Top Computer Multimedia Services in Asheville, NC 28804
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How much does it cost? And why?
It's no different than building a house. There are many cost impacting specifications that contribute to the price of a house. There's location and size of the property, the square footage and layout of the house, the exterior building materials, the interior building materials, the appliances, the interior fixtures, and the landscaping. Prospective clients have to clearly define the scope of what they want before they can hope that a web design firm can give them a quote. Unfortunately, we see it more times than we would like-- the clients need something simple, just a little brochure site, not a big deal, here's my "inspiration site," and "give me the price for a basic site." Depending on whether or not the information seems logical, we bid. In the next instance, we are on a 3 month logo design safari with a rapidly creeping scope in form of widgets and web apps. In the meantime, we watch while our project budget flies out the window and we are praying just to break even. Most of the time, clients just don't understand. And why should they? When I take my car to the mechanic, I don't want to learn how to replace my transmission, I just need to know that he did it. However, with Web development it becomes a bit different, with much higher financial stakes. Clearly, Google and myspace and facebook were not apps built in a day or even two months. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, have gone into the conceptualization, programming, and maintenance of these "simple" sites. For that reason, it is illogical to think that a small Web firm can build an exact replica of a major social networking site for the cost of a new transmission. Custom website projects are often misunderstood because 1) there is the belief that it relies on an open source solution to supply the framework that it is not custom. Not true. Relying on a framework that is open source allows you, the customer, to enjoy the benefits of using open source technology, which prescribes many of the standards by which "joomla" developers or "drupal" developers operate. Using these open-source standards often make the site easier to maintain if you go from one developer/firm to another in the future.2) There are many basic holes in the proverbial ozone in which the buyer/client and the developer/firm fail to communicate. Often, neither the client nor the firm understand precisely what web solution is needed for the project. Decision makers and client-side contacts need to be on the same page. If you want to ensure the failure of a web project, then plan poorly. Poor planning is the primary reason projects have problems. Planning becomes more critical to the success of a website as the size and complexity of the project increases. Firms are faced with two huge challenges; 1) Convincing clients of the importance of investing time in the planning process, and 2) Having the willpower to refuse a client's project until an adequate plan is established, understood, and approved by all stakeholders. Communication Breakdown In the practical world, communication gaps are present during every project. The size of the gap (and the importance of the portion of the scope that is in the gap), will determine whether or not the project was "a smashing success" or a "nightmare/failure". If the gap is large, problems will be obvious. The firm honestly believes they did their job, and the client thinks the job was not complete, and wants to continue to make additions and changes with no more charges. In these cases, all parties think they are losing. And they are all right. A well-developed plan and constant communication can solve this. A web design firm would never intentionally create communication gaps on projectsthey sell and execute. Gaps and the potential for them increase when 1) the person communicating the needs of the client is a 3rd party with no experience in the web development cycle, 2) the project is large with multiple widgets or functions that the client has envisioned working in a way that is not technically feasible, or 3) the client does not have a well-formed business idea and the idea morphs and changes as the end of the project draws near and the client wants to keep the door open for changing scope to accommodate business plan changes. We have seen bad technology projects get saved and we have seen them die. We always try to resolve the issues with clients, however, sometimes it is in the best interest of everyone if we part ways. To save a project, one has to clearly define the communication gap. Defining the gap may involve spec sheets, punch lists, mockups, etc. Developers need from clients absolute clarity. Once the gap is defined, we always try to work out a compromise. Some truths:1) Because business models and priorities change, the web development and planning process is ongoing and should be revisited at least once per year. For new websites, the result of this process will dictate the scope of the website. For existing websites, the result of this process will dictate the scope of the redesign and increase in functionality.2) For companies or organizations that have many stakeholders and decisions makers, we much prefer one person take the lead on getting the process done. It typically works best if the lead person puts together a planning document and then provides it for review and revisions to the other stakeholders prior to any web production. Things for clients to consider. Consideration 1. Define your target audiences Define all of your target audiences for the website (i.e. potential customers, existing customers, existing reseller, potential reseller, existing investors, potential investors, existing employees, potential employees, press, existing vendors, potential vendors, etc). Consideration 2. Rank the target audiences Rank / prioritize the target with number 1 being the most important audience you need to address with your website. Consideration 3. List your goals for each target audience. Starting with your number 1 target audience - list the goals you have related to the website (i.e. "Buyers will be able to shop for products and purchase them"). The goals should be centered around what actions you want your target audiences to take on the website or as a result of the website. Consideration 4. Review the goals in two ways. First by Importance - use an A, B, or C. * A = Must get done* B = Should get done* C = Get done if it's easy / doesn't impact other more important items Next by Urgency * 2 = Needs to be done within 2 months* 6 = Needs to be done within 6 months* 12 = Needs to be done within 12 months* NI = Not important When you are done with the above steps, you should be able to look at the overall results and say... "if we don't get anything else right, we have to do these X things". How much? The most important question and the 300 lb gorilla in the room. There are three categories of pricing and they are as follows: 1) Design - You can address this portion of your scope by answering the question "What is your website going to look like?" The website design includes the overall graphical look and feel of your website. For most websites, this includes the home page layout/design, the interior page template layout / design (typically there is only one, but if there are more.. this needs to be addressed), and the navigation structure and design. 