Creating a website as a product or "why is it so expensive?"

Hi, Habrelovelek! I'm afraid to seem obvious, but creating a product is not at all the same as developing a project. It's like comparing a full-scale military campaign and one small battle. The forces are different, the goals are different, tactics are replaced by strategy, and the end result is separated at least for months, and sometimes for years. And it took the same years to realize this difference, build a working process around it and create a team capable of winning not battles, but wars.

I will try today to tell about the prerequisites, the result and give constructive, socially useful conclusions. By the way, if you have another difficult client, you can drop a link to this article, let it be aware of the scale of what is happening behind the scenes of a smiling girl manager or a stylishly dressed sales boy.
')
Attention, longrid!

Instead of the preface

Back in 2013, I set out to tell about the organization of Workflow for a growing IT company on the example of my own - Fruitware. I thought about a cycle of articles, but I only had one. Years passed, a lot of water, bloody tears, sweat and nerves flowed. And all the while managing the company, projects, working with clients, I didn’t leave a feeling of being wrong. Something went wrong. Interesting projects were made, invoices were closed, files were sent to client servers, and applications were sent to the market and store. But, quite often, closing the next project in redmine ( yes, we still use redmine , although it has acquired a bunch of bundles and integrations, but this is a separate story ), and the history of the project itself ended. He went into a long box, gathering dust with basic content, for him did not extend the domain. In general, it seemed that the work was going "on the table." Of course, this was not the case every time ( we would have gone mad :), but at least 20% of the work did not go beyond transferring everything to the client.

The thought was hysterically twitching in the subcortex area, but the current affairs shaft was constantly distracting attention, and another deadline, urgent revision, or a new client focused on an understandable goal — to fulfill the order qualitatively and on time. It could not go on forever, and at some point the thought of incorrectness won back “machine time” - I was able to think it over.

Prerequisites

A project is a task (well, or a set of tasks) as part of a statement from a client. This is one small battle of the team against the timing and inadequacy or simply the volatility of the client.

The product is not what the client asks, but what his business needs. Even if he is still not aware of this. Even if he meets the product in hostility. Even if he sees everything in a completely different way.

“ So what's the difference? In what problem to solve? The reader will ask me. In general, yes, but not quite :) The difference is of course in the approach and premises. Why are the projects "gathering dust on the shelf"? There are not so many reasons (we will immediately note terrible things like the collapse of a business or a criminal case brought to the client :) :

• The client wanted the site, but did not think that besides the site, something else was needed;
• A cool app idea was born in a head that is far from marketing, online business or person project management;
• The site or the application itself was not needed by the client, they simply told him that without them he was not in business, so he ordered, “for a tick”;
• The client, in general, did not want to launch the project - this is his personal garage and his favorite Zhiguli, which on weekends is so pleasant to pick;
• The client didn’t want a website, he wanted to raise sales, take the business to a new level, he wanted your digital advertising;
• The client overestimated his strength - he thought that “Masha” would cope with the management of the site, and “Misha” with marketing, but, alas, no;
• Priorities have changed, but it is a shame to speak about it and not in a business-like manner - a contract is a contract;
• Yee, yes, it was a "cut".

Maybe the list is not exhaustive, but all of these reasons are from one source - the client decided to become an “auto mechanic” in your “service”. Well, or at least hold the key and bring your logbook.

If it is simpler to speak and formulate with one sentence - the client, voluntarily or involuntarily, took over our (your) work and began to treat with a frenzy a symptom, not a disease . I came to solve a problem, which in fact was not a problem. And we “fell for it” and, having not understood, began to solve it.

Oh, so already, it seems, we are groping for the source of all troubles and we can begin to “heal”. What is wrong with our "general" and how to help him organize a campaign instead of storming the neighboring garden?

The result of fabrications

Here, in fact, it dawned on me.

Firstly , it turned out that we are still engaged in advertising. Unpleasant news for an IT person is almost like a visitor and sticky word "politics" for the average person. We do not “vparivaem” - we are engineers, scientists, rebels and geniuses, masters of zeros and ones, the lords of the network, not some traveling salesmen. But if you remove all the pathos and prejudice - marketing is also a science. Yes, and at the junction of psychology, sociology, economics, mathematics, engineering - a lot of things came together so that the same Apple gathered its army of fanatical followers. Therefore, we are humbled, inspired and go further.

