Re: Cost to redesign a company website
We are redesigning our company website, and I am wondering if the estimate from a vendor is reasonable. I'm hoping you web-savvy people in Techwhirler land can give me some perspective on this.I've been in the web business since 1999 but I don't consider myself as a guru just a TW that does most of its business around web applications.
To give you an idea of the scope of this job:Very small website, even if you change the navigation, the look and feel, starting from scratch. I've learn a lot when I was working for a big multimedia service in a big IT company: it's right to say that complex web application are a tough job, small static site are, well, just small appetizers. Most of those static websites can be done by one or two freelancers...
--We are redesigning an existing website of 12 pages (the number of pages will stay about the same).
--The big changes in the redesign are: provide a new design/look; change the sitemap/headings; add some existing or stock photos; provide a link to a 5-minute video clip; provide links to some brochures and manuals in PDF form; and add a password-protected part of the site for our customers.Password-protect a directory in your website is just plain easy turn-on turn-off feature at server admin level (5 minutes job)
--The password-protected part will include links for documents such as customer bulletins and our manuals--we will not be doing any e-commerce. Our "password audience" will be 500 to 1000 people.Just a bunch of link/page/files in a password protected directory (5 minutes job)
--It's a business-to-business site (we sell products mainly to physicians and hospitals), so while the site must be professional it does not have to accommodate a mass consumer audience.It is not an application so your sole point is about site appearance consistency among various browser (go with conditional comments + CSS for MSIE and pure CSS for all others)
--All of the revised or new text content for each page is being provided by me, not the vendor.You got the biggest work : content.
--The website code currently is in FrontPage. The new website will be coded in straight HTML by the vendor, who will incorporate Macromedia's Contribute, to allow us to make some future changes on our own. I and others at my company have enough HTML experience to make smaller changes when needed.Don't know about macromedia's contribute, I'm a bit concerned about wyswyg package for designing websites.
--The website will be hosted on a server at our company.why? Unless you already host sites and/or have big application running on your site with very sensitive data in your database, why bother with all that trouble ? Setting up and maintenance of a webserver ain't easy job, rather give that stuff to a seasonned professionnal. Even the biggest companies prefer to host elsewhere.
What security are you talking about? I can password-protect a directory in few clicks for my site. But if your talking about ssl128 that's another point but why do that if you don't do ecommerce?From a vendor, who is a well-established multimedia company, we havereceived an estimate of $10,000 for the website redesign, with an additional $8,000 to develop the password-protected portion of the site. I especially quesion the $8,000 because I'm thinking that with all the websites out there using a standard password setup (which is what we want), there must be some ready-made code that could be adapted for our company--as opposed to creating the password portion from scratch.
I've you thought about a Content management system, there is a whole bunch of solution ranging from free to several thousand USD out there. A bit of reading, a bit of tweaking and with a little bit less hair on your head, your website is up and running.
Do you think these costs are reasonable? Thanks for any feedback you can give me.Not reasonable at all, with that figure (over 15k) I would give you a dynamic DB driven website with an open-source CMS and the hosting/maintenance for at least one year plus the CMS formation and customized documentation. I would also do lawnmowing, car wash a care your children while you write the content (just kidding I hate car washing) And most of my webdevelopper/integrator/programmer freelance buddies would aggree with me .
David
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