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Why are clients shocked by the price for web development?

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Re: Why are clients shocked by the price for web development?

#41

Post by keenerd »

pasbesoin wrote: post #30
learc83 wrote: post #14

Because a wordpress[1] site with a $20 template is all most small businesses need for their brochureware site. The average small business needs a website with their hours, phone number, some pictures, and maybe a blog that they'll never actually update, but they don't really know the difference between paying someone to set up wordpress and paying someone to build a bespoke web application. The only reason the majori…

Until they insist on using the email service that is packaged with the shared hosting plan. And they, or an unwitting employee, start using it to communicate information they shouldn't. And their account gets owned. (Keep in mind, the content is no longer just public web pages...) And... Even if the web site hosting should have been done this way, they still needed help/advice/pressure to be more clueful about their…

Stuff like this is why I usually set my smallest clients up with a static html generator. (At least if they don't want comments, and then we consider Disqus before wordpress.)

It is really hard to have vulerabilities with static html. Similarly, hosting these costs nothing. Usually in the ballpark of $3/year, the DNS alone is the dominate cost. And if they do get a sudden inrush of traffic, static hosts need to see a thousand times more load than stock wordpress before they fall down.

Come to think of it, I've never had a client that was the correct size for Wordpress. They were either way too small or way too large.

Re: Why are clients shocked by the price for web development?

#43

Post by _mpf »

vinceguidry wrote: post #39
_mpf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@vinceguidry IMHO being out of date isn`t a WordPress problem, it`s a clients or a developer problem. Any software must be upgraded from time to time. Can you suggest any more elegant solution? In my opinion WordPress is good solution with great community. With many different people you get a lot of different levels of deployment, so maybe you didn`t have a luck?

It's not Wordpress that's the issue, it's with the current state of the problem domain. People want websites that they don't have to pay a programmer to maintain. Wordpress solved this for blogging , but using it for anything else and not having technical talent on call makes for a giant mess.

Yes, exactly - it`s not a problem with tool, but with use of it. I also wouldn`t recommend using any software without knowledge how it behaves and what can be done with it.

Re: Why are clients shocked by the price for web development?

#44

Post by vinceguidry »

mpclark wrote: post #38
vinceguidry wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to smack all the developers and designers who think Wordpress is "good enough". It's not. It's an unmaintainable mess. Every client-run Wordpress site I touch is disgustingly out of date and everything added since the first design looks like crayon drawings done by five-year olds with ADD. I don't see much Drupal in the wild so I can't comment on that. Web development has not reached the state where non-techni…

WordPress is excellent, and there are some mighty big WP sites out there. You're barking up the right tree when you say "you need a developer on staff" though. Web sites are not just "set and forget" deals. They need continuing care and maintenance. And the whole idea of having a site that the receptionist can take care of on a Friday afternoon, which I have found pervasive in small businesses, has just never really…

Wordpress sucks for small business. It's just that simple. It shouldn't, but it does.

Re: Why are clients shocked by the price for web development?

#45

Post by adregan »

andyhmltn wrote: post #3

Because web development is easy. Why would I pay so much when you sit on the computer for a few hours pressing buttons. It requires nowhere near as much skill as say.. A builder. /s

While we're at it, doesn't being a doctor look easy too? Just ask a few questions, read the nurse's notes, prescribe some medicine.

Re: Why are clients shocked by the price for web development?

#46

Post by stray »

rbsn wrote: post #11
level09 wrote: post #6

Because of lack of knowledge about software development and how complex it is. They usually associate complex work with physical products (laptops, phones, cars .. )

So how can we get across that it is that much more complex than many people think? I considered explaining that it is like asking an interior designer to design your kitchen, or any other room in your house so that it is completely unique to you and that you're not buying Ikea flat pack furniture and putting it sporadically around your house.

I like comparing it to clothing.

There's a huge cost difference between grabbing a pair of pants at Walmart and having a good tailor craft a pair of nice slacks.

And the difference between the two is glaringly obvious.

Re: Why are clients shocked by the price for web development?

#48

Post by enrolly »

I was looking for a company to build a website for me in the UK the prices were not realistic like $1000 a day and most of them needed a 50 working days to build version 1.

As a business owner I know it will cost money but not in this rate. Now I am in Morocco with a great team, they are working 12 hours a day to finish this project for much much cheaper cost same quality. ++ Marrakesh weather is a bonus.

Re: Why are clients shocked by the price for web development?

#49

Post by learc83 »

keenerd wrote: post #41
pasbesoin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they insist on using the email service that is packaged with the shared hosting plan. And they, or an unwitting employee, start using it to communicate information they shouldn't. And their account gets owned. (Keep in mind, the content is no longer just public web pages...) And... Even if the web site hosting should have been done this way, they still needed help/advice/pressure to be more clueful about their…

Stuff like this is why I usually set my smallest clients up with a static html generator. (At least if they don't want comments, and then we consider Disqus before wordpress.) It is really hard to have vulerabilities with static html. Similarly, hosting these costs nothing. Usually in the ballpark of $3/year, the DNS alone is the dominate cost. And if they do get a sudden inrush of traffic, static hosts need to see a…

Clients left to their own devices can eventually destroy anything.

I had a client who wanted a static site, but at the last minute decided they needed a "news" sidebar on every page that they could update. This was before any of the off the shelf solutions existed (to mixing static and dynamic content), so I wrote some javascript (before jquery made ajax easy) that grabbed the content from a flat file.

Long story short, a few years later, they had someone on staff who knew some html, and they basically turned that tiny sidebar from a div displaying 2 or 3 paragraphs of text into an entire website--complete with oversized videos, rotating image headers, and dozens of links.

Re: Why are clients shocked by the price for web development?

#50

Post by vinceguidry »

headcanon wrote: post #36
blindhippo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cut my teeth building wordpress/drupal brochure sites for small businesses. I have inherited custom web sites for these customers who got duped by some punk developer who didn't feel like using an established solution. I want to punch all developers in the mouth who think a custom application for this type of situation is a good idea. They give us all a bad name and exacerbate the cost problem.

I feel kind of the opposite, where I've seen wordpress used to create what is effectively a static brochure site - what good is a Content Management Solution when the content isn't being managed? The only reason they're using it is that's all they know, and it allows them to create the site without looking at any code. Plus, giving customers a wordpress site opens up the door for user error, plus the inevitable secur…

Static sites are an excellent solution. It keeps clients from getting too ambitious for their own good.

As far as CMSes go, I was pretty impressed with Umbraco. It lets you design the client interface that they use to update the site. It's .NET, but I've yet to see a better solution.

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