Secondly , we already have all the cards on hand. Here it is, a systems analyst. Well, yes, we need another marketer. And the psychiatrist is a psychologist. It would be nice for the client to "scan", forNL, to get into his head and understand the motivation of the appeal. For sure! Let's learn from him everything thoroughly, corral and do not give a chance to come up with something different in the best traditions of science fiction writers. You need to take a client by storm, elicit everything from him at a personal meeting, carefully write down, ask uncomfortable questions and delve into his dirty (or clean - here how lucky) laundry . As a result, we will understand what our divine magnificent client will wish for truly. Maybe he does not need a site, and landing. Or maybe even worse - he is generally at the next door, where there are BTL actions, total advertising, outdoor advertising and sms-mailings. We will understand .

Thirdly , the king is naked. Well, he needs a website. And that the site, in fact, requires content, that the whole world does not know about it by itself, and in general the price is worthless ( even if the price was half a year-long Russian ) without a domain, hosting, support, analytics, SEO, advertising campaign and other very expensive pieces, knows only taught by a bitter experience, worn out and tired, hating programmers as a class, a client.

Fourth , even if the client knows all this, it’s not a fact that Masha can, but Misha can manage and promote the site, and that this one is flashing red in green on your modern mi-mi and any other site will not wrap the entire conversion in a knot, and customers will not rush to a competitor faster than Mr. Chief Executive will say ROI.

Collecting the puzzle piece by piece, I came to such a set of "young product research expert", a team that can and can:

1. Empathic business analyst with marketing knowledge.
2. The marketer , who is right here, next to everything, details everything and tells you where and how to poke this Central Asia so that she can buy it.
3. A client manager who will keep our dearest and most precious client away from the product and team.
4. A product manager (he is a product-ovner in forever-English), who for the product will break not only the pharynx, but also the deadlines together with the budgets.
5. The art director , who would rather eat his tie for breakfast, than allow the flashing banner to flash into this materiali-design.
6. A designer who will play with fonts will take photos and illustrate the prototype of the product as it should.
7. The head of the development department , who is also the main one in terms of quality and efficiency, will give the project to the engineer who will make it within the client budget, without refactoring, smoothies, sweatshirts and gyroscopes - on the engine that is as efficient as possible (read qualitatively, quickly and in proportion to the money) will solve the client's problem.
8. The same software engineer (or several) who will conjure from here to the QA-department, so that the buttons will poke, the molds will be sent, and the money from the buyers will come to the customer’s account, and not to finance the war in Libya.
9. QA , known in wide circles as a tester, whom everyone hates for having disrupted the layout of such a ready-made release, having found a CRITICAL ERROR.
10. The SEO , which will add a pixel of Facebook, and the semantic core will jot down - right here all these “buy a teapot in online business” structures and scatters across the pages of the site.
11. The container manager , who will both write and publish on the site, will correctly execute the intricate conflicting instructions of the SEOshnik.

Well, on the little things - targetgate, smm-specialist, banner designer, text editor ... In general, let's give already. In the sense of putting your corporate site in the work.

findings

Remember, I wrote about money in the title? In my opinion, everything is intelligible and transparent here, but just in case, I will reveal the idea. All these above people are in every successful project . And besides them, there can be mobile developers and a UX-specialist (if the product-owner does not know Axure and does not glue the interactive prototype). And there is still an office, coffee, buns, taxes, a porsche for leasing a modest subcompact director and budgets for training new specialists, for leisure of tough workers. And stash on a black day.

If you did give an article to the client, and our reader today is probably the one who paid ( or paid ) for the entire corps de ballet, then I think it would be unnecessary to remind you that all this simply cannot cost 100 rubles. And a thousand can not, unfortunately. And even 10 thousand can not.

But, to keep your staff - the marketing department, specialists in development, support and administration, quality author of the texts, creatives - this means paying them a salary every month . And it's not a fact that a cool professional will want to work on your one project, even if you have money for it. I am already silent about the fact that this very professional will simply not be able to develop in accordance with all the new trends, to keep up with the technologies without a powerful team. And run away from you, God forbid, bringing the next bug-report to the conditional status "fulfilled".

So the price of hundreds of thousands of rubles - it is justified. And even in a couple of million, if the whole team will work for you for more than one month. But the result will not have to redo. And do not have to be disappointed in him. And to curse with the last words of fools-programmers and the friend who recommended making a website to increase sales is not necessary either.