5 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
5 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Develop Custom Website @ lowest Cost

by amro
4 replies
Hello,

What is the best strategy to develop a Custom Website at the lowest Cost possible with high Quality?

Many of us launch Websites based on Word press, forum software..etc.

But I have tried to develop a Social Shopping website based on Ruby on Rails and the result was very bad, the project is almost a fail.

I am trying to do this at the lowest cost, and I asked the developers to clone an existing social shopping website ( yes, I did not give them functional specification document.).

The quality is too bad, and the developers seem to require guidance at every step. I hired developers over oDesk.

I think my mistakes are

- Looking for the lowest cost developers
- Not providing functional specification document
- going for ROR ( less developers and more expensive)

or should I avoid developing custom websites all together if I am low in budget?

what is the considerable budget to allocate if you want to develop social shooing website such as ownza.com? the lowest you can to launch a website and attract few visitors, then look for investors?


Thanks
A
#cost #custom #develop #lowest #website
  • Profile picture of the author Black Belt Marketing
    Like everything else in life, with custom coding of websites, you get what you pay for.

    A budget developer more than likely is going to give you a lower quality website.

    There really isn't any way around that.

    You may be able to find a great developer with low prices but it will take a lot of trial and error.

    I would suggest that you save up a bit more money so that you can hire a firm with a good reputation that is known for high quality work.

    Don't go cheap, especially if you want to attract investors at some point.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9633804].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author goodfuture
    Originally Posted by amro View Post


    What is the best strategy to develop a Custom Website at the lowest Cost possible with high Quality?
    Generally, cost and quality are inversely proportional to one another. In case of lowest cost, quality will always be compromised, either directly or indirectly.

    Perhaps the right question to ask is how to reduce the cost of custom website development.

    You don't necessarily have to refrain from a project just because you are short of capital. My two cents.

    Post a job on a freelancing site. Prefer choosing an Asian developer (cost-effective). Build a website within your budget, even if it does not meet your expectations. Once you start making money from your site, invest it in making your site better.
    Signature
    Make $250+ Per Day With Only One Stupid Page: CPA Profit Academy
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9633834].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author CSmitty
      Low cost means low quality. Just remember this, the cheap comes out expensive. You try to do it on the cheap you end up with garbage and you either lose your money or have to hire someone new to fix it. It would be better to just pay more and do it right from the start.
      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9633877].message }}
      • Profile picture of the author kilgore
        As everyone has already said, if you try to cheap out on your website development, the quality of your site will suffer. Sorry, but there's no way around that.

        Right now in the web development world it's very much a seller's market. Good developers have no trouble getting long-term, high paying and interesting work. Why would they want to work for peanuts? And the whole idea that you can find cheap, fantastic developers in developing countries is also erroneous. Take India, for example. It's absolutely true that there are some fantastic developers in India. But they aren't working for $5/hour on Freelancer -- they're earning salaries comparable to their western counterparts working for dynamic, large and well-funded companies like Infosys.

        Another thing to keep in mind is that top developers are much, much, much more productive than cheap developers, in the short term, but also for the long-term lifecycle of your code. Edits, upgrades and new features will be a lot, lot easier (and cheaper) to do with a site that is well-architected than one that is pieced together with the digital equivalent of string and chewing gum. Your site will also be more stable and more secure. The point is that over the lifecycle of your site, it's actually cheaper to pay more for quality development.

        Rather than trying to find cut-rate developers I recommend thinking about what serial-entrepreneur and academic Steve Blank calls the Minimum Feature Set or the Minimum Viable Product. Basically instead of trying to build every feature that you think your site should have at the get-go, you try to figure out, "What is the smallest or least complicated problem that the customer will pay us to solve?" and you build that. This isn't your end goal, but it's what you start with and you use that as the foundation from which you will eventually build out the rest of your site. If you're interested, I recommend reading Blank's article here: Perfection By Subtraction - The Minimum Feature Set | Steve Blank.

        This approach can balance your need to reduce costs while also allowing you to have a truly quality product (or website). It also ensures that the product you do develop will be truly meeting the needs of your users and allow you to tailor the rest of your development as you learn more about what your customers are looking for, what is working and what isn't.
        Signature
        {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[9634035].message }}

Trending Topics