We’ll always do our 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. In this contract you won’t find any complicated legal terms or long passages of unreadable text. We’ve no desire to trick you into signing something that you might later regret. What we do want is what’s best for both parties, now and in the future.
So, in short;
“You”, the named signatory to this agreement, are hiring “us”, Pembroke Digital Limited, trading as O’Brien Media, who’s registered office is at Suite 4, Marlborough House,26 High Street, Old Town, Swindon, SN1 3EP (Registered in England and Wales number: 14750911) to design and develop a web site or provide consultancy services for the estimated total price as outlined in our previous correspondence. Of course it’s a little more complicated, but we’ll get to that.
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 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 at the end of this contract.
Us: We 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 accordance with our privacy policy at obrienmedia.co.uk/privacy.
Getting down to the nitty gritty
Design
We create look-and-feel designs, and flexible layouts that adapt to the capabilities of many devices and screen sizes. We create designs iteratively and use predominantly HTML and CSS so we won’t waste time mocking up every template as a static visual. We may use visuals to indicate a creative direction (colour, texture and typography.) We call that ‘atmosphere.’
You’ll have plenty of opportunities to review our work and provide feedback. We’ll share a development site with you and we’ll have regular, possibly daily contact.
If, at any stage, you change your mind about what you want to be delivered and are not happy with the direction our work is taking you’ll pay us in full for the time we’ve spent working with you until that point and terminate this contract.
This contract includes one main design plus the opportunity for you to make up to two rounds of revisions.
Text content
Unless agreed separately, we’re not responsible for inputting text or images into your content management system 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 can provide a separate estimate for that.
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 for that.
HTML, CSS and JavaScript
We deliver web page types developed from HTML markup, CSS stylesheets for styling and unobtrusive JavaScript for feature detection, poly-fills and behaviours.
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 Firefox and Opera. We’ll also test to ensure that people who use Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 for Windows get an appropriate experience. 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 9: Safari, Google Chrome
Android: Google Chrome on Android Emulator
We won’t test in Blackberry, Opera Mini/Mobile, specific Android devices, Windows or other mobile browsers unless we agreed separately. If you need us to test using these, we can provide a separate estimate for that.
Website hosting
You may already have professional web site hosting; you might even manage that hosting in-house; if that’s the case, great. If you don’t manage your own web site hosting, we can set up an account for you on our own web hosting platform, this will be invoiced at the rate agreed and invoiced monthly or yearly in advance.
Whilst we are not a web site hosting company we do have a lot of experience hosting websites and will provide technical support for any website hosting and email services provided by us during normal working hours. Separate website hosting and domain name registration contracts cover the provision of these services.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
We don’t guarantee improvements to your website’s search engine ranking, but the web pages that we develop are accessible to search engines. If you have specific SEO objectives we can provide a separate estimate for that.
Meetings
We tend to find that in most cases meetings aren’t required for smaller projects, however if you require any meetings we will be happy to accommodate you at one of our office locations. Meetings will be charged at our standard hourly rate unless otherwise agreed in writing. If you require an off-site meeting at your location, or a location of your choice, travel time and expenses will also be payable and we can provide a separate estimate for that.
Changes and revisions
We know from plenty of experience that fixed-price contracts are rarely beneficial to you, as they often limit you to your first idea about how something should look, or how it might work. We don’t want to limit either your options or your opportunities to change your mind.
Where the project is a new or redeveloped website, the estimates/quotations provided are based on the time that we estimate we’ll need to accomplish everything that you have told us you want to achieve. If you do want to change your mind, add extra pages or templates or even add new functionality, that won’t be a problem. If you want to add things to the project that’s fine, we’ll provide you with a quote for the work based on our standard hourly rate. Along the way we might ask you to put requests in writing so we can keep track of changes.
