Investment return on Web standards (ROI)

Web|web Standard

• Original Author: D. Keith Robinson
• Original source:Asterisk
• Original publication date: June 1, 2004

Is there any doubt that the development of web standards can bring real benefits?

If so, I've prepared some very compelling evidence for you, especially some of the benefits of CSS based design. I'm going to show you a real set of data that shows you the very obvious return on investment (Rio:return on Investment) with web standards.

I looked up two invoices for websites that were very similar (on a range and delivery) and wrote down their data. One was completed in 2001 and the other was just completed by the end of 2003. I'm going to show you how two projects take time, effort, and money differently, telling you the real effects of using web standards. That was amazing.

Incidentally, I will also talk about a hospital project we recently completed. Don't say how great it is, just want to say what real benefits the project has gained by using Web Standard technology. Explode project

Here we will show you the overall data of the project, most of them are accurate, a small amount of data that has to be estimated, I will also indicate. I will also show you the relevant data, but it does not contain everything about the project. For the sake of convenience, I estimate the cost of my work to 100 USD per hour. Of course, the actual cost estimates for these projects are not the same, only to be compared to have the same baseline.

After the data, I will comment on the project situation and explain the meaning of the data.

All of these projects are simple manual-type (brochure-type) sites that are implemented with server-side inclusion technology, most of which are static and require little or no development of complex applications.

Item A: 2001

Data

• Page: 56 page
• Spend my time: 112 hours
• Time spent on web development: 80 hours (initially completed in about 40 hours, then modified for about 40 hours). )
• Total project days: 195 days
• Total Cost: 11200 USD (my cost is 100 USD/h, total 11200 USD, of which 8000 USD is used for web development. )

Detail Description

Obviously, the project is very simple, 56 pages cost 112 hours, from the beginning to the end around 6 months. I made a profit from it, but you must be wondering why it took so long to sound so bad.

Site production using a fairly conservative approach: tables, pictures and a small amount of CSS. Whenever a customer has a little change, it often takes a lot of time to fix it.

As the project progresses, the menu changes and the content needs to be repeated. Customers are generally the same, serving small customers will not be easier than big customers. Because the non-standard development is very troublesome, plus I do not use CSS, I have to spend a lot of time to reuse in Photoshop to make navigation pictures. I remember the table layout I used at the time was simple to create, but it became more and more difficult to change over time.

Before I started learning to use web standards, I was used to developing websites in a traditional, conservative way. Similar to the first project such a situation is very typical, in order to design better, do not know how many times to modify!

Item Two: 2003

Data

• Page: 82 page
• Spend my time: 32 hours
• Time spent on web development: 19 hours (initially completed in about 10 hours, then modified for about 9 hours). This does not include 8 hours spent on content production.
• Total project days: 15 days
• Total Cost: 3200 USD (my cost is 100 USD/h, total 3200 USD, of which 1900 USD is used for web development. )

Detail Description

This project is very similar to the first project in many ways. The site is basically static, with a lot of modifications and adjustments. To tell you the truth, the client is very organized, responding to my emai L was in time. But overall, it's not much different from the first project's customers.

You can see that two projects are very different in time, energy and cost. The second project cost less than 6000 dollars, only 32 hours, the project period of not more than one months. and the page production volume than the first project more.

Web site standards developed. Once I have done the template, the modification is very easy. I can focus on the content and interface, or adjust it at any time. I don't think I need to stress how much this has changed.

It is clear that I have used less cost on this project. And, with the time spent on the first project, I can do almost 12 projects like the second one, and you can imagine how much it would do for me. In doing so, I can save money for my clients and improve my own work cost assessment (get more revenue).

Investment Reporting (ROI)

I think it's very clear now that using Web Standard development can save time and money. I must admit that learning and mastering new knowledge requires a process, especially when patching CSS to adapt to IE will increase project time, but even this---is worthwhile.

To further illustrate this point, let me say a hospital project we just finished. The benefits are not as tangible as the projects above. This is a site that is serving a large number of people, and we need to deal with a lot of existing legacy content (the content is very difficult to make). I also list some of the data for the project, but this case is not the same as the first and second projects.

Item Three: 2004

Data

• Page: 65 page
• Spend my time: 65 hours
• Time spent on web development: 15 hours (initially completed in about 8 hours, then modified for about 7 hours). Content production time is long and difficult for about 30 hours, mainly because of the modification of the original code.
• Total project days: 32 days
• Total Cost: 6500 USD (my cost is 100 USD/h, total 6500 USD, of which 1500 USD is used for web development. )

Detail Description

The project is expected to take much longer than is actually done. Because our web development team is between internal and external users. We have to design the details of the page, and can not stop the content of the daily maintenance, we are very likely to smash.

Because I used the CSS construction site, so that I can complete the design before the completion of the content, and allow the site to continue to move forward. I spent a lot of my time on this project, noticing the difference between "my Time" and "Web development time", and if I spend more time on web development, this project will not be so smooth.

Ideally, there should be more interaction with customers and users, but our web development team has to keep the project moving in a bad situation. Development based on CSS and web standards let's do this. Finally, the biggest obstacle is overcome, we begin to transform the original content. To be honest, we need a lot of time to do it, but fortunately we have more time and finally delivered the project before the deadline.

Really, the project is not perfect and I have to wait for the design to be finalized. If it is not a powerful feature of CSS that helps mitigate design and content changes, the project is likely to be postponed, which will increase the cost of the hospital.

All the work was done in January, and it was amazing in the hospital projects that I had been doing. The contribution of Web standards to the project has had a positive impact on our approach.

Summarize

When you analyze the above example it is very simple to conclude thatWeb standards can save you and your customers time and money, it is not a silver bullet, but a great step in the right direction.