Where the money goes – Get your budgets ready!
We write this blog primarily for our clients, that’s not to say these topics are exclusive to our clients, on the contrary they are true for everyone and anyone. But generally we try to stick to topics that effect small to medium sized business owners looking to make the most of the Internet.
However this time a warning and and explanation of what this warning might entail. We’ve always prided ourselves on associating the value of our work with the effort involved. I’ll try and explain that.
If a product or service costs £100 how do you know it is the right price. In a free marker situation the general concept is that if you can find buyers for the product willing to pay £150 – then that should be the price. Even though the work input into the product was only £100. It’s basic supply and demand.
One of the values we’ve been collecting apart from general know-how is of course experience. So the question rises if I employ a freshman straight from University – I should pay him accordingly… When he becomes and expert in his field he can charge more… for doing the same job.
There’s a clash of ideals there… It’s the same work and should therefore cost the same no matter who does it.
And this is the situation facing the current website design industry – we talk of recession but you won’t find website designers out of work, in fact as the economy picks up demand is far outstripping supply and the numbers aren’t adding up.
My warning is simple – Web Design is getting more and more expensive for the same service and it’s very difficult to control this.
My explanation:
There are more than one set of forces at work here. Barring the economy, the industry is coming of age, in days gone by you could get away with a novice experimenting in his bedroom after his day job. Now you can’t.
The complexities are increasing, have you considered search engines, images, video, Facebook? Then you need to consider how people access your website on their phone, iPad or friends laptop. Competition is growing so that’s another reason you need a slicker and better website, more complexity. It all mounts up.
From every aspect we offer the challenges are growing:
- Domain Name selection – all the good names are gone, so you might have to fork out for that special name you’re determined to have.
- Hosting – faster websites are a must, the impatient public just aren’t willing to wait for your website to load, so you need to get a decent server
- Design – this not only involves making it look good, but also usable, search engine friendly, functional, does it do want it says on the tin and easily and quickly.
- Maintenance – not just the adding of news or updates, but functionality to – will you move with the times.
- Marketing – all this investments needs eyeballs increasingly you have to go out and pay for those eyeballs. Google Adwords is an art form in itself.
- SEO – with increasing emphasis on content and collaboration with other websites, increasing the drain on time and resources.
- Social – you need to be where your customers are – more so now than ever before, so Facebook, Instagram, Twitter – you name it you need to be on it.
- Video – still the largest growth area on the internet, people are watching and they want to see more of the product.
- Consultancy – experience costs and there are only so many hours in an experienced web designers day.