This is something that’s been at the back of my mind for some time.

There seems to be a complete disconnect in the way one web developer ( for the sake of simplicity, this includes, Web Designers, Web Graphic Artists, and Code Slingers) prices his/her services from the next . You’d be forgiven for thinking that some of these characters pick out prices from thin air; and you’d be right half the the time.

For a long time I dismissed these differences as the makings of  free market economics until a revelation suddenly dawned on me ( /* insert hallelujah chorus here */)

The low barriers to entry for web development make it so easy to make a mess of things and get away with it that most people will not notice except for the few discerning eyes.

Detour

Let me digress for a moment.

Apart from formal training in computer science, I have no formal web training at all. The web was a lab experiment when I was a student (that’s when ftp was the killer app). So I learned by trial-and-error (ok, I also learned quite a bit from the multinational computer giant I worked at). I still learn quite a lot and I prefer staying an eternal student rather than being a know-it-all Guru.

When I started out on the web, I was under the naive impression that web development was a piece of cake. I’m guilty of jumping on the web bandwagon with a view to making an easy, decent living (that was 2001 – I had been dabbling since 1996), but my fantasy bubble has long since been popped by harsh reality.

Things Have Changed

It’s true that  developing acceptable websites was easier in the early days (Think, blinking javascript, smileys all over the page and intergalactic backgrounds); but aspects of the web have since evolved into something almost totally unrecognisable from the initial purpose of websites. The web has evolved from a medium for displaying telephone numbers and directions to your location to a specialised networking medium with many invisible underlying protocols.

This is not readily apparent to the newcomer and there’s still a lot of debris floating on the surface (I know, I’ve produced a lot of junk myself along the way and I’m not ashamed to say it).

What Are You Dishing Out?

It is very common to find a clueless pair of web developer and client working together to unleash on the world a spectacularly malformed pile of rubbish (the pro’s will agree with me here, there are many ready examples of individual websites, companies, and goverment departments committing horrendous atrocities on the web). This is not limited to one-man-show developers or small business. Big organisations screw up too!

The Widening Gap

I’m repeating what you might already know. The tools for building websites have become fairly easy to use, and even though I applaud the efforts of all those who worked hard to make it easier for others to use this fantastic medium, the unintended result is that too many people are using these tools improperly and charging none-the-wiser customers for the service. Filling the web with even more junk.

This is linked to the number 1 reason you find the staggering difference in pricing from one developer to the next. The professionals charge more for their efforts because they know what it takes to do the job properly.

They know about the importance of valid CSS and XHTML, they know about optimally placing JavaScript links to reduce loading times, they keep Search Optimisation in mind while working on your design, Cross-Browser compatibility…, I can go on and on about the many other things that are not readily apparent to the uninitiated.

It’s Your Baby

This makes it increasingly important for a person who needs a web solution to learn as much as possible about the modern web and to ask the right questions when interviewing for a web project.

Just as you learned all by yourself to tell the difference between grasshoppers and Prada shoes, you need to learn the difference between web debris and and a quality web solution. If your only knowledge consists of comparing the price of one product/developer to another, you are in big, BIIIG trouble.

Just because something is cheap doesn’t mean it’s worth the cost