2) Development for functionality - You can address this portion of your scope by answering the question "What is your website going to do?". The functionality on your website should all be geared towards helping you accomplish your goals with your target audiences. Functionality can be split into many general categories including content management, ecommerce shopping carts / product catalogs, directories, navigation management, marketing tools, third party software integration tools, etc. For business websites, this will likely represent the lion's share of your price. It also is the highest area of risk for communication gaps. 3) Content - You can address this portion of your scope by answering the question "What is your website going to say?" Content includes marketing copy (i.e. for your home page, about us page, etc), press releases, product data and images, pictures, presentation, documents / files, etc. Answer the following with the stakeholders:o Who is responsible for the initial preparation / creation of the content?o How will content updates (add, edits, removes) be made, and who will make them? Notwithstanding a contract for copywriting, the client is responsible for the initial preparation of the content. Copywriting takes a great deal of time, especially if the technical developer is not an expert in the business field of the website being built. So to answer the question, "how much?" we recommend you contact us with your specifications to get a commitment-free quote today. ...read more
By Wishbone MediaWorks October 24, 2009
One Size Does Not Fit All
One of the main issues we development agencies face when engaging in the bidding process on projects is that we often cannot gauge the complexity of a project until we are in the throes of it. Some clients appear to know precisely what they want— come equipped with Word docs of content and folders of image files ready to ftp— but in reality, what they think they need quickly changes in development and we face issues of scope creep. Many of you have also witnessed the demise of agencies with tons of potential to succeed. We have seen projects that paid $8,000 in which the cost of development was calculated at over $20,000. Venture capital or not, a business can't float long on those numbers. We have to avoid, at all costs, getting upside down on projects. We, and others like us, run a very real risk of misallocating time, miscalculating resources required to complete a job, and losing everything that experience and our wits have helped us build. In the old days, we had a very clear picture of what it would take to put a company's brochure on the Web. Content could possibly change a dozen or so times a year, competition wasn't overwhelming, the sites were fairly simplistic in function although they could be quite complicated in look and feel/design. We spent a lot of time building websites that were very beautiful with tons of Flash that existed to be an online elevator pitch/ad for a company and nothing more. Today we operate a Drupal shop. Drupal, at its very core, provides the basic building blocks that create complex web architectures by exploiting database relationships. How these relationships form, relate to the data, and transmit new results (content) to the site are highly involved algorithms. Sometimes the relationships present a new puzzle, one that has not been tested in Drupal, something that has to be developed, tested over time, ensured by the client to have the desired results. Often, more than not, the clients decide that their needs change midstream— often because they failed to grasp the potential of Drupal on the outset— more often because viewing their idea in development gives them new and improved ideas. All of this is fantastic fun, of course, until you examine the hours spent on the project and realize that it has been grossly underbid and that every 2 hour conversation you have with the client is leaking the lifeblood out of the business. The biggest time-wasters, we have already discovered, occur with the addition of a middle man, project manager, account manager who deals directly with the client and actively participates in the the ever-changing scope. I don't want to sound all doom and gloom, like there is no hope for a streamlined pricing structure in which sales partners can hope to obtain estimates. There are dream clients out there and for those one could give highly competitive consistent prices all day long. But far too often the scenario is like the one described above. Some questions to consider for agencies hoping to sell web development and act as front men for your multimedia agency: If there was a standard pricing structure, would they write in the ability for you to bill them separately and additionally when the project left scope? If a sales team would be willing to provide some level of insurance for us, as developers, in working with their clients, then it would make our ability to provide general pricing easier. Do technology salesmen understand the nuances of Drupal development? Do they understand that varied data requirements coupled with varying user permissions (for instance) take an octopus with 8 legs and give it hundreds of tentacles? The complexity of a website changes exponentially when new and varied requirements are introduced to the database. Would a proposed sales team be willing to have us (the design/development agency) interface directly with the clients on the web project? Sales could act at PM, but for the process to be efficient, the middle person must be removed during the development cycle. Don't you agree? To this point, we have been able to see success in our endeavors because of our efficiency. Bid a project, develop it, deploy it, bill it— repeat and rinse. We will not succeed in the rhythm of: bid a project, talk it to death, wait around for rooms full of people to decide what the product is, listen to tons of discussion about the design, listen to arguments about the content, redesign, redeploy, leave up as a test site, train site managers, retrain site managers, never get paid, lose money, lose time, go insane... How can we communicate the need for the pricing schedule to be slightly modified on a case by case basis due to the myriad nuances involved in web application development? ...read more
By Wishbone MediaWorks October 24, 2009
Asheville Web Design & Graphic Design
Firefly Design is an Asheville, NC web design and graphic design studio. Building web sites that build relationships. Connecting people, ideas, and technology. Creating innovative marketing solutions that get results. Asheville Web Design ...read more
By Firefly Design Studio - Asheville web design January 29, 2007