John ran an eCommerce store selling specialty kitchen appliances.
The website had been up for four years and had gained some decent search engine rankings and traffic levels in that time, but the design was aging and needed a refresh. He also wanted to upgrade his eCommerce system to something more search engine and user friendly.
John approached three web developers about the project and submitted requests for proposals. In his request he covered the basics, made sure he was clear on his desired color scheme and the emphasis on usability he wanted to maintain. He had a half hour discussion with each developer about the project. A week later the proposals were in.
One proposal was well-polished and five pages long – the price tag was $16,750.
A second proposal went into great detail in 15 pages and listed a cost of $9,500.
The third proposal was just two pages long, got straight to the point and boasted a low price of $5,750.
Do you think you can guess who John hired?
Not enough information, is it? OK, fair enough, I’ll tell you: John hired the third developer. Times were tough and he figured, “if I can get the same product for less, why not save the money for other expenses” – logical thinking.
But here’s the rub: it’s never the same product.
It turned out that the cheap developer never redirected John’s old URLs to his new URLs. Every page other than his home page displayed a 404 error – and after a week none of his inner pages were ranking. He lost 40% of his traffic and 50% of his sales.
It took John some time to realize what happened – and when he made the developer keenly aware of the problem they set to work fixing it. But there was nothing they could do to replace the sales John had already lost.
Does cheaper always mean lower quality?
Of course not. Some developers are downright overpriced. The worst of them charge a lot more for a lesser product than you could get somewhere else. On the flip side, you can sometimes find great developers who work cheap. They’re rare, but they’re out there.
The point isn’t that cheap means poor or that expensive means worth it.
The saying “you get what you pay for” doesn’t apply universally. It just works well when you pay a low price and find out later you were getting low quality.
The point is that if you don’t educate yourself you might not know the difference between low cost and low quality. You might find out the hard way. Price alone tells you just about nothing. Dig deeper.
The attitude that you “don’t need to know” what separates good web development from bad web development is fine so long as you’re OK with leaving yourself open to failure.
I think John has to take on some of the responsibility himself. You hire the cheapest and don’t know why you are just asking for trouble. I have ask designers to make me a 5 page informational web site and they come back with $9,000. I doubt if the even read the email I sent them. You have to look out for yourself because nobody else will.
Couldn’t agree more.
I’ve worked with designers who priced themselves similarly. Some of them won’t touch a project for less than $15k. For them, it’s about what the market can bear – if their market is mostly Fortune 500 companies $15k for a 5 page website isn’t going to be a big deal.
The trouble is that everyone has the best solution according to them. Everybody understands your needs. Everybody codes with the best methods and has the best designers on staff.
If you don’t understand what’s wrong with your car in at least the basic sense you might end up being sold a flux capacitor when all you needed was a new belt. That’s the risk you take on when you choose not to educate yourself.
It’s probably one of the toughest things for a client/company to figure out when it comes to having a website done. Obviously price seems like the easiest way, but as you mention above this can lead you down a path of the unknown.
I think that clients/companies need to start realizing that a website is not just a “thing”, but rather it’s a vital resource to their organization. A website in today’s economy can mean the difference between profit and loss. Taking the time to understand what you are contracting for, what each firm is proposing and feeling comfortable discussing all aspects of the project with the selected firm is crucial.
Absolutely – I’d say for most businesses the website needs to be part of the business plan from the get go (if there is one). Business owners and managers can’t afford not to understand the role their website will play. Outsourcing the work is one thing – neglecting to understand the essentials of the work is another thing entirely and leads to bad situations.