Every time you, or someone, asks a web design/development firm to build a website and they give you a deadline, or an estimate of time/pricing at a reasonable price (without obtaining too much profit), they are never certain if their estimate will correspond to the actual time the project will take.
Every project estimate a company does is based on a series of trial and errors. Each time they are wrong, the estimate’s value increases; each time they are right, it decreases.
If you ask a firm to develop a project with a very large scope of features, it’s absolutely normal for the project cost/time estimates to rise at a much higher rate.
The problem
If you own a small business, or you want to make a site to reflect your corporate image, and create an online presence, it’s quite simple to give you an accurate proposal with a realistic deadline and a price that we know is coherent with both our skill set, and the amount of time it will take for us to finish it.
Sometimes even simple projects can get out of hand, as customers demand for more features, or want to infinitely tweak the design of the site without bringing them further costs. These demands are perfectly manageable when we’re talking about a simple website but they escalate unreasonable amounts as the project scope grows.
If your car’s engine has a problem you take it to the mechanic (and provided they’re not lying to you), it will be reasonably simple for them to fix it. They understand how car engines work very well, and in some cases can tell the trouble just by listening to the car.
If you’re taking a flight to somewhere, and they detect an engine problem somewhere, it’s almost certain that the flight will be canceled, and it will take several hours or days to solve it. This is more or less a reasonable equivalent between a small and a large scope web project.
Where that leaves both sides at
So that leaves us at a cold “grey area” for the project. Neither party is exactly sure of how long the project will consist and how much effort and time they will consume for each side. This is usually where negotiations break down.
On the agency’s side they can choose to do two things:
- throw a proposal straight away – knowing that the value will either be exaggeratedly high or low. One value might completely “scare” the customer away, the other might bring serious harm for the company.
- examine the project’s scope – get into the thick of things. Ask the customer exactly what he wants from the site. What he wants to be able to do with it. Find something or some platform to base the project upon, and draw an estimate of time for each task.
You get what you pay for
Examining a project’s scope takes time. In some cases it’s not an expense that can be overlooked. It’s not an expensive process, but it is time consuming. It doesn’t matter whether you’re going be working with that agency or not, if the plan they give you is well made, you can take it to another agency, skip that part of the negotiations, and work from there.
If you’re the customer here’s a tip for obtaining the best service from a web design company. The more interest and enthusiasm you show for the project, the better will feel the people working on it. If you simply don’t care what you’re web endeavor is going to work or look like until you see it up and running, don’t expect the company to be happy about making those changes.
The sooner you notice a change you want to make, the less effort it will take for the agency to act. If you’re keen on keeping track of the project, the agency will thank you and the final product will be better and finished sooner.
Of course you can choose to ignore this, and just randomly ask for proposals to a dozen companies, you’ll receive some with incredibly inflated numbers, which are the agencies that are taking no risks; A few with ridiculously low prices, which either didn’t understand the project or want to force you to use a certain pre-made program, and limit you to it; and finally there will be a few companies asking for more details, and offering to have a meeting with you, and they are not necessarily the ones that want to “rip you off“.
And although you might find it tempting to just take one of the offers that gave you an actual number, rather than the ones ask for boring old details, you’ll find that those companies “boring you” with details are actually the ones looking out for you and your interests. Who want to build the website you want, that works the way you’d expect it.
Like the saying goes, you do get what you pay for, but for the first two cases, you’re paying for your ignorance, and not your project’s quality.