The Web is Expensive

Posted: January 23rd, 2009 | Author: msh | Filed under: Client Side | Tags: , , , | No Comments »

It’s easy to forget that we work in a new and strange industry.  We surround ourselves with ourselves, so we take the nature of our product for granted.  But for the majority of web users, we create virtual products — they take up no space; their size, complexity, and location are indeterminate; they appear and disappear from the screen in an instant.  So how to value their worth?

For many of our clients, the worth is apparent, either because of their past experience in this arena or their experience with similar creative services (advertising, brand strategy, business consulting, etc.).  It’s a relatively straightforward process to translate a strategy into a proposal and budget with clients like these.

For many other clients, though, even those with deep pockets, the web is a hard place to get a grip on.  This could be because technology scares them.  They might equate their IT budget with the kind of work that we do, because of they perceive a shared arena of activity.  Or the web to them is an infinite realm of untold, mind-boggling possibility.  Or, maybe, they’ve stumbled through every creative project they’ve ever embarked on in the past, and expect that we operate in the same fashion.

There are myriad ways to get to a common vision of the value of the work that we do.  And keep in mind that we don’t mean only us; we want to arrive at a common vision of value for our industry, not just ourselves.  We may not be the firm for you, but you’ll have a much more successful search if you can better quantify the worth of your project.

So, the “we” and “us” below don’t refer just to us at Helen Marie; we’re presumptuously speaking for the industry.

The bottom line

An easy one. You, the client, need us to do something that you estimate will affect your bottom line by X dollars in the next year.  You want to come out ahead, so obviously our work can’t cost X dollars.  But it shouldn’t be surprising for it to cost, say, half of X.  Your payment to us is fixed, but the value to you increases beyond the next year.  Our fee, then, decreases over time in relationship to the change in your bottom line.  This is math that you can do in advance of your agency search, and that will help you square your available budget against what you’re asking an agency to produce.

What it would really cost you

This often comes into play with calculations against your IT budget, because you imagine that the IT team can do work similar to ours.  Our long experience working with (and in) IT departments is that this assumption is always, always wrong.  And your IT team will be happy to disabuse you of the notion that they can magically transmogrify into a group with decades of collective web experience who can give your project the attention and focus it deserves.

If you can’t square our cost against your IT team, then what other point of reference do you have?  You can look at the job listings for web designers, web developers, information architects, and interactive project managers, and piece together the cost of bringing them on salary for a year or more.

Our experience

If you think a project is expensive, try doing it twice.  Or three times.  This happens often.  As we’ve said elsewhere on this blog, we’re often approached to redesign the client’s current site.  And the current site is often some kind of minor tragedy of wasted time and money.

We don’t guarantee that we will design and build a product that will answer all your needs for the next ten years.  What we do offer is the experience to make intelligent choices, and the opportunity to educate you on the process and help you to make informed choices.

Peace of mind

There are few experiences more relieving than finding the perfect experts for your problem.  You can’t quantify the dollar worth of that feeling.  But you can imagine paying for it.

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