The much needed makeover for the Tandolin website is under way. It’s ironic how – just like a good car mechanic whose own car is a wreck – it takes quite some effort for a web developer to re-design the company website.
I’m glad that something is finally being done on that front. There’s a new intermediate placeholder website in place while I’m finalising the billing/helpdesk joomla component for use on the brand new tandolin website.
The hard facts from Paul Boag.
A must read for prospective web clients and web designers:
Getting the design of your website right is important. However it is no use if nobody sees it. Your number one priority has to be driving traffic to your site.
Web designers like to claim they need to spend hours testing on every browser combination. However, in reality this is just another way to extract more money from you.
At first I wanted to grab Paul by the ears and shove a keyboard down his throat. How could he expose designer secrets this way? Web people, just make sure you read his post to the very end before you think of creative ways to hurt the author. The comments are particularly informative. Read the post here
Update: Oh, and if you still don’t get it, see the next post here
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.