Page nine arrives in week seven, in an email that begins "small thing." The site was scoped as five templates in a call nobody wrote down. The copy for pages two through five is "nearly there." The client has just discovered that the CMS, which was going to be easy, has a learning curve, and would like a training session, and would like the site live on the twenty-eighth, on hosting that has not come up once.
None of this is unusual. It is what a website project looks like when the three lines that decide it were never written.
The page count
A website has no natural size. "A site" can be five templates or fifty pages, and the client's picture of it grows as they see it, which is a compliment and a cost. The only defence is a number. Five page templates, named: home, about, services, a case study, contact. The neighbouring things listed as not included: the blog archive, the second language, the careers section that HR mentioned. A page past the count is then a purchase with a stated price, not a favour with an unstated resentment.
The note that goes back when page nine arrives is three facts and a question: happy to add it, it sits outside the five we scoped, it is this much and moves delivery to this date, shall I go ahead. Sent the same day, before the page is built.
The copy that never comes
A design timeline assumes words. The words come from the client, and clients are slow with words, because writing about themselves is the hardest task in the project and the one they thought would be easy. The site then stalls at the point where lorem ipsum has to become sentences, and the delay is somehow yours.
Write the assumption down with a date. "Final copy supplied by the client before design begins on each page" is a line in the proposal. Then the missed date is a fact both of you can see rather than a memory you disagree about, and the invoice for the design stage does not wait for the words to arrive.
Hosting, domains, and the handover
This paragraph prevents the worst outcome. The domain should be in the client's name from the start. The hosting should be on their account and their card, with you as a collaborator. Credentials get handed over as a named step near launch. A site on your hosting is a support contract you never priced; a domain in your name is a renewal-date dispute, one year out, with a client who has moved on.
Training on the CMS is a deliverable too, if you are offering it: one session, recorded, with a stated length. If it is not in the scope, it is a purchase.
The site, scoped before the mockup
You paste the notes from the call. North drafts the proposal with the pages counted and the exclusions named, as three options that are different amounts of site rather than the same site in three prices ("Five pages", "Five pages and the blog", "The site and the launch"). Under each page is a sentence about what that page has to do for the business, in the client's own terms. The terms note names the assumptions the price rests on: who supplies the copy, one consolidated voice for feedback, feedback returned within a stated number of working days.
You edit it and press send yourself; the client reads it at a private link, picks an option and accepts. The agreement, drafted alongside from the same scope and terms, is shown to them then; they verify their email once and sign. After signing, the accepted option can become stages (design, build, content, launch) with dates spread across the agreed timeline, which the client watches from the room; a finished stage becomes an invoice line, and the final invoice remembers what the design stage already billed. Invoices are drafted from the project and sent by you. On the paid plan the client pays by card on your own Stripe account, and the stages themselves are part of that plan; the invoice, the reminder you choose to send, and the room are free.
The document carries your logo and your colour. For a web designer, the proposal is the first page the client sees you build; it should not look like anyone else's.
What North does not host
North does not host anything, transfer a domain, migrate a blog archive, or record a CMS walkthrough. It does not monitor uptime and it will not tell the client their hosting bill is due. Those live wherever they live now. What North gives you is the sentence in a signed document that says which of them were yours.
Common questions
- How do I stop a website project growing from five pages to twelve?
- Count the pages in the proposal and list what is not included by name: the blog archive migration, the careers section, the second language. A page count is a number the client agreed to; a request past it is arithmetic. Then price the extra page in the same document, so that page nine has a cost before anyone asks for it, and send a short note with that cost the day the request arrives rather than after the work.
- What do I do when the client has not supplied the copy?
- Put copy delivery in the proposal as an assumption with a date, and make the timeline conditional on it. Then the conversation in week five is about a date the client missed, not about why the site is late. A placeholder build can proceed, but launch waits for their words, and the invoice for the design stage does not.
- Who owns the domain and hosting when a freelancer builds the site?
- The client should, from day one, in accounts under their own name and card, with you added as a collaborator. A site on your hosting account is a support contract you did not price, and a domain in your name is a dispute waiting for a renewal date. Write the arrangement into the scope as a line, with the handover of credentials as a named step near launch.