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Margins on website development are shrinking

chrishardie.com

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Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#11

Post by ahallock »

I've had no shortage of people looking for custom websites. Having a fully-customized identity throughout, warranted or not, is still very important to a lot of clients. You still integrate with third-party services, whether it's social media sites, blogs, or e-commerce--but even then, these clients want it to feel like their own, not some generic, off-the-shelf product.

Also, I've shown clients pre-baked themes to save time & money and they've been quite offended, or agreed to use one, but then ended up changing the theme so much, it was hardly worth the effort.

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#13

Post by Guvante »

lpvn wrote: post #6

Automation has eliminated a lot of jobs in manufacturing, I don't know why one would think that it was gonna be different for web development.

There is still a lot of creativity in creating a website. You can put up a quick website using a theme and get online for pennies, but would you really want your online presence to be a theme?

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#14

Post by didgeoridoo »

All the tools mentioned in the article are mainly useful to the bottom of the market; low-budget customers can now put together something half-decent on their own.

If anything, this is GREAT for us as web developers. We've taken to pointing prospects to ThemeForest if we don't think a custom site would add significant value to their company. It keeps us from having to do boring & repetitive work, so we can focus on the fun, high-impact stuff.

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#15

Post by joepet »

lpvn wrote: post #6

Automation has eliminated a lot of jobs in manufacturing, I don't know why one would think that it was gonna be different for web development.

only mass production is heavely automated, the customized production didn't dissapeared, so you shoudnt think that all web projects will be mass products, you will never create production line for unique product not oriented to mass, thats why customized development will be alive forever!!!

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#16

Post by jiggy2011 »

yogo wrote: post #7
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).

True, although "digital marketing" is a somewhat different skillset than web development.

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#17

Post by jplur »

Clients understand the value of design, but the development costs are an overhead. They expect the finished site to be delivered as soon as the design has been finalized. Meanwhile, the front end developer is sitting there typing away, converting a photoshop document into HTML/CSS one tweak at a time. It's archaic, and I truly hope that it will become obsolete.

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#18

Post by onemorepassword »

The title should be "the margins on bottomfeeding are shrinking".

I consider this a good thing. Now if only these companies could stop calling themselves "developers" altogether, and maybe we wouldn't have to explain so often to potential clients why our software development is so much more expensive than their so-called "web development".

Re: Margins on website development are shrinking

#19

Post by rhizome »

bzalasky wrote: post #2

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.

Posts like this strike me as comment and controversy bait (more specific than linkbait). An underinformed post whose points are stated too emphatically about a large topic.
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