Sometimes we still have clients just like you, wondering why it is worth investing so much in their custom webshop? And why are custom made websites in general are so expensive?
Now, the simple answer to these questions is that there are two key variables that influence the price of your custom website:
1. Quality of IT staff who create it. It takes a good IT professional to create a good custom website.
2. Time required to create it. Depending on complexity of the structure and the technologies, custom website development can be a time-taking matter.
Back in the 90’s your typical custom website consisted of a few basic pages: Home, About, Contacts, sometimes Products or Services, News or Career Opportunities. The website rarely changed: a new name added to the Top Management page was a major update. SEO was not nearly as important as it is today: Google was not even there until 1998. Dial-up connection did not allow large amount of data to be loaded fast, and graphic design comprised of a couple graphic images against a solid background, usually white. CGI and Perl were big, and JavaScript’s prospects were seen with skepticism. User experience – um, never heard of. Security – oh, don’t get me started on that!
In 2016 we find ourselves in a different reality, where design is complex, security protocols are a must, JavaScript is at the core of every web application, high-speed Internet is omnipresent. Content rules in the world of nearly 3.5 billion users, who publish using content management systems, post, share and broadcast in social networks. And user experience is at the center stage.
If that is the distance that the world of web has made in the past 20 years, you can imagine how much an IT professional needs constant training, investigating and innovating to keep his skills sharp as a tack to add value to a company in the ever-changing world of software development.
Over the years at MavenEcommerce we have been shaping and developing our business process and adapting our structure that would allow us to engage with each of our clients in different stages of their projects ensuring quality, responsibility and client satisfaction. Today we will give you a sneak peek behind the scenes of custom website development. This will explain how much thought is put into planning, the amount of effort and the depth of expertise needed for development and the level of efficiency and resolution required to get it released.
Account Management
The Account Management team is at the forefront of our organization interacting with our clients from Initiation to Release of the project. When a client wants to create a custom web store, our Account Managers make an evaluation, put forward suggestions and prepare a project roadmap. Their role is to communicate client vision to the developers, conduct feasibility studies and find solutions. All this is necessary for us to prepare the proposal, estimate the fee and time required. Should it be necessary to adjust the budget and the project scope, our Account Managers take care of the negotiations to reach an agreement.
In the next phase the Account Managers coordinate the teams involved, organize discussions of project details and draw up the project timeline. Here Account Managers serve as client advocates ensuring that efficient communication is established between the departments and the necessary resources will be provided.
Project Planning
Now, why did you choose to go for a custom website in the first place? You wanted it to be individual and functional, right? And it is at the Planning stage of the project that this ambition is truly coming to life, as our Developers look at the objectives that you want to achieve by having this online store created. How do we make this web store unique and feature-reach? How do we help the user have the best shopping experience? How do we make complicated behind-the-scene mechanisms look simple and the interface intuitive? With the help of Use Cases, Storyboards, Wireframes, Sitemaps, Information Architecture, Interactive Prototypes and Effects Planning we work on providing a visual outline of the website we are going to design, which would be easy to present to both our clients and our designers.
Web Design
With the visual representation of the web store, our design team begins working on the theme, branding, user interface, UX and other visual elements that will make your custom web store design truly unique and powerful. It is not unusual to update the visuals according to the feedback we get from the client.
Development
Web Development team consists of two subdivisions, each working on their part of the project.
Front-end Developers work on web store’s interface, for which they use a wide range of technologies including HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, NodeJS, Angular and React.
Back-end developers work with software responsible for databases and applications that allow your web store to function and scale. They use modern frameworks, like Symfony and ZendFramewok. Every individual feature of your custom web store may require a new element to be developed, which in its turn may entail a couple of files and hundreds of lines of code (or potentially dozens of files and thousands of lines of code). And the code Back-end Developers write must be carefully crafted to serve the intended purpose.
The Development stage is the most time-taking and intense part of project implementation. To ensure that every element of Developers’ work fits perfectly with the others, a good Developer requires not only the knowledge of technology but also critical thinking, the ability to concentrate and problem solving attitude. Once again, each project is unique, and to make things look simple and intuitive, Developers do immense amount of work and constantly learn to be able to solve ongoing issues.
Release
The launch phase of the project may sound like a simple issue. However to make sure that our client’s custom web store is deployed flawlessly, our Release team makes sure that the servers and domain are properly configured to ensure a seamless migration.
And we are ready to help you after the deployment, too. Because if we did our job right, great things can happen, and you may expect the number of your visitor to grow and you may need more unique features to be added to bring shopping experience to the new level. Which is why you have chosen us for the job in the first place.
Like I said, creating a great custom web store will require time and skills. Each stage of the project must be handled with care and knowledge, and for that you need the team able to deliver top-notch custom work and guarantee its excellence, and at a reasonable price. So that when you look at the result you feel that it was worth every penny.
