The cost of building a website is the cost most owners plan for. The cost of owning a website is the cost most owners discover after the fact, in pieces, often during the second or third unexpected invoice. These ownership costs are not a markup. They are what it actually takes to keep a website […]
There comes a point in every website life when something is no longer working. The site is slow. It looks dated. It is missing features the business now needs. Conversion rates have dropped. Traffic has flattened. The decision in front of the owner is whether to fix what exists or replace it entirely. Choosing wrong […]
The launch of a new website feels like the end of a project. The contract was for a finished site, the site is now live, and the developer has been paid. The client has every reason to believe the work is done. It is not. A launched website is the beginning of a different phase […]
A website project usually starts with optimism. The developer was chosen carefully, the contract was signed, and the work has begun. The early weeks feel productive. Then, somewhere in the middle of the project, things start to feel off — but the client cannot quite say why, or whether the unease is justified. There are […]
A web developer first request after signing the contract is usually some version of “send me everything.” That phrase is shorthand for a long list of materials that the developer needs in order to do the work, and the speed at which the project moves is almost entirely determined by how complete that list is […]
A new client almost always asks the same question early in the conversation: how long will this take? The answer they receive — whether two weeks, six weeks, or three months — is rarely the actual time the project will take from start to launch. The estimate is not dishonest. It is just structurally incomplete, […]
The platform decision is one of the first decisions in a website project, and it is one of the easiest to get wrong. Most owners choose based on what they have heard, what they have seen, or what a friend used. The result is a site built on a platform that does not match the […]
Most website projects start with a question about design. What should it look like? What colors? What style? Modern or classic? Bold or subtle? These questions feel like the natural starting point because design is what most people associate with websites. It is also the wrong starting point. Design is the surface of a site. […]
The plan sounds reasonable. Build something cheap on a drag-and-drop platform now, get the business running, and hire a real developer later when there is money to spend. It is one of the most common decisions made at the start of a project, and it is one of the most expensive ones in the long […]
The price quoted at the start of a website project is rarely the price paid by the time the site is live, and it is almost never the total cost of ownership. This is not a matter of dishonest quoting. It is a matter of what a quote can include, and what most clients are […]