Why is it profitable to make a website from scratch or order the services of an agency?
1. Responsibility for the final result is documented. We all know about the disadvantages of working with freelancers: uncertainty, missed deadlines, communication problems, etc. When concluding an agreement with an agency, you relieve yourself of all risks associated with the human factor.
2. It is beneficial for the company to make a good case. By working on your project, she increases her reputation and importance in the market.
3. The agency that developed the project from scratch is interested in continuing to support it. In the case of an online store, this means inevitable business scaling, regular updates and integration with external services. Let's say the obvious: the majority of a development company's revenue comes from further servicing and development of its clients' projects.
How much does development cost?
To answer this question, let’s determine the minimum team composition for developing a website from scratch:
Business analyst
This is a person who helps determine business requirements, approve technical specifications, create CJM and write User Stories. The purpose of this stage is to generate documentation and provide prototypes of the future site with functionality that will be included in the first iteration*.
*At the pre-sale stage, we formulate a preliminary commercial proposal based on basic functional requirements, which come from our experience in developing similar projects. That is, we can roughly estimate the scope of work in advance and show the client a preliminary cost, which will change slightly up or down during the approval process. For convenience, we draw up a framework agreement and two orders for it: for business analytics and for development.
Project manager
This is the heart of development, he is responsible for communication between team members and the client, setting tasks, identifying risks, creating deadlines and monitoring all timelines. The manager is responsible for the progress of the project at every stage.
Design: art director, designer
The art director defines the visual concept and is responsible for the final production. He analyzes the market and the client’s product and forms a unified visual concept. The UI designer draws the interface based on the prototypes that were created at the analytics stage, creates layouts in Figma (UI-Kit, mobile version and a set of components that will then be used, including when scaling the site) and designs it into a beautiful presentation.
Development: team lead, 2 developers (Frontend and Backend)
Based on the analytics performed, the team leader selects the technologies that will be used in development, decomposes and sets tasks, and is responsible for the entire environment system and the final production code. The frontend developer designs and writes the logic of the client part, the backend developer writes the server logic, and deals with the configuration of the CMS (if we develop on it).
QA: manual tester
This person tests CJM, the functionality of each element of the site (feedback form, payment forms and all user scripts), checks blocks for compliance with layouts, and finds bugs.
Production: content manager
As a rule, online stores ask you to upload goods to a ready-made website from their systems, for example, 1C. Usually this is a basic nomenclature with the number of stocks, prices and some kind of description, but in 90% of cases this content is not suitable for a website showcase. The content manager uploads photos of the required size, distributes product characteristics and adjusts client data to the approved design. The customer can provide his own content manager, but it’s easier to hire someone from the agency at least at the start, because knowing the specifics of the system and the design concept, he will do this work faster and better.
Administrative department and indirect costs
Many people forget to include the administrative part of the production workshop in the estimate, but this is an important point that ensures the functionality of the entire system. This is an accountant (a person who deals with document flow and financial operations), a project manager (in small companies this role can be played by the CEO), office expenses (rent and security), pre-sale (initial calls, briefing, creation of a commercial proposal).
How is each team member's bet calculated?
For rough calculations, you can derive the formula:
Internal employee rate (salary on hand)
+ personal income tax 13%
+ Unified Social Tax 25%
+ indirect costs (all indirect costs divided by the number of production units, say 5%)
+ margin for the company (in our case 30%)
When developing a website from scratch, we can easily administer it, add new functionality, add integrations with other services, and constantly update it to meet business needs. Having supported such development with well-tuned analytics (we wrote about the specifics and importance of this stage in one of the articles), you will receive an online tool that will help not only demonstrate and sell your product, but also increase its sales.
