’s best for both parties, now and in the future.
I will always do my best to fulfil your needs and meet your expectations, but it’s important to have things written down so that we both know what’s what, who should do what and when, and what will happen if something goes wrong.
The Terms on this page were last updated 14 July 2024.
In short …
These terms of service apply to
You: the person(s) identified in the correspondence exchanged prior to the project’s commencement.
Us (or we): Myself, my associates, and any specialists required for the completion of a project.
You, as the customer, are hiring us (myself & my associates) to provide strategic, creative, design & associated technical services, for an estimated total price outlined in supporting correspondence supplied before the project’s start date.
What do both parties agree to?
You: You have the authority to engage us for the services listed above on behalf of yourself, your company or your organisation. You’ll provide the assets and information we require to complete the project. You’ll do this when requested and provide it in the formats we ask for. You’ll review our work, provide feedback and approval in a timely manner too. Deadlines work two ways, so you’ll also be bound by dates we set together. You also agree to stick to the payment schedule set out in our correspondence. Unless otherwise agreed, payment is due 7 days from the date of any invoice.
Us: We, and our associates, have the experience and ability to do everything we’ve agreed with you and we’ll do it all in a professional and timely manner. We’ll endeavour to meet every deadline that’s set and on top of that we’ll maintain the confidentiality of everything you give us.
In more detail …
Estimates
Estimates are calculated based on the outlined scope (goals, requirements & functionality) of the project. If the scope changes this will impact on the estimated price. It’s important to note that payment is for the time that we spend working on your behalf, not the outcome or deliverables.
Design
We create designs that are often required to adapt to the capabilities of many devices and screen sizes. We create design iteratively and often use code to achieve visual design. We won’t waste time mocking up every design and/or template as a static visual. We may use visuals to indicate a creative direction (colour, texture and typography.) These will be at our discretion and used only to establish the general style and creative direction.
You’ll have plenty of opportunities to review our work and provide feedback. We’ll either share a Dropbox, Google Drive folder or Github repository or a development site with you and we’ll have regular contact.
If, at any stage, you change your mind about what you want delivered or aren’t happy with the direction our work is taking, you’ll pay us in full for the time we’ve spent working until that point and may terminate the project.
Text content
Unless agreed separately, we’re not responsible for inputting text or images into your content management system (CMS) or creating every page on your website. We provide professional copywriting and editing services, so if you’d like us to create new content or input content for you, we’ll provide a separate estimate.
The CMS is designed so that you can easily add, remove & edit content. We will provide basic instruction of how to use the CMS but we require you to use it to input your data as part of our CMS training and design creation process.
Graphics and photographs
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.
HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript
We deliver pages developed from HTML markup, CSS stylesheets for styling, unobtrusive JavaScript for behaviours and PHP for functions.
WordPress CMS Websites
We use WordPress as our preferred content management system (CMS). We heavily modify the software to match the needs of your project. We use a suite of professional premium plugins and build tools to achieve the website’s main scaffolding and functionality.
WordPress Plugin Licensing
As with most software, premium WordPress plugins generally require a license to access updates and new features. At the time of publishing your website the plugins will be updated to the most recent stable release. You are not required to update the plugins in order to continue using them, however, you may wish to buy & maintain your own licenses to access new and updated features. In this case you would purchase the license directly from the vendor.
Ongoing Website Maintenance
If you would like to access new features & functionality as it becomes available, but would prefer not to buy & maintain your own licenses, we offer ongoing maintenance contracts. We can discuss the specifics relevant to your project and budget but in general this will include regular security audits, daily backups, plugin updates and it will cover the cost of licensing so you won’t have additional costs. We can provide a separate estimate for website management & maintenance once the initial project has been completed.
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.
Older browsers are incapable of achieving the same results as modern browsers. The browsers’ abilities requirements impact on the designs, capabilities, choices & tools used in a given project. If you need a website to work on a specific browser this must be specified before the project starts. Unless specifically stated all websites are designed & tested against the current release of the major desktop browsers.
We test our work in current versions of major desktop browsers including those made by Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), Microsoft (Edge), Mozilla Firefox and Opera. We won’t test in other older browsers unless we agreed separately. If you need an enhanced design for an older browser, we can provide a separate estimate for that.
