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The Great Website Development Ripoff continues
Web developers continue to fleece unsuspecting smaller business operators

Not that long ago I worked as part of web development teams building custom websites for clients large and small.

Clients would brief us on their requirements, an estimate and ‘spec’ (functional specification) was subsequently produced and if all good, a quite labour-intensive design and development process would commence.

This all seemed to work fine.  Business was plentiful, clients were happy and pretty much everyone seemed to walk away happy with the ensuing result.

Then one day I was collared by a gentleman at a networking function promising to show me a revolution in ‘website systems’.  Reluctantly, and with a fair degree of suspicion, I went along for the ride.

I had thought I was relatively in touch with the web development industry, but what he showed me made me simultaneously excited and nervous.

Because what he showed me cost his clients a tiny fraction of what our talented and comparatively affordable development team were charging for pretty much an identical result.

Seriously good websites at a fraction of the price
And this was no ‘template’ website.  Not only was it flexible in its appearance, it had all the functionality all the big players had forked out literally hundreds of thousands for.

Seems that someone smart had assembled a wishlist of all the functionality a smaller business could ever want and then some, then worked out a pricepoint at which it could essentially ‘rent’ its functionality at a price the small business operator could afford.

What jolted me the most about this genuinely revolutionary approach to website development was that from that point on, there was no way I could look a smaller business customer in the eye and tell them that their custom developed website represented good value.

Because it was simply no longer true.

And being someone who enjoyed working with smaller business, it occurred to me that I’d either have to start working with larger clients with deeper pockets, or work out a way of becoming involved in this new way of offering websites to smaller clients.

Thankfully I chose the latter.

A rented solution for your specific requirements
Now there are an abundance of ‘rented’ website solutions on the market and the firm I started shortly afterwards has employed many of them to build websites that our clients would previously not have dreamed of.

You would think such a fundamental change in the way websites are offered would see web developers scrambling to change their business models to adapt to this serious challenger.

But amazingly, some six years later, it appears many website developers have no intention of surrendering their hard earned clientelle to these upstarts.

Just in the last few days I’ve seen first hand how one website development firm is charging a smaller client a sum that simply cannot be justified given the low cost of rented technology.

Essentially the client had been charged around $20,000 to custom build a website which looked good enough but lacked much in the way of functionality – the all important tools to run your online business.

Employing a rented solution with many times the features of the site that was built, my firm would have been lucky to have charged $5,000 for a similar result – but the story doesn’t end there.

The hidden cost of ongoing development
Some months later the client realised that the password protected area the site included was quite limited and so approached the developer to create a more advanced system to accommodate their new requirements.

The price?  Another $20,000.

The price for the same functionality for the system my firm would have provided? 

Nothing at all.

Because the system we would have provided already allowed for the client’s growth requirements and already included that functionality.

So what now cost $40,000 via the developer was now costing a whopping eight times more than the rented solution.

All because the client was not aware the rented option existed, or if they were, had been talked out of it with some persuasive sales patter.

Yes the client would never have ‘owned’ the website software of the rented solution provider.  But typically they dont ‘own’ any software they currently employ because the ‘build’ option is financially out of the question.

And even if they are forced to switch rented solutions down the track, this cost is still miniscule compared to the build / own alternative.  And chances are they would have recouped their investment many times over anyways.

Stories like this abound
This is not an isolated case.  Not that long ago I was told about a client that over the years had forked out $150,000 in web development fees.  No matter how much we accommodated for unforeseen costs, top level design, contingencies and so on, we couldn’t work out a way of charging more than $15,000 for the same result.

And we couldn’t work out a way to break that news gently to the client concerned.

In fairness to these developers, clearly they are not going to turn the client away if they are asked to quote on a project and they end up winning it.

It’s really up to the client to understand the website marketplace well enough to understand the difference between ‘build’ and ‘buy’ and obtain the appropriate comparitive estimates.

My advice to all smaller business operators is to ascertain whether rented solutions will do the job for them instead of the expensive developed alternative.

And when in doubt get independent advice on your particular situation.