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Thread: help with consluting services
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From: Nathan Clark
Date: Sat, Apr 22 2023 7:09AM
Subject: help with consluting services
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Dear list,
I have a friend that is offering me work as an accessibility
consultant. He wants me to do some manual testing on a local banking
website. He wants me to figure out a quote for the work that I would
be doing on the site.
How do I go about calculating a competitive and reasonable rate for a
quote on a banking site where I will be doing manual testing on the
site. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Nathan Clark
From: glen walker
Date: Sat, Apr 22 2023 9:04AM
Subject: Re: help with consluting services
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A lot of factors go into a quote but you can get a rough idea if you know
how long it takes you to review one page and write up the report for that
page.
The report itself also can have a lot of factors, such as:
- Do you have to explain why an issue is a problem or just report it?
- Do you need a severity level for the issue as it pertains to the user?
- Do you need a screenshot of where on the page the issue occurs?
- Do you need to show the HTML/CSS code that is causing the problem?
- Do you need to show HTML/CSS that will fix the problem?
If it takes you 3 hours to review a page and you want to charge $50/hr,
then it's $150 per page.
If it takes you 5 hours to review a page and you want to charge $150/hr,
then it's $750 per page.
If it takes you 1.5 hours to review a page and you want to charge $30/hr,
then it's $45 per page.
Then obviously multiply the per page cost by how many pages you'll review.
As you can see, the numbers can be all over the place. You really have to
evaluate yourself and what you think your time is worth.
You also need a rough idea of the complexity of the pages you'll review. If
they're all simple "contact us" type pages or informational pages, those
might only take 30-45 min to review.
If there are lots of forms and interactive elements and popup dialogs, or
the interface is complex such as tables with expandable rows, those will
take longer. Perhaps 4-5 hours, especially if you are showing HTML code on
how to fix the issues.
And then decide how many simple pages there are and how many complex pages
there are and come up with an average estimate of how long it will take.
Are you testing all public facing pages or do they want you to test account
pages? If you're not a customer with that bank, then you'll need a testing
account so you can login. That doesn't affect your estimate of the quote
but it's something you'll need to clarify up front.
On Sat, Apr 22, 2023 at 7:09 AM Nathan Clark < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> I have a friend that is offering me work as an accessibility
> consultant. He wants me to do some manual testing on a local banking
> website. He wants me to figure out a quote for the work that I would
> be doing on the site.
>
>
> How do I go about calculating a competitive and reasonable rate for a
> quote on a banking site where I will be doing manual testing on the
> site. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Sincerely,
> Nathan Clark
> > > > >
From: Steve Green
Date: Sat, Apr 22 2023 10:07AM
Subject: Re: help with consluting services
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I agree with what Glen says, with the exception that you tend to get faster once you have tested a few pages because you are seeing the same coding techniques and non-conformances again and again. At least you should be - there's something wrong if you aren't.
Once we have determined that the coding is indeed consistent, we usually take a component-based approach to pricing. On most websites you can identify numerous components that are always the same wherever they appear, such as page headers, footers, accordions, date pickers, embedded videos etc. We work out time allowances for the components and test one example of each, taking into account any variants. Then when we are estimating the cost of testing individual pages, we exclude those components. The result is that it might take 45 minutes to test a page instead of 90 minutes.
This approach minimises the time and cost of fixed-price projects, but doesn't lend itself to a price-per-page model. That said, a price-per-page model is a hopelessly inaccurate way to try and estimate the cost. Fixed-price and time-and-materials are better.
If you don't have any experience of estimation, I would advise going for a T&M model and tell them you can probably test between 3 and 5 pages per day on average, depending on the size and complexity of the pages, the amount of unique content and how badly coded it is. If they insist on a fixed price per page, guess high (perhaps 3 pages per day) because you will be taking all the risk.
Steve Green
Managing Director
Test Partners Ltd