At MB/I, a lot of our competition is not the other web development firms you would expect. We actually compete a lot with the friends and family members who know a little code and with the template-based solutions out there. This is because of cost. Small business owners look for less expensive options. The problem is that they typically don’t look at the big picture.

In our experience, the alternative “solutions” we end up hearing about are very problematic. They take months to complete and launch the site. And I’m not exaggerating. There are currently 2-3 businesses (no to mention all of the ones from the past) that went this route instead of spending a few hundred dollars extra with us. They contacted us anywhere from 6-8 months ago and their sites are not done yet.

This type of delay causes not only frustration but lost income as well. The real question is: what is the opportunity cost of not having your site live for a few extra months? So, you saved a couple of hundred dollars initially, but how much have you lost in potential income by not having a site live already? Depending on the price of what you sell, even just one sale could have evened things out during the proposal stage and you would have been live much sooner making even more money.

If you have to base your decision of who to hire to develop your website on only price, make sure you look at the big picture:

• Are you comparing apples to apples? If you don’t have the right foundation, you will spend more in the long term with every new piece of functionality you add.
• What’s the difference in the timeframe? Will the lost income due to delays be more than the initial savings?
• Is the initial cost lower because there are monthly fees involved?

Make sure you look through the contract and understand all of the fine print before you make your final decision.