Your organization, your audience, your goals

This may sound obvious, but we’ll say it all the same: to be successful, your website must fit the needs of your audience. If you are a B2B company selling primarily to electrical engineers, your website will be  a very different kind of website from an educational site designed to reach out to lower-income mothers, for example. Who your audience is will determine the depth of the site, the level of design needed and how your content will be presented. The first step in your web project (and the most important one) is to understand who your audience is and what you’re trying to achieve with your site.  This will steer the planning for your web project, and will have a big impact on everything from content to feature set.

Content

Every usability, development and design expert has said it, and we can’t stress it strongly enough: Content is king. Sites with useful, engaging, unique content are the sites that succeed. For the purposes of estimating a site, a marketing firm would need to know four things about your content:

• What content you think your site should have
  This affects the information architecture of your site and helps shape our thinking about what features and tools might be helpful to your users. Of course, one of the reasons you hire communications experts for a website build is that we might have some input on what content should or should not be included, but having your list is a very good place to start from.
• How much of your content exists already, and in what format
  For the purposes of estimating, this is a big determining factor in cost. Because the content is the most important part of your site, it has to be very well written, well thought-out and consistent in tone and style. You should look at your content objectively and comprehensively from the point of view of your audience. Marketing firms like us have copywriters on staff who can create content and edit existing content for consistency. Even the most complete and comprehensive content often has to be edited for web, since writing for web is different from writing for print. Tip: Creating a content inventory in a spreadsheet is a good way to start, so you can document what you have, what quality it is and what you want.
• How technical or specialized your content is
  In order to create a site that conveys who you are and what you do, a marketing firm needs to understand exactly that. How difficult and involved it will be to gain that knowledge will affect your estimate.
• How your content will be maintained
  In order to keep your site relevant and maintain a good search engine ranking, your site will need fresh content on a regular basis. For some organizations, that might mean quarterly or yearly updates of small sections of the site, and for others, it might mean daily updates of much of the content. Do you have IT support in house who will maintain your content, or will it be done by staff with no special training or software? How your content will be created and maintained going forward will be a major factor in determining the manner in which your site is built and what platform it’s built on.

Choosing features

What tools, features and capabilities do you want from your site? Think about the front-end of the site (what the user sees and does) as well as the back-end (what you and your employees see and do). Some examples of front-end features might be a shopping cart, Send-to-a-friend forms, video testimonials or interactive games. Some examples of back-end features might be calendar management, CRM (customer relation management) system integration or inventory management. Tip: A good way to get a sense of what front-end features you might want would be to look around at sites related to yours and see what they have. Decisions on back-end features are often driven by your organizations processes and the needs of the site.

In general, the more features you want on your site, the more expensive it gets, so think lean; There are myriad bells and whistles out there, but you only want the ones that will be really helpful to your audience and help achieve your goals. Another important factor in deciding on features is whether you have the content to drive those features.

We know that many business people don’t know about all the possibilities out there, so if you have no idea what features you might want, that’s OK. We can look at your content, your goals and your audience, and make some suggestions. Decisions on whether features would be helpful or not are often shaped by the results of our research.

Research

As a research-based firm, we place a lot of value in doing the right research and planning your site correctly. In addition to all our secondary research on your industry or field, your competitors, your audience behaviors and general web design and development trends, we often do usability research and user testing on sites as we work to create them.
If your site is a major component of your organization’s communication plan or will be used to generate  revenue, we very much recommend at least one round of user testing, or sometimes as many as three rounds. This is often not very expensive, and even a single round of testing with only a handful of subjects can be very useful. We have a full research team in house, which makes in-process research efficient and simple. If your site is important to you, we don’t recommend cutting back on research; there are safer ways to keep your budget lean.

Keeping it lean

In general, the reason people ask how much it will cost is because they’re on a budget and want to know if they can afford it. We recommend asking it the other way: What can I get for what I have to spend? If your organization is looking to build a successful site on a set budget, we have to know that for the estimating process. Bring us your wish list and your budget, and we’ll help figure out what you can get on that list for what you have to spend. Tip: In general, the most bang for your buck is in content and site structure/usability, and the most cost is in features. In addition, it’s easy to add features as more money comes in, as long as the site has a strong foundation. We recommend starting the trimming process by looking at what features are “must-have-right-now” items, and what are optional or can be put off until later. Having a sense of that going into it will make it easier to squeeze your pennies without sacrificing quality.

