Litmus

I think it is a great idea. You would end up being like a CSS doctor.

Just something to think about:
- would you guarantee that your solution is standards compliant?
- would you explain your solution? usually stylesheets are shared amongst many pages and would need to be integrated.

In general I really like the concept though.

Great phrase - "CSS doctor"! I love it!

Fantastic points John. Yes, you're right, we'd need to offer the guarantee that any changes would validate against the W3C's HTML and CSS validators. (What would we do if the original site didn't validate though? That could end up being a big job.)

We'd also need to provide some kind of summary I think - perhaps a PDF document that explained what caused the problem, and how we solved it.

I envisaged it as a service offered only as an add-on for SiteVista subscribers, but perhaps we should open it up to anyone - at cssdoctor.com, perhaps? :-)

I'm definetely in with this idea. But I'd like to express caution on some point. What if in a scenario a person is trying to develop his website, suddenly just gets frustrated cause it doesn't look good and wants you guys to fix it? The danger is that some might have a lot of work whilst some might be minor.

I'm wondering if having a ratio calculator of how much fixes need to be done would be a good thing? And from there you've maybe a chart of advisory. That way, you're offering a greater value by offering a fixing service as well as a consultant type note. :)

Cheers.

Danny,

Thanks for your ideas. I think you're right, it could be difficult to price something like this at say a set $89. What we were thinking was that we'd say "Most problems can be fixed with under three hours' work. These cost $89. If your problem is more complex, it could cost more, but we'll contact you before continuing." What do you think?

BTW, I've registered cssdoctor.com (not sure whether we'll use it yet, but I loved the name, thanks John :-)

Great idea! I think the pricing is reasonable. Thinking in pounds, once an issue has taken a designer an hour to fix, and he/she hasn't gotten any closer to a solution, the breakpoint is reached where it will cost less to have you guys do the work - if it's a guaranteed fix.

The only difficulty I see is defining the scope of a fix - a known issue with freelance designers. You have to have an agreement in place with the client about where the line is drawn and the issue becomes solved. Unless you categorise solutions and problems into a small number of issues, reaching a 'fix' definition for each job may be costly compared to the cheap initial fee.

That'll work. And to make it not so boring, play around with the 'panic button' concept for it. ;) Because I feel advertising even "$89 for three hours of work" is promoting about your work speed and some clients need fixes pretty urgently.

That lead us to another thing, what if some clients need a fix more urgently than the rest?

Cheers.

This is a great little dicussion, thanks guys for your input.

I think defining the scope is absolutely key. I need to go away and give the whole thing some more thought really, but I love the "panic button" idea!

What if one client needs a fix more urgently? I'm not sure, I was going to suggest a higher priced option for getting it fixed quicker, but we had in mind a day or so's turnaround already so I'm not sure I could manage to do it any quicker!

The idea seems interesting. However, by the looks of it, especially seeing that you're already eyeing a fee amount before deciding on the details and specifics, it doesn't look solidly planned out.

Think about who your target audience will be. Will a professional web designer ever be in such a desperate situation that he/she would fork over $90 for help? Considering professionals already know probably 99% of the tricks of the trade, not only will they practically never need such a service, but even if they DO encounter problems, they will surely prefer to do some research, work on it, and fix it themselves. And as an added bonus, they learn something new along the way. And all of this not for $90 but at no cost other than some time--time that would be spent idly waiting for the 'CSS Doctor' to do the work anyway.

Consider, on the other hand, the amateur web designer. A beginner in CSS and HTML makes websites for two reasons: to learn, and to have fun. As sexy as the name 'CSS Doctor' sounds, it doesn't answer either of these goals. Sure, could include the PDF report and explain what you did, so they would learn. But for most web design newbies, the problems encountered are trivial and simple to solve. Beginners usually need small pointers in large quantities, not big $90 solutions. Of course, the biggest hurdle will probably be explaining to newbies why you charge a fee when there are innumberable free resources available on the web.

In the case of the professionals, it comes down to the same thing as well: there are tons of tutorials, forums, mailing lists, even books dedicated to proper CSS compliant web design. Charging for web development itself, as professional web designers do, is one thing. Clients usually know little of web design and therefore are forced to use the services of designers who know what they're doing. But charging just for fixing CSS? I don't see you pulling that one off.

Nano, thanks for your comments. I think it would certainly be a service aimed at professional developers. Amateur designers doing it in their spare time won't spend $89.

However, for the professionals, when you've been debugging a design for hours and desperately need to move onto the next task, this is your solution. There *are* other options, there always will be, but if you don't want to cross your fingers that someone in a forum or on a mailing list will help, then this is a guaranteed fix.

You wouldn't be wasting any time either, quite the opposite, as you could continue with the next part of the project whilst the design was being fixed for compatibility.

Do professionals know 99% of the tricks of the trade? I don't think so. And even if we do, we all get stuck on some bug or another almost every project we do. :-)

I think we just need to launch it and see. There's never been anything like this offered before. I've had a lot of interest on this blog and by email, so I'll definitely be going ahead with it. If no-one uses it, so be it, but it's got to be worth a shot!

You could call your PDF document The Perscription with a nice big RX someplace in the design and the HTML/CSS you deliver could be "The Meds" (or maybe that's pushing it a little too far.) Fun concept - I know as a professional designer and CSS head that there have been moments on projects where I would have been willing to fork out $90 to move on.

I'm wondeing how that idea attract clients.

Helen: I don't think it would bring us new subscribers, but it would be an extra revenue stream. And even if people don't take advatage of it, it might be reassuring to know that if you're ever get really stuck, we could get your page fixed for you.

Now I see your point. Thank you for the answer.