Website development costs – why they need to be spread out

June 15, 2010 8:59 am admin Website Development

For most of the past decade I’ve been working with companies that want to gain more from their websites.  In that time though there’s always been one consistent sticking point – the costs to redevelop an existing website/create a new website from scratch.

The sticking point is always price and it’s a mammoth task to convince a client that it’s worth investing more rather than less.  There are so many web developers nowadays and with that comes a wide range of costs for a website to be developed.  While I accept that there are a few gems of developers who will create a fully CMS website, that gives clients all the editing/adding access required – for under £1,500, they’re in the minority.

From the clients point of view (and I’m talking mainly about smaller businesses here), once the costs of a new website go beyond the £2,000 mark, they start to lose interest.  Is it that web developers are greedy?  In some cases, yes, but in the majority of cases, no.   Any web developer that is good will spend an extensive amount of time on creating a website and so expects to get paid accordingly.  This puts them in a difficult position when a client has, say, £1,500 – £2,000 on the table but won’t pay any more.  Is the web developer to walk away or are they going to necessarily cut a few corners (or make a loss on the project)?

I’ve now seen many examples where clients ideally needed to spend extra (typically, around £3,000 instead of up to £2,000) to get a website that is truly what will benefit them (i.e. will play its part in generating business).   Right now I’m involved in a project where the budget is £2,000 and the client has been told that the chosen web developer isn’t able to create the result I want for that budget, but there’s no extra budget in the pot.  Ultimately, the result will be a website that won’t get the level of results desired.  What’s ironic about this is that the extra £1,000 invested now would be easilyrecouped within two months maximum (because the new website would be totally what was needed, instead of a compromise, and so would generate more business to recoup that extra investment).

So what’s the answer to this problem?  

I feel the answer is that website development costs need to be spread out.   In the same way that someone may buy something and pay for it over a period of months, web development could be treated in the same way.   Given the choice, I personally would spend £3,000 or more on a website (if I knew what difference that would make) than £2,000 and what would make me do that would be if I was offered the option to spread the payments (e.g. over a 12 month period).

Understandably, many web developers wouldn’t want to be involved in a project that took 12 months to get paid for but I feel that those who would adopt that mindset would be those that would gain more business through positive referrals onto new potential clients.    Or how about an innovative financing company being prepared to pay the web developer the whole costs in exchange for taking on the responsibility for getting payments from the client, with the cost of the project having been uplifted accordingly.   So, a £3,000 project then becomes £3,300 and the end client is tied into a commitment to pay over the 12 months and the financing company make £300 for what would be minimal effort.

I’ve been waiting for such innovations to happen in recent years but as yet, I’m seeing little evidence of it happening.  OK, it happens with some smaller web developers and those who perhaps aren’t up to the standards required to get the desired fantastic website, but those who are capable of creating fantastic results for clients don’t seem to ‘get it’ that they need to be offering such financial incentives.

From the viewpoint of the company buying the website development they will immediately get a website that performs to a much higher standard and although paying more than they may have wanted to, can spread those payments over several months.  If the website is right and it’s marketed properly then they’ll make that money back in no time.

From the viewpoint of the web developer, within a few such projects there becomes a steady input of cashflow over the months (less feast and famine), clients will love them more because they’re getting great results without a big initial financial hit, and ultimately, the relationship will be stronger and likely lead onto the web developer being recommended onto others.

To me it all looks very simple and it’s not dissimilar to how Custwin works – huge amounts of time are used initially on clients (so there is effectively a ‘loss’ in the early months) but the results come in faster and the client is then happy to pay each month thereafter.  Any web developers that offer such a way of spreading website payments, and is up to the standards we expect for client websites, would be people we’d be wanting to talk to.