Site Design Construction

Site Design & Construction

The cost of designing and building your Web site can be either the smallest or largest cost of establishing a Web presence. Two factors directly influence costs:

• What do you want to include on your Web site? This includes the quantity and quality of content, as well as Web site features such as search capabilities, feedback forms, and counters.

• Who will design and build the site? You can tackle the job yourself, use or hire an in-house person, or use an outside consultant.

Chapters 5 and 6 cover Web site content, interface elements, and features in detail, so I won't discuss them here. Instead, I'll concentrate on the "who factor" to fully explain your options and give you an idea of related costs.

Do It Yourself

The do-it-yourself approach can be the least expensive by far. But do you have what it takes to design and build a Web site? And can you afford to spend the time and effort to do the job right? If the answer to either of these two questions is no, the do-it-yourself approach can wind up being quite costly.

The Right Stuff

To design and build a Web site, you need to have certain skills and knowledge:

• Design skills enable you to come up with a design that not only looks good on screen, but is appropriate for your business. Without these skills, your Web site could appear ugly or amateurish or fail to communicate the right image for your company.

• Web knowledge gives you an understanding of how text, graphics, and links work on the Web. Without this knowledge, you won't know how to create effective layouts, image displays, or site navigation systems.

• Web authoring skills makes it possible to turn the design you've developed into a fully-functioning Web site. Without these skills, you won't be able to translate your design into a Web site.

• Web administration knowledge enables you to upload Web site contents to a Web server, troubleshoot problems, and update pages when necessary. Without this knowledge, you won't be able to get your site online or keep it running smoothly.

If you lack the necessary skills or knowledge to design and build a Web site, you'll have to either learn these skills or hire someone to help you (or, worse yet, fix the mistakes you made). That's going to cost time and money ”perhaps the same amount of money you thought you'd save by doing it yourself.

In general, amateurs build amateurish Web sites. Want proof? Go to http://hometown.aol.com/ and follow the links under Explore Member Pages.

Tip

If you think you have what it takes to design and build a Web site, Chapter 8 is for you! It provides a wealth of information for do-it-yourselfers.

Time is Money

Did you ever stop to think about how doing your job affects your company's bottom line? If you're in sales, you may be able to estimate the amount of revenue you generate. You might be able to do the same for other positions . But even if you can't estimate how much you earn for your company, can you estimate what it would cost your company if you couldn't do your job? Because you were, perhaps, busy building a Web site?

Before you start thinking about how much you can save by doing it yourself, take a moment to think about how much it'll cost your company if you weren't doing your usual job. If you're valuable to your company in your current role, perhaps that's the role you should stick to, for the good of the company.

As for building a site in your free time: do you really want to do that?

If your company can benefit more from you doing your regular job than from you spending time building a Web site, you probably shouldn't be building a Web site.

Use an In-House Person

The next step up on the expense ladder is using an in-house person to design and build your Web site. For this, you need a person who has the skills and knowledge required to do the job right: a real Web developer.

There are several benefits to using an in-house Web developer:

• In general, in-house Web developers are less expensive than consultants with the same skills and knowledge.

• An in-house Web developer can do all work on your premises, so you can supervise the work and provide input and feedback at any time.

• When the Web site design and construction is finished, an in-house Web developer will be around to troubleshoot and update the Web site when necessary.

Of course, not all businesses need an employee dedicated to designing and building a Web site. For example, if your company plans to build a site that has a lot of general information that does not change, the Web developer probably won't have much to do when the site is up and running. Or if your company is very small, it might not be able to afford an employee for just one job. In either case, it might be more practical to make the Web development task part of an existing job description. Just make sure that the person who does the job has the skills and knowledge required to do it right.

Use a Consultant

The most costly alternative is usually to hire a Web consultant. These people have all the skills and knowledge necessary to get the job done. Hopefully, they also have the communication skills necessary to understand what you want so they can deliver it.

Most consultants charge by the hour. Rates can be anywhere from $20 or $30 per hour up to $150 or $200 per hour . Some consultants charge a per-page fee of anywhere from $20 to $100 per page. (This doesn't make much sense when you consider that a Web page can be any length.) Still other consultants will take on a job at a flat fee. That fee can be considerable ”for example, the three pages in The Chicago Safe Company's Web site (http://www.chicagosafe.com/; see Figure 3.1) cost $2,000 to produce. Ouch!

Figure 3.1. The Chicago Safe Company's site consists of only 3 professionally prepared pages.

I'd like to say that you get what you pay for, but unfortunately that isn't always true. You can find very reasonable Web consultants that do a great job or you can get burned by an expensive Web consultant that doesn't deliver what you want. But if you select the right Web consultant, you'll get a professionally prepared Web site without the bother of doing it yourself or using an in-house developer.

Tip

Back in Chapter 2 there's a sidebar warning about Web consultants. If you skipped over that, read it now. And be sure to read Chapter 9 before you hire a Web consultant.