Terms

Summary:

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 agreeing 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 are hiring us to design and develop a web site and / or to carry out SEO / Social Media Management for the total price as quoted to you. Of course it may be a little more complicated than that, but we'll get to that.

What do both parties agree to do?

You: You have the authority to enter into this contract on behalf of yourself, your company or your organisation. You'll give us everything we need to complete the project as and when and in the format we need it. 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 we set up.

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.

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  templates as a static visuals. We may use static visuals as a mood board to indicate a look, feel and style direction (colours, positions, texture and typography.)

You'll have plenty of opportunities to review our work and provide feedback. We'll share our progress with you by email, phone or via our CRM (project management portal) and have regular contact with you. If, at any stage, you're not happy with the direction our work is taking, you can pay us in full for everything we've produced until that point and cancel this contract.

Text content

We will input your content for you and format your pages. However, we're not responsible for writing / creating new text copy unless we have agreed to do that for you. If you'd like us to write new content for you, we can provide an estimate for that.

Photographs

In almost all cases, unless we agree to the contrary, we will create and provide the graphics and photographs for your website. However, if our agreement means that you will be providing your own graphics, you should supply the files in an editable, high resolution or 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. 

HTML, CSS and JavaScript

We deliver web page types developed from HTML5 markup, PHP and CSS stylesheets for styling and with unobtrusive JavaScript, Jquery, Ajax for feature detection, poly-fills and functionality.

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.

Desktop browser testing

We test our work in current versions of major desktop browsers including those made by Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome), Microsoft (Internet Explorer), Mozilla Firefox and Opera. We'll also test to ensure Microsoft Internet Explorer users get an appropriate, possibly different, experience. We won't test in other older browsers unless you specify otherwise.

Mobile browser testing

Testing popular small-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 work in:

iOS: Safari, Google Chrome Android 4.x: Google Chrome and Firefox

We currently don't test Blackberry, Opera Mini/Mobile, Windows Phone or other mobile browsers. If you need us to test using these, we can provide a separate estimate for that.

Search Engine Optimisation

We cannot make guarantees about search engine ranking, nor can we promise to get a site to 'Number One on Google', but we build every site in a way that is accessible to search engines and we provide a separate SEO consultancy service to handle all aspects of website marketing.

Technical support & 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 can set up an account for you on one of our servers at an annual fee of currently £60.00. We'll provide you with a control panel to set up and manage email and other services

Changes and revisions

We know from experience that fixed-price contracts are not always beneficial to you, as they often limit you to your earliest ideas. We don't want to limit your ability to change your mind. The price quoted for this contract is based on the length of 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 that.

Legal stuff

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 or other incidental, consequential or special damages, even if you've advised us of them. Finally, if any provision of this contract turns out to be unlawful, void, or for any reason unenforceable, then that provision shall be deemed severable from this contract and it won't affect the validity and enforceability of the remaining provisions.

Copyrights

First, you guarantee that all elements of text, images or other artwork you provide are either owned by your goodselves, or that you've permission to use them.

Then, when your final payment has been made, copyright will be automatically assigned as follows:

You'll own the visual elements that we create for this project. You'll own all elements of content, text, images and data you provided, unless someone else owns them.

We'll own the unique combination of these files, scripts and elements that constitutes a complete system and we'll license its use to you, exclusively and in perpetuity for this project only, unless we agree otherwise. You will not provide access to these copyrighted source files to any party without our express permission and, where such permission is granted, access will be restricted solely to the party for whom permission has been granted.

We love to show off our work and share what we've learned with other people, so we reserve the right, with your permission, to display and link to your project as part of our portfolio and to write about it on websites, in magazine articles and in books.

Payments

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 undertake to stick to the payment schedule we agree and you understand that the fact that we're letting you pay in instalments does not mean that you can cancel the arrangement as if it were a subscription.

But where's all the horrible small print?

Just like a parking ticket, you can't transfer this contract to anyone else without our permission. This contract 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.

Although the language is simple, the intentions are serious and this contract is a legal document under the exclusive and respective jurisdictions of  the courts of England, Wales and Scotland or, where applicable, the appropriate International Court.