ROI on Websites and Content Management Systems for Small Organizations

1. How much did it cost to get your website to its present state?
   1. Add up all the costs associated with your website, including design, extra programming, maintenance fees, hosting charges, and routine updates. Divide it by units of time, and you’ve got a cost per unit of time. You can break it out in as much detail as you want, but the overall cost per unit of time is similar to the cost per square foot of residential building. It’s a number you can think with.
   2. Do you expect similar costs as you continue?

                                                     i.     Most web companies have a minimum charge, to keep themselves from getting “nickeled and dimed” by and excessive number of small changes. This makes sense for them, but not for their client businesses. For them, a comma out of place may make an important difference in the message, and an incorrect price or service rate may cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.

                                                      ii.     Businesses compromise by holding off on less essential changes and making essential changes when needed, collecting a number of small “inessential” changes to be submitted at one time. This makes the best of a bad situation, but is not ideal by any means.

                                                        iii.     Costs for this approach to updating a website have to do with how often an organization makes changes and on the scope or amount of the information that changes.

2. What would it cost to build a database-driven content management system (CMS), and how does that compare with building a “standard” HTML site?
   1. Hosting and databases

                                                     i.     Low-cost hosting including databases is easily available at low cost. MySQL is the most prevalent, as most hosting is on Linux-type servers, for which MySQL was created. MSSQL is a standard database type for sites hosted on Windows servers.

2.  
   2. HTML

                                                     i.     A highly competent web developer can implement a large-scale website in pure HTML at a reasonable cost.

                                                      ii.     Such people may be easy to find, but usually they’re already employed by someone else. The HTML site requires code to be entered and uploaded to make changes, and that is an activity that incurs cost on an ongoing basis.

                                                        iii.     A less competent developer can handicap the site by improper coding, unclear design strategy, lack of information design, and lack of experience in up-to-date web standards.

                                                        iv.     Day-to-day changes may be handled by software such as Macromedia (now Adobe) Contribute, which acts like a browser, then like a website editor. It requires strict controls on what can be edited on a website, an can be used to create new pages if the new pages are based on existing pages.

                                                      v.     File upload capabilities, password-protection of sections of the site, including editorial control, and other special functions require extra programming or involvement by the developer/webmaster, adding cost.

                                                        vi.     Functions not integrated by their association with a relational database may be more difficult and therefore more costly to coordinate, update, and improve.

2.  
   3. CMS

                                                     i.     Don’t look only at the cost of the CMS software. Free open-source CMS are surprisingly complex and competent, but have a steep development cost and a steep learning curve, because of their complexity. One of the drawbacks to open source is that it has been agglomerated over time by many developers, and often lacks a cohesive strategy. This single factor may make development costs very high for “free” software.

                                                      ii.     Truly simple CMS are very hard to find. Most are in two categories: those geared either toward the raw do-it-yourselfer, and provided as a loss leader by hosting companies, and those geared toward larger organizations. A CMS that meets your immediate needs and still allows for growth is the ideal.

                                                        iii.     Sometimes the needs of a business are so specific that a custom-programmed CMS is the answer.

                                                        iv.     Can you or a consultant make your own updates to the site? The cost savings involved in updating your own site are easy to pinpoint (just add up the webmaster’s bills for changes last year). The implications for your business may not be so obvious, but are very real.

1.     Once employees are comfortable with using a CMS, their involvement gives them a deeper connection to the well-being of the company.

2.     Agility in your web message can be something both you and your customers can come to count on. If your customers see you respond online to their needs, they’re more likely to return to you for more.

3.     You can refine your web message with the help of a consultant who specializes in web marketing, and test pages for effectiveness. Editorial rights can be given to the consultant, with publishing rights retained by the owner of the site.

4.     Your web developer can contribute code for special formatting or display not within the purview of the CMS.

When you have answered your questions, launch and fill out the ROI assessment (Excel spreadsheet) included. The white fields are for entering information. Please do not modify other fields. If you can, please take a moment to let us know what you think about the concepts and the assessment. We welcome feedback. Email us at webteam@autograff.com.

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Richard Merrill is one of the owners of Autograff, and has been designing and building websites for over ten years. Originally from the high desert cattle country of Oregon, Richard Merrill moved to the east coast as a mechanical design engineer in Boston’s high-tech belt, distilling complex aerospace assemblies into a few parts in a process he has termed “simplicity engineering.” When he headed north to Maine to raise his family, he formed a design/build company on the same principles, transferring these skills to web development in the 90s. His firm, Autograff, founded with partner Kurt Stoll, designs and produces graphics, identity and web sites for startups and multi-million-dollar companies.