Exposing The Cost Variance of Web Development

If you’ve ever approached various web development firms for a website proposal or quote, almost immediately you would have noticed the alarmingly wide cost variations. Determining what’s best for you and your budget sure can be mind-boggling. To help you, we have outlined what commonly differentiates one firm from another and how it affects the pricing. I often like to use the analogy of a car to explain the options or features versus cost variations. I know it’s not the same comparing cars to websites, but it will help with clarification.

1. Understanding of purpose and project specs -OR- car buyer says, “I want a car!”
Whether it is a want or a need, a car buyer will undoubtedly have a reason for making a purchase. In web development this is typically where miscommunication occurs between the website vendor and consumer. To help minimize this, it’s important to reach an understanding of the goals, objectives, and necessary functions of a website, as well as a business model. You should know your competitors and consumers, and explain how you want the site to work. It’s important to differentiate a general web visitor vs. a member/subscriber/customer, or website administrator. This way the web company can understand how each level of access needs to work. Even rough “blueprints” can be very helpful.

2. Level of feature detail-OR- “What kind of a car are you looking for? Type? Class?”
This is where quotes can start to vary depending on the level of detail put into your website project. Without getting too technical, a price estimate takes into account the implementation and degree of security (including protection against known attacks, input sanitization, and the safety of sensitive data), performance (including speed, optimization of both front end and databases, and efficient scaling), configurability, scalability, etc. For instance, developers may add logic to ensure that a phone number is correctly entered in numerical form, rather than just checking if one is provided at all. They may also check if a given postal code matches a selected country. These sorts of features make for a smarter website, and are generally not included in low cost website development.

Note that if the web developer was to add every possible detail within a project’s proposal, they’d end up with a novel. The benefit of working with a reputable and experienced provider is trusting them to select the best features for you.

2. Choice of technology -OR- “Car’s engine type?”
When choosing a technology for a website, you are typically faced with options between an open-source technology like PHP and MySQL or a proprietary one like Microsoft’s .NET Framework, Java, JSP, Oracle, etc. Open-source advocates argue that PHP-based solutions draw from a larger pool of developers, resources, and readily available information. Proprietary technology advocates argue that closed solutions offer more power, scalability, and are inherently less viral. The fact at the moment is that PHP is the most widely used server-side programming language in the world. Its popularity is only going to increase as it becomes even more widely tested, implemented, and extended. All of this is yet another reason you need to hire a reputable and knowledgeable firm to handle your site. Choose somebody who can not only tell you the advantages and disadvantages of all available options, but also give you an objective and real analysis of where your needs place you in regards to a platform decision.

3. Type and size of firm -OR- “Which car dealership?”
Today a website is often a business’ first impression and it needs to be the right one. No one person can have all the skills necessary to create a successful website. Therefore, it’s imperative to select a team that can account for all the facets of a website: project/strategic management, design, development, copy, marketing, quality assurance, and post-production maintenance.

4. Ownership.
Many web development firms may provide their own packaged software or other pre-built components. So the question to ask is, “Do you own your entire website, including images, code, databases, etc.?” This is something very important that most web clients do not even consider until it’s too late. If at a later point you decide to move to a different hosting provider or have someone else work on the website, can it be done without going back to the initial web developers? In most instances, you own everything that you have provided to the web company, however anything they provide is kept within their licensed right. Some may charge a licensing fee and may also require you to host your website on their servers. The same is true for templated solutions. Essentially, lack of ownership will substantially reduce the cost, since providers who are willing to give you the rights to all the source codes will charge a premium.

5. Reputation -OR- “What do you and others know about the car make?”
Last but not least, a prominent web development firm that’s renowned for client satisfaction and awarded for excellence by the industry is an indication of quality and reliability.

It’s important to prioritize your expenses in order to stay within a budget. These 5 basics should shed some light on where and how the costs are incurred, and should help not only in your review of different web development firms, but also in preparing your requirements list. Above all remember that your web solutions company should be a partner helping your business succeed.

Comments

• This is good, but there are also some details that the clients should know about. Like the difference between a photoshop generated screenshot, and a web page being rendered. Browser limitations do pose a problem when trying to imagine a “beautiful” website, only to have some parts of it not come out as expected.

  Comment by Shameer — December 20th, 2007