What not to do

“Get a website for only $499!” Seeing a dollar figure in a banner ad is tempting, because it’s a set number, it’s cheap, and the sites they show as examples are ok looking. There are 3 reasons not to be tempted by cheap online web design:

1. Not customizeable
   Those companies make sites like McDonald’s makes burgers – Getting a custom site from them is like ordering a Big Mac medium-rare: It’s not just that they won’t do it, it’s that they can’t. They have set templates to which they apply your logo, add some copy and call it good. There’s no strategy or planning behind it, and they don’t care who you are, who your audience is or what you’re trying to accomplish.
2. Built using unskilled offshore labor
   Cheap websites are made with cheap labor, usually overseas. Regardless of your opinion of offshoring from a moral or economic standpoint, it simply can’t be argued that the end product is the same. There is a much lower level of quality control; combine that with unskilled cheap labor (for whom English is a second language) and it spells disaster. Or possibly misspells disaster…
3. Cheap isn’t a good deal, and in fact, often isn’t even cheap
   But it’s cheap, right? Sure, sort of. They define the scope of the project so narrowly that you will almost certainly go out-of-scope and have to pay extra. That means you pay more for design exploration, customization, iterations of design or function, additional navigation… All things that are part of the process for a real website build become a la carte options that you have add on. End result? Not so cheap.
   What it comes down to is this: You may be tempted by promises of a cheap website, but in the end, even if it’s cheap, it won’t be a good deal.

Do your homework

Before you meet with anyone about your new site (or the possibility of a new site), do your homework. Have an idea of how to answer some of the questions in this article. If your current website is collecting any kind of user stats or reporting, have that info with you. It would be a good move to have a rough idea of what the stats mean, but they can be very confusing for someone who doesn’t look at them all the time. At a minimum, have them with you.

When you meet with a web or communications firm, it’s a good idea to give some thought to who you’d like to be there. Anyone who will be responsible for maintaining the site might be a good idea, someone who is tech-savvy might be a good as well, and anyone that directly interfaces with your target audience and can answer questions about their needs would also be good.

It also can’t hurt to look at some competitor sites, and go to your first meeting with some ideas of what others are doing. Look at those sites and gather your thoughts on what aspects of their sites you think are strong, and some that you think are weak. This can help shape the discussion with the web/communications firm.

The bottom line

There are a lot of factors that go into determining how much your new website will cost, and I hope this article has given you some idea of what those are. Be wary of anyone that gives you a number (or a number range) without asking you a lot of questions, and before you meet with anyone do your homework. By going in prepared, you make it easier to get what you need at the right price.

So why spend hours making your site work in a browser that (according to 2009 W3C stats) only 18.5% of the population uses? Sometimes you have to, if you’re communicating with lower-income populations. Sometimes you’re doing a job with federal grant money and need 100% compliance. Whatever the reason, it happens, and it’s not fun, but here are 3 things I do that lessen the pain.

1. IE8.js
   Dean Edwards has created a script that forces anything lower than IE8 into compliance (mostly) with current standards. It’s an ongoing project, and not all code works the same, but it’s a great starting point, and I think I have a man-crush on him. http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/

2. Ies4OSX
   Based on Ies4Linux, a linux IE emulator, this allows macs with Intel processors and 10.5 or greater to run IE 6 via a version of WINE, the windows emulator. It’s really nice if you’re on a mac to not have to run windows on the same box or keep a second machine around. You also don’t have to move the files off your local machine to test, which saves a lot of time. Love it. http://www.kronenberg.org/ies4osx/

3. Web Developer toolbars
   There’s the infinitely helpful “Web Developer Toolbar” add-on for firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60) and the slightly less helpful IE version (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=E59C3964-672D-4511-BB3E-2D5E1DB91038&displaylang=en) The thing that makes these toolbars so wonderful is that you can click on elements in the page (if, for example, part of a layout isn’t working correctly) and see exactly where in your code styles are being set for that element (which file, which line). It’s not perfect every time (where styles are inherited from parent elements, it can be a little hit or miss) but it’s a HUGE time saver.

Between those 3 things, I’ve found that I can design for Firefox (Mac or PC, doesn’t seem to matter), and then use css if statements to make minor tweaks to the styles to make IE6 happy. So until the day I trip over a magic lamp in the sand, I’ll make do.