There’s a dangerous question that I often try to avoid when talking to potential clients, and that’s this — “What other websites do you think are similar in style to what you’re looking for?”
I remember one instance where a guy showed me that site, the one he wanted his site to feel like. I remember doing some research to find that that website had a pricetag of $125,000.
Let’s just say we had to catch his fall a little.
While this situation was somewhat humorous, it reminds of that experience where you flip a price tag to show a price about 50% more than you anticipated. Your next question or thought would probably have been, “What makes that thing so expensive?”
For your consideration, here are several components that make a website “cost,” if you will. (In fact, if these items didn’t cost you anything, your site may not be as good as you once thought.)
1. Discovery
Think of this as your plan of attack. As my 8th grade science teacher said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” I hate clichés, but folks, this one rings true! Any decent web designer/developer can build features, but a website is much deeper that that. If you didn’t ask and answer 50–60 questions about your audience, goals for the site, and website user flow, your website most likely lacks effectiveness — no plan!
2. Content
You thought Design was next? Nope. From Call to Action button content to wording of the Menu items, Content becomes one of the defining elements of a website. I’d be so brash to say that this is the “Make or Break” element of a website. Does your content make or break your website?
3. Design
Color, texture selection, and image usage are in play here, but there’s so much more to Web design. Ever thought about how well your home page directs eye flow to your most desired content? Probably not, right? Makes sense — you probably chose a cheaper website option.
4. Development
This is bigger than “making it work.” There are always at least 3–4 viable options for development scenarios. Development decisions should find their cue from the discovery plan at the project start.
Final thoughts
You might be surprised at this, but for great websites, these 4 areas will get a good share of time. If any one of these areas (and there are more like Testing) is left wanting, you cheated yourself out of a quality site. Don’t expect results!
Do you agree with me, or am I totally wet on this? Odds are that you probably know a few things I don’t.
Why not share those thoughts below?
And then there are all the ongoing costs that people overlook. Even a small site can take a lot of time to maintain if you want to keep it looking good (I shudder at the maintenance I should be doing on my own blog for example). Especially with large sites (let’s say 100,000 pages or more), all the ongoing maintenance issues become extremely important. Which is to say that not only is the initial cost of a large site a lot, but the ongoing maintenance can be impossible depending on how it’s implemented (hence the need for product management for a large site).
The issues you raise make sense. Other items that make a site cost are: a) how customized it needs to be (in other words, how much CMS out of the box functionality can be used), b) how much integration with other systems is required, c) migration costs, d) number of sections / subsites, e) how many channels it publishes to (or is it just a web site), etc.
You list the most important stage: Discovery! A more complicated site requires more of that.…
Excellent points Brandon and David. I recognise Brandon’s point more from dealing with smaller projects, and many of David’s points (obviously) from the larger ones.
I think the “internet boom” of the early to mid 00’s has a lot to blame for some of the current problems with have in producing great web sites (and web presences — let’s not forget that these issues go beyond the walls of the humble company site).
During those formative years the industry pitched a pitch of quick and easy web sites. That mind-set is still there. Many clients (especially the small to medium sized ones) find the cost of doing a *proper* website shocking.
Unfortunately there are far too many people and companies out there who are prepared to do the (inadequate) work (or don’t understand what they are /not/ doing) for what these clients are willing to pay. The cycle continues.
David Hobbs makes an excellent point about the cost of maintenance. One of the less visible aspects of that is the accountability, the commitment of time and the related resources required to keep content current and easy to locate. Added to that is the cost of someone’s time to monitor the entire site and to prod (oops, to “motivate”) those at the end of the bell shaped curve who somehow let their enthusiasm and accountability dwindle. Agree?
I agree with that, a good, useful, quality website costs a lot of money. As David already mentioned the maintenance even more. But when we have an high quality and maintained & monitored site. Where will it live? Big sites usually live on big servers in high-end data centers with top security standards, with back-up and fall-back scenarios. The hosting and support contract costs can easily add up another couple of 10K’s per year. (Also when you do it all ‘in house’)
I have a second comment (couldn’t alter my previous), but in this post I mention a few detailed corporate enterprise requirements to consider when building an enterprise website.
These have a serious price tag (on resources): http://www.baszurburg.com/post/2010/03/14/Corporate-Web-Development-is-different.aspx
David, James, Jim, and Bas: Thanks for taking time to write. I’d really be interested to know more about this from your experience. Here are some questions/thoughts for you guys/others:
(1) Do you require the Discovery phase of all projects? Or is that just for projects above a certain level?
(2) What percentage do you typically propose/budget for discover phase, as opposed to the design and development phases?
We’ve found at Worthwhile, that the discovery phase could easily be 1/3 of the total project time, particularly if they’re coming with big goals/expectations or if they don’t have a clue what they want.
Look forward to hearing back from you guys. Great conversation!
(Another response from Stockholm, here, following James’ link!)
Excellent points, Brandon. From the perspective of a content marketer who work with words, this is something I often come up against with clients. Just this week I was talking with a client who wanted major work done on his copy, but there were so many problems with the site:
–no space above the fold to put call-to-actions
–overloaded footers that no one will see
–a domineering header that wipes out too much of the screen and doesn’t leave room for the key value propositions.
Unfortunately he’d just paid for the redesign and was now coming to me for the copy. There should be a bit button on Google that says: Looking for a New Website ? Talk to a designer AND copywriter.
Hi Brandon, In my opinion it all depends on the people you’re working with. I used to do big websites (40+ country sites) for companies in a role of technical lead.
As you know, external websites are mostly done by the marketing department. Some companies have good and clear plans that sometimes even rock, but others do not. (It all depended on the people). If the plan sucked, even I had to advise on the content strategy.
The most important things of a website is the content strategy. If you mean with discovery phase determining the content strategy, Pffff, wet finger, but around 50% should go in there at least. But be careful that the discussions are not about the colors and look and feel. These discussions can eat a lot of the available budget. (I have seen an example that most money went to a company that designed a stupid logo — The wrong way to brand a company).
Also the project setup has an high impact on the budget. There will be many stakeholders, but only one can be the boss! Don’t allow others to interfere.
The part of this issue of “Cost” that I didn’t raise is this — an effective discovery has to be done before the project scope is set and agreed upon, else the discovery is hand-cuffed by the project scope boundaries.
Companies and firms give away so much free advice and consulting, that at times, it’s hard to get people to see the value of a discovery, which is really unfortunate.
Depending upon the size and specialties of a web project (some that you guys have noted), I could easily see the four items I listed above each taking 25% of the budget. Some projects are design-heavy, if there are many pages that don’t follow a standard content page design.
The other ironic piece here, is that this doesn’t include any SEO, SEM, or ongiong consulting, or as you guys mentioned hosting or updates.