First of all, let me state that I have also been on the receiving end of requesting a proposal, and being asked for a budget figure on the request for quotation/proposal form. You know, the line that goes:

What is your budget for this project? : $____________________

 

The first time I encountered it, my first reaction was

 

…shouldn’t it be your responsibility to tell me how much the whole thing is going to cost? I don’t know much about the pricing in your industry. What if I tell you my budget and I end up over-paying?

 

So I know how you feel. Any first-time prospective web/software development client can be forgiven for thinking that this is a trick question; A naked attempt to rip you off. Tell them you have 50-thousand and they’ll price your requirements at 50-thousand, even though the whole thing probably costs 4-thousand, right?

To be honest, the are probably some unscrupulous web design firms / software development houses that do just that, but I don’t know any; so I’ll only be talking about the good guys. 

It turns out there is a very good reason you will be asked for a budget figure  when you request a quotation for a web/software project. I found it a pity that the reasons for this question are not made widely known. 

In this article I’m going to set the record straight to allay your fears, dear potential web client <wink, wink>.

The first reason is that you may have exceptionally high expectations and a budget that can barely touch the surface when it comes to delivering on your requirements.

Imagine how the poor bidder for your project will feel after spending spirited hours (or days even) putting together a beatifully formatted project proposal with the fair market estimate for your project; only for you to turn them down because you did not expect it to be that expensive, and you definitely do not have that kind of money!

The firm/bidder will have actually spent money (i.e. on unbilled billable hours, proposal development skill, materials and infrastructure) on something that was never going to happen, simply because your budget, which you kept secret, was unrealistic compared to the deliverables you asked for.

You will have created a mini-economic crisis for the bidder and wasted your own time in reading through that beautiful proposal. If you had sent out your request to more than one firm/bidder? Well… you get the idea.

Reason number two is that there is more to development and design nowadays. Back in the good old days, it was much simpler to design (for example) a website. If it looked good in internet explorer, you were all set. Netscape had lost in the browser wars, so there was no need to worry about designing for it.

Today we have four major web browsers that can be used by visitors to your website, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari (not taking into account the older browser versions). These browsers have slight differences in the way they would display your web pages. Tests should be run on your design using each of these browsers, and corrections need to be made so that your website looks consistent accross these browsers. This excercise costs time and money, and it definitely has to be costed in.

Now, to get to the point:  There are a number of separate, ideal tests that can be conducted on your project to improve the quality of the end-results. Some are mandatory, some are recommended but can be left out if your budget is too tight. Your project may end up with some quality issues, e.g. usability issues if the usability test was not conducted. 

So there you have it. Giving a budget estimate actually helps your bidders to carve out the best solutions for your projects. I hope this article has shed a bit more light on the topic.