Mobile browser testing
Testing using popular smaller screen devices is essential in ensuring that a person’s experience of a design is appropriate to the capabilities of the device they’re using. We test our designs in:
iOS: Safari and Google Chrome
Android: Google Chrome
We won’t test in Opera Mini/Mobile, specific Android devices, or other mobile browsers unless we agreed separately. If you need us to test using these, we can provide a separate estimate.
Technical support
We’re not a website hosting company so we don’t offer support for website hosting, email or other services relating to hosting. You may already have professional hosting and you might even manage that hosting in-house; if you do, great. If you don’t, we will recommend one of our preferred hosting providers. We can set up your site on a server, plus any statistics software such as Google Analytics and will provide a separate estimate for that. Then, the updates and management of that server will be up to you.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
We don’t guarantee improvements to your website’s search engine ranking, but the pages that we develop are accessible to search engines.
Changes and revisions
We don’t want to limit your ability to change your mind. The price at the beginning of the project is based on the time we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything you’ve told us you want to achieve, but we’re happy to be flexible. If you want to change your mind or add anything new, that won’t be a problem as we’ll provide a separate estimate for the additional time.
The legal small print
We’ll carry out our work in accordance with good industry practice and at the standard expected from a suitably qualified person with relevant experience. That said, we can’t guarantee that our work will be error-free and so we can’t be liable to you or any third-party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages, even if you’ve advised us of them.
Your liability to us will also be limited to the amount of fees payable under this agreement and you won’t be liable to us or any third-party for damages, including lost profits, lost savings or other incidental, consequential or special damages, even if we’ve advised you of them.
Finally, if any provision of this agreement shall be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this agreement and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.
Intellectual property rights
Just to be clear, “Intellectual property rights” means all patents, rights to inventions, copyright (including rights in software) and related rights, trademarks, service marks, get up and trade names, internet domain names, rights to goodwill or to sue for passing off, rights in designs, database rights, rights in confidential information (including know-how) and any other intellectual property rights, in each case whether registered or unregistered and including all applications (or rights to apply) for, and renewals or extensions of, such rights and all similar or equivalent rights or forms of protection which subsist or shall subsist now or in the future in any part of the world.
First, you guarantee that all elements of text, images or other artwork you provide are either owned by your good selves, or that you’ve permission to use them. When you provide text, images or other artwork to us, you agree to protect us from any claim by a third party that we’re using their intellectual property.
We guarantee that all elements of the work we deliver to you are either owned by us or we’ve obtained permission to provide them to you. When we provide text, images or other artwork to you, we agree to protect you from any claim by a third party that you’re using their intellectual property. Provided you’ve paid for the work and that this agreement hasn’t been terminated, we’ll assign all intellectual property rights to you as follows:
You’ll own the website we design for you plus the visual elements that we create for it. We’ll give you source files and finished files and you should keep them somewhere safe as we’re not required to keep a copy. You own all intellectual property rights of text, images, site specification and data you provided, unless someone else owns them.
We’ll own any intellectual property rights we’ve developed prior to, or developed separately from this project and not paid for by you. We’ll own the unique combination of these elements that constitutes a complete design and we’ll license its use to you, exclusively and in perpetuity for this project only, unless we agree otherwise.
Displaying our work
We love to show off our work, so we reserve the right to display all aspects of our creative work, including sketches, work-in-progress designs and the completed project on our portfolio and in articles on websites, in magazine articles and in books.
Payment schedule
We’re sure you understand how important it is as 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 tight to the payment schedule provided in our estimate to you.
We issue invoices electronically. Our payment terms are strictly 7 days from the date of invoice by BACS or the SWIFT international payments system. All proposals are quoted in £ GBP Sterling and payments will be made at the equivalent conversion rate at the date the transfer is made.
You agree to pay all charges associated with international transfers of funds. The appropriate bank account details will be printed on our electronic invoice. We reserve the right to charge interest on all overdue debts at the rate of 8% per month or part of a month.
Liability
Like a parking ticket, neither of us can transfer this contract to anyone else without the other’s permission.
We both agree that we’ll adhere to all relevant laws and regulations in relation to our activities under this contract and not cause the other to breach any relevant laws or regulations.
This agreement stays in place and need not be renewed. If for some reason one part of this contract becomes invalid or unenforceable, the remaining parts of it remain in place.
The language used in these terms is deliberately simple, however, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document under exclusive jurisdiction of English and Welsh courts.