What do you charge for your services?
Sapient Design charges for work by the project, rather than an hourly fee. This helps to protect both of us from a legal standpoint, as the IRS has tricky requirements in determining whether a service provider is a 1099 consultant or should be classified as an employee (costly to you).

As for specific rates, these vary depending on the complexity of the work to be completed, how much time it is projected to take, and how quickly you need it completed. The complimentary consultation is used to prepare a custom estimate for you, before you have committed anything financially to Sapient Design. The scope of work can be tailored to fit most budgets, so there is no risk to you in talking with us to find out how we may be able to complete your project.

I just want a website. Do I really need user research and/or usability testing?
User research (or exploratory research) helps to identify your clients and their needs. We cannot design an effective web solution if we don't understand who we are designing for. If you are an established business, with a solid, consistent client base and can describe the characteristics of your audience (such as age range, socio-economic status, etc.), then we may be able to skip this step. If, however, you are a new business, a business that has changed it's focus or services, or a business that is struggling to build or keep it's clients, exploratory research is highly recommened.

Usability testing insures that your users can complete the tasks that you have designed your web solution to address. Very simple informational sites may be able to skip this step, but complex sites that include things like e-commerce, database/search queries, or other specific tasks will benefit from being tested by real users. If, for example, the goal of your website is to sell tickets to an event, you'll want to make absolutely certain that there are no problems with the checkout/payment mechanism in place that could prevent users from completing the transaction. The site statistics provided by your ISP may be able to show you whether you are losing site visitors before they complete these tasks. We can work with you to analyze this data.