Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Margins on website development are shrinking

chrishardie.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 78 posts

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#2

Post by bzalasky »

I understand some of the points the author is making, and will have to give it a closer read when I'm not at work. But I reject the thesis at a glance. Most clients don't have time to deal with everything related to their web presence, custom or not. If you're solving business problems, not training them to use WordPress, you can charge a premium.

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#5

Post by jiggy2011 »

I think part of the issue is that many businesses have presence on the "mega sites" (facebook/youtube/twitter etc) and unless they are going to spend a lot of money marketing a website their presence on the mega-site is likely to be getting more exposure (higher up on google , more engagement).

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#7

Post by yogo »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #5

I think part of the issue is that many businesses have presence on the "mega sites" (facebook/youtube/twitter etc) and unless they are going to spend a lot of money marketing a website their presence on the mega-site is likely to be getting more exposure (higher up on google , more engagement).

Very true, which is why I was expecting to hear them mention that they are turning into a digital marketing agency, which is what a lot of firms become. That way they can probably keep charging the prices they are used to while web development will be part of the package (placed on one of the hosted services they mentioned or outsourced to another firm/freelancer).

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#8

Post by theg2 »

Judging by the amount of people in my office who can't handle something as simple as formatting a Wordpress post correctly...I think it's a bit pre-mature.

Yes, most things have been made far easier, but good design and code skills still trump most of the out of the box systems out there and those themes he mentions are a form of web development, just not the ones making the author any money.

The good web developers are generalist developers at heart and will always be looking at the next bleeding edge system/project/new shiny to work on and deliver the new and shiny to customers.

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#9

Post by grrrando »

This article takes a fairly narrow-minded look at the work done by lots of "website developer" professionals, and an even narrower look at what clients want from a website, app, etc.. It's like saying that Graphic Design will cease to be a profession because there's free photo manipulation tools.

There's a valid point that, sooner or later, CMS/app farming isn't a valid long-term business. But, thankfully, what you don't typically find at these shops, or on free/cheap online tools is the creativity that many clients demand.

The author does bring up "Marketing and branding consulting" as one of the two continuing successful business models. Ok, halfway there. However, anyone that's worked in marketing or branding knows that ideas are just a fraction of a successful campaign. A great idea will fail if it's not executed well.

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#10

Post by damon_c »

Here is the trick:

All of the technologies that your customers supposedly now use to replace the services you used to offer them, can also be used by YOU... to replace the services you used to offer with better services in much less time.

Proper use of today's tools will make your customers think you have somehow gained super powers as you deliver them better results, faster, and with much less effort than when you had to spend time custom coding solutions that are now implemented as easily as pasting some javascript code onto your customer's website.

Post reply on HN