Thursday, January 21, 2010

The True Costs Of Web Design

Most people do not know much about how much a website is worth, or better yet how much it costs to build a website. After all, there is no official price standard to follow; the values of digital goods are still somewhat hard for people to grasp in this case. There are many ways to bill for a website: by hour, project, module, etc…. but more often than not, these pricing schemes are designed to hide the real costs involve. So I am going to try to break down the different aspects of web design and their worth.

1. Consultation

Some web design agencies charge you for talking with a representative and further ironing out the idea that you have for the website. A detailed consultation session could help you understand all of the moving pieces that are involved with web design and give you a more accurate quote. However, unless your website is quite complex, consultation should be part of the project price.

2. Look And Feel

The way the website looks visually is in large part due to the efforts of the graphic designer. The graphic designer takes your vision and creates a template of what your website will look like. The template does not have any real content: they design the visuals and the user experience of the site. The template phase can be as cheap as $100 for a template at templatemonster.com or as expensive as thousands of dollars for a large custom template.

3. Implementation Of Content

The template by itself is not the website: more often than not, the template must be further worked on before it can go live. The site is populated with real textual, graphical, and dynamic content using a variety of languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Adobe Flash and Silverlight. This phase is typically a straightforward process unless advanced animation effects are required, which would require its own consultation and look and feel phase. The cost of this phase depends largely on the template discussed in the look and feel phase, and how many times you change your mind. Because this part of the process essentially consist of the bulk of the coding on the website, this part of the website can vary from a couple of hundred bucks for pre-made websites to even the tens of thousands for custom systems.

4. Backend Services

Most web 2.0 sites also need to be connected to backend services that enable your site to do more than load web pages. If you opt to have your website powered by a CMS (Content Management System), then you will be able to edit your website without a web developer. The CMS hosts a backend where you can log in and add content that is automatically incorporated into the site. CMS implementations can run from low four figures to beyond depending on the services you want on your site. Services like e-commerce, databases, search capabilities, blogs, forums, user login, and protected areas are all considered additional modules that will also run up the bill, so be sure you really need those services as you proceed.

5. Hosting And Maintenance

Maintenance packages ensure that your site runs continuously and is updated with the latest security updates, so unless your site is very simple, it is a good idea to purchase maintenance for your site. Hosting is required to have your site up on the Internet in the first place. Hosting and maintenance can run you from $10 to hundreds of dollars a month depending on the complexity of your website.

So roughly every website process can be broken down into these five phases. Understanding the costs of web design helps you ask the right questions and provide the most helpful input to ensure the success of your website.

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Why Small Business and Non-Profits?

In 2004, Trifecta Tech was founded with a focus on small business and non-profit clients. Five years later, they remain our core clientele as part of our ongoing development strategy. But with all the various kinds of businesses out there of different sizes and shapes, why focus on the small organizations?

Bringing Technology To All

Trifecta was built on the belief that technology should be accessible to all. In our modern age where technology permeates every facet of daily life, not only is it impossible to live completely isolated from technology, but the resources currently available present unprecedented opportunities to those who can take advantage of it. They are opportunities to connect with people across geographical borders and time zones in ways like never before, allowing someone to build personal one-on-one connections as well as reach a mass audience in real time. They provide unparalleled access to a wide array of information, all available with the tap of a few keys or a click of a mouse. For a growing organization, there are numerous technological tools that can be harnessed for use in making information available and getting the word out to others, and also as a way to get feedback from users that can potentially lead to an improved business.

However, in taking advantage of these kinds of tools, Trifecta noticed that certain small businesses and non-profits were at a disadvantage compared to their larger counterparts. Large companies are more likely to have the resources to invest in dedicated technology departments that can focus their attentions on maintaining the most current and relevant technologies. For small businesses and non-profits that are not able to maintain such an extensive technical infrastructure, Trifecta seeks to bridge that gap by providing the services of a dedicated, full-service technology team that works together with clients on the technological front in a way that complements their business, so that they can do what they do even better.

The Personal Touch

Trifecta believes that in order to do the best job for our clients, it is important to actually build a relationship with the people we work with and to understand their business on a deeper level. It is not about merely completing the task set forth by the client at the beginning of an engagement, but about actually working together and having an ongoing conversation about how to best utilize the tools at our disposal in a way that works for them. It is about making our technical expertise and professional judgment available, and that expertise is applied with most benefit when we have a good understanding of the organization and its goals, and the community in which it exists.

We have found that our connection with small companies and non-profits has been particularly meaningful because of the depth of the relationship that we have been able to cultivate with them. Many of our clients are those who worked with us initially and were impressed enough by the results that they have stayed with us through the years. They know that we are available to them for any questions or issues they may have, and when they are looking to embark on a larger project such as a website overhaul, we are the ones they turn to. By working so closely with each other, with us taking the time to understand what they are working towards, we become a part of each other’s families and their success becomes our success.

Partnering Up And Giving Back

Trifecta exists as a business, but our vision and goals extend past the bottom line. We like to partner with people who have causes and purposes beyond merely making money because we have experienced the benefits of such organizations ourselves. They are the ones that have helped all of us along the way to where we are now, so we can say from firsthand experience that these groups can, and do, make a difference. Now, through Trifecta, we are doing our small part to help them achieve their aspirations and impact the lives of others who can take advantage of their services.

Looking Forward

Trifecta’s focus on small businesses and non-profits was not an arbitrary decision for us. In addition to our vision of making the best technological resources available to these organizations and the opportunity to build meaningful partnerships with groups that we respect and believe can make a difference, another motivation for working with who we do is the potential for tremendous growth in this area. Particularly during these trying economic times, we know that small businesses account for the majority of job growth, so we want to do what we can to ensure that they do well going forward. We see the future in small businesses, and we are ready for the journey.