3 Major Problems with Web Development Projects

It doesn’t matter who you are – a customer or a web developer, for you will encounter same problems when you are faced with website development projects. Of course, sides matter – the clients want to get job done as fast and cheap as possible, and the professionals wish to take their time and get appropriate payment. However, business is all about compromises, and in this article we will try to offer some solutions to most common problems that will be fit for both customers and web developers.

Problem â„–1: You never know the real cost

Customers tend to shift their expectations and requirements. Professionals tend to say that they can only define the real price of the project relatively. This uncertainty always hurts the quality of the project – or the budget.

Solution: you should work together and decide what your priorities are. The minimum price, set by web developers, should be at least 15% lower than the highest price the client is ready to pay. That way the web developers will be able to fulfill the basic requirements, set by the customer, and there will be enough money left to pay expenses for additional details.

Problem â„–2: Mess with requirements

Requirements of the client are always a pain in the neck. First, sometimes clients have no idea what they want or – what is even more horrifying – have ideas one simply cannot translate into reality. Second, sometimes the requirements change because the client realized he needs to change the target audience or for other business reasons. Third, sometimes web developers realize they can offer a better solution and all previous requirements prevent them from doing so. In third case customers are most often enraged, because they think that the developers they employed could have offered such solution at the very beginning of their cooperation, and do it in the middle of working process in order to get more money for the order.

Solution: no need to go into details when one sets up requirements. The concept of the site rarely changes completely during the working process, but little things – like design elements, – often get altered. Customer only needs to define the basics – everything else should be discussed and implemented during the process of development of the site.

Problem â„–3: You cannot simply launch a site

There is always something that will stop you from launching the site on time. If you are a customer – say hello to web developers that are also occupied with the projects of other clients, or to the careful and search of qualitative content, or to the necessity of changing the site design at the last minute. If you are a web developer – say hello to sudden requirements and endless corrections. And even when one does launch a site, it doesn’t mean that the work is ended. Clients come to the site in bigger and bigger waves, and soon someone finds a “bug”, and someone says that the functionality could have been better.

Solution: make a basic version of the site and let visitors come to it until the main version is complete. It’s better to start with a site of a substandard quality rather than waste time without any. Site development is a difficult process, so if you decide to wait until everything is in order you might lose the possibility to get acquainted with your customers, to learn their needs and to find out their wishes.

The key to successful web development projects is the qualitative cooperation between customer and the web developers. Learn to create a dialogue with the one you chose to create your site (or with the one who hired you) – and the work will be accomplished the best way possible.

image credit: Dev Made Easy

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Melissa Burns is an education blogger, and a new teacher. She was studying in Columbia and those years inspired her to dedicate her life to teaching. She graduated from Iowa State University and is passionately interested in informatics, writing, and educational activism. She has already visited 38 countries and is planning to travel around the globe. Follow her @melissaburns and contact her at burns.melissaa@gmail.com