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As mentioned on the Products and Services page, our approach to pricing is different for each of our three types of service (Websites, Databases, and Training) and is based on the scope of the work required.

Website Cost-Benefit Analysis 

Level I: Brochure Ware
At a minimum, all marketing oriented websites should provide:

• Product and marketing information.
• A point of contact for customers new and old.
• A place to find answers to common questions.

Each of these functions has an intangible value to your organization that can be difficult to measure. Like sales literature and business cards, they are a necessity of doing business today. Studied in that light, a busy website can disseminate information for a fraction of the cost of traditional print collateral such as full color brochures. Moreover, there are many other benefits that only a website can provide. For instance, its contents can be updated without expensive reprinting and information is presented in a more engaging, interactive manner.

Level II: Added Value Services
You can dramatically increase your return on investment by adding more functions to your site:

• Sell product online.
• Offer creative customer services like online statements and invoices.
• Provide in depth technical support databases.

Your investment for adding these services can be compared with conventional approaches. If your website can eliminate or even just delay the need to hire your next sales rep, customer rep or technical support person, you can achieve a payback on your website investment in a year or two. Besides, like ATM's at a bank, these online services not only save on personnel costs, but also customers are quickly coming to expect them. The benefit to your company is that now your customers, and prospective customers, have a reason to revisit your site repeatedly.

Level III: Virtual Communities
The next phase of services and benefits is a little harder to quantify, but it's important in terms of long-term payback. At this level, your customers come to consider your website their website. This approach can significantly increase client satisfaction. They count on it for:

• Relevant news about common interests.
• A forum for sharing their views.
• A means of getting their questions answered by other members of the community.
• A focal point for their use of the Internet

The value of this kind of usage is obvious, yet again hard to translate into hard ROI numbers. Since the benefit is getting and keeping customers, you should compare the costs of your website to the costs of your industry for getting new customers, as well as the cost of losing current customers to competitors who cultivate this type of community.

Outsourcing
Some firms have internal resources that might be able to do website work. However, in this era of reduced personnel and accelerated time schedules, many companies, large and small, have found it best to outsource work to singularly focused experts.

In their August, 1996 Telecom Strategies Report, "Sizing Internet Services", Forrester research said:

"Outsourcing Web hosting is all the rage. Two-thirds of large businesses are doing it... Big companies outsource for want of skills and speed to market... The first-year cost for a high-end internally hosted Web site is $221,000, compared with $42,000 when outsourced."

 

A January 20, 1997 InfoWorld article also supports the value of outsourcing:

According to Nancy Faigen, vice president, content hosting solutions at IBM, in White Plains, N.Y., "Outsourcing was a low-cost, low-risk way to test out the Internet, because the outsourcer absorbs the technology risks, with lower costs. [Customers] want to focus on their core competencies and rely on experts to manage the Web." They are turning to providers because of the special management requirements needed to handle rapidly changing technologies such as audio and video. "Web hosting provides both large and small businesses with cost and performance advantages, as well as access to the latest technology," says Pushpendra Mohta, executive vice president of Cerfnet, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based company that provides Web hosting services.

 

When asked by Forrester Research why they outsource websites, 35 Fortune 1,000 companies responded (multiple responses were allowed):

43% Need external labor

37% Need external knowledge

37% Increased security

31% Increased speed to market

29% Better service and support

14% More cost effective

InfoMatters welcomes outsourced projects and is adept at "technology transfers" back into corporate environments.

The Bottom Line
As regards your particular project's investment, usually there is no magic. You get what you pay for, and no more. However, InfoMatters has made significant investments that have yielded some "magic"!

We believe in creating something right the first time and reusing it's component pieces multiple times. As a result we are able to leverage our previous accomplishments to create economies of scale that allow us to create customized work built on previous foundations, at a fraction of the cost. In sum, our clients benefit from a "multiplier" effect which allows them to receive much more functionality in return for their investments.

In terms of specific pricing, since the particulars and underlying business principles for each website are unique, we must provide custom quotations for each project. However, in general, our fixed priced projects run in the $5,000 - $80,000 range . We are also open to percentage and royalty arrangements for proven businesses.

For more information, please provide us with your project's details .