The GartnerGroup has just finished running a survey in the Asia Pacific that shows most clients were unhappy with their Web development firms. Craig Errey, director of consultancy firm The Performance Technologies Group, agrees. We see timelines blow out quite a lot. But to be fair to the developers, some clients have unrealistic expectations. But apart from not delivering projects on time, many Web development firms are guilty of charging clients far too much.
People have to be very careful in understanding what they're getting upfront.
But as the market understands the Web more, it is less likely to fork out millions for a simple front-end site, as has happened. Even though Web sites are becoming more complex, the average cost of building a site is starting to go down. If you look at companies building dot com sites on spec, I'm sure they spent millions of dollars doing these things. Companies that have now gone belly up, like Spike and Zivo, were basically preying on the fundamental lack of understanding of the Web and the opportunities to charge premium prices. Obviously as the market becomes more aware and more competition enters the market, I think the ability of these guys to charge what were absolutely crazy prices for brochureware sites has been eliminated.