Websites rarely come in neat boxes with a yellow label showing the price and feature list. Website costs can be deceptive. If you are trying to decide how much to budget, or looking over a set of proposals, you’ll want to know what the bottom line really means. One estimate may seem low, but you might end up paying much more in the long run. Another estimate may include elements that you can more easily accomplish in-house.

In many cases an existing website will have something you really like, but the owner may have spent a lot on features that are less relevant to your needs. If you understand why you want a website, and have done a good job of prioritizing your needs, you should be able to confine the costs to those areas that are most important to you. The key is to spend the most in the areas that will bring you the best return.

System modeling
Good modeling done prior to the commencement of actual development will greatly reduce the overall cost of the website. Changes are costly; scope creep and loss of focus can derail a project entirely. Taking the time to get all the potential decision makers, in advance, to agree on the goals and process that will be used in development will give you the best chance of getting you what you want for the budget you have laid out. This preplanning is not free, of course. You should account for the time spent internally, including that by the top-level decision makers. And, you will want your web development company being involved in the preplanning process to a great extent.

Creating a website involves strategic thinking, analysis of needs and audiences, awareness of where you want it to develop over time. Having the right information architecture and good design notes on how it should look before starting will save a lot of time and money later. How much you should be paying for planning varies widely depending on the size of the project, the type of firm you're dealing with, the management style of your own organization, and whether you intend to be more of a leader or an imitator in the market. Even a small site will require about 10 hours of pre-planning, though much of this may be accomplished in a well-thought out Request for Proposal.

Project Management
A complex website involves many elements which must fit together properly. Timing is also important; certain steps need to be completed before others can begin. Some elements may have to be redone if not coordinated properly. Even if you have a single designer doing a basic site, the communication between designer and client are a form of Project Management. One party has to ensure that all communications are tracked and nothing falls through the cracks.

Assume that for every hour spent on design or program, at least a quarter hour to an hour will be necessary to manage the project. Factors such as institutional complexity and functionality will increase costs of project management in ways similar to their affect on strategy costs.

Website Interactive Features
A Website that just sits there and displays itself may be fine for some people, but chances are you want to know more about what your audience thinks. You may want to know who they are and where they've come from. Some information can be gathered from statistical programs on your site's server, but you might want to get specific personal information from them as well. You might want to ask them what they think about certain topics. Perhaps you want a record of visitors in certain categories so you can e-mail them when news occurs in their area. Information collection can be done with respect to privacy, with plenty of notice, if necessary.

A basic form that would collect an e-mail address, a request or a comment, and a brief profile might cost comparatively little to develop, while more extensive sets of forms with questions and differentiation that tie into a corporate database might run into larger amounts. Interactivity can be enhanced with the addition of many fairly simple tools. Some, such as visitor hit counters have become hallmarks of amateurism, but others are often used and bookmarked by visitors, if useful. Mortgage calculators, phrase translators, on-line calendars, protein parameters translators, etc. are just a few of the thousands of tools that can make life easier. If your site has an audience that will be well served by some such tool, you might consider adding it so that people will come and come back.

Adding an on-line tool should be targeted. Generating fortunes might be interesting for a Chinese restaurant, but useless on a home finance page.

Some tools are available free. If you are building your own site, you might consider adding in a generic tool, downloadable from various shareware sites. The disadvantage is that these tools are often not customizable. Also, other similar pages may have the same tools.

On-line tools may be custom designed for prices that vary, depending on the complexity of the tool. Say you want to add a function to your site whereby constituents can log on and write a letter to their Senator. Such tools can be programmed, complete with customized and customizable text options.

Multimedia Design: Selection and Usage
Modern Websites don't just sit there. Flash and Shockwave animation, streaming video, javascripts and applets, and any number of action graphics enhancements, make your Website come alive. That doesn't mean you should do it. Done badly, animation can annoy and distract the viewer, extend download time, require the viewer to download plug-ins, and give the Website a cheap feel. But done well, animation can give the viewer a stronger sense of the sophistication and cutting-edge nature of your company. In all cases, repeat viewers need to be able to skip Flash programming.

E-Commerce
It's no secret that E-commerce has gone through a tremendous boom and bust. Many business models drew an enormous amount of investment, yet failed in the implementation. Still, there are successes. More importantly, Websites for companies and organizations that aren't purely devoted to e-commerce add an important revenue stream by adding e-commerce, as well as satisfying the expectations of many of your site visitors. While a full-blown e-commerce site that exists entirely to sell on-line is looking at costs around $800,000 per year, adding e-commerce to your site doesn't have to be expensive at all.