Break down the project
Below I will first show you the overall data of the project. Most of them are accurate. I will also mark the small amount of data that has to be estimated. I will also show you relevant data, but not everything about the project. For the sake of illustration, I've assessed the cost of my job at $100/hour. Of course, the actual cost estimates for these projects are not the same; this is done just to have the same baseline for comparison.
After the data, I will annotate the relevant project status and explain the meaning of the data.
All of these projects are relatively simple brochure-type sites, implemented using server-side inclusion technology. Most of the pages are static and require little customization to develop complex applications.
Project 1:2001
data
Pages: 56 pages
Time spent on me: 112 hours
Time spent on web development: 80 hours (it took about 40 hours to initially complete, and about 40 hours to adjust and modify later.)
Total project days: 195 days
Total cost: $11,200 (My cost was $100/hour, totaling $11,200, of which $8,000 was for web development.)
Details
It's clear that this project was very simple, taking 112 hours for 56 pages, about 6 months from start to finish. I made a fortune out of it, but you must be wondering why it took so long, which doesn’t sound great.
The site was built using a fairly conservative approach: tables, images, and a little CSS. Whenever a customer has some suggestions for changes, it often takes a lot of time to correct them.
As the project progressed, menus changed and content needed to be redone. Generally speaking, customers are all the same, and it will not be easier to serve small customers than large customers. Because non-standardized development is very troublesome, and I don’t use CSS, I had to spend a lot of time re-creating navigation images in photoshop. I remember using a table layout that was simple to create at first, but became increasingly difficult to modify over time.
Before I started learning to use web standards, I was used to developing websites using a traditional, conservative approach. Situations like the first project are very typical. In order to design better, I don’t know how many times I have to modify it!
Project 2:2003
data
Pages: 82 pages
Time spent on me: 32 hours
Time spent on web development: 19 hours (it took about 10 hours to complete initially, and about 9 hours to adjust and modify. This does not include the 8 hours spent on content production)
Total project days: 15 days
Total cost: $3200 (My cost was $100/hour, total $3200, $1900 of which was for web development.)
Details
This project is very similar to the first project in many ways. The website is essentially static, subject to extensive revisions and tweaks. To be honest, this customer is very organized and responded to my email in a timely manner. But overall, it’s not much different from the client on the first project.
You can see the huge difference in time, effort and cost between the two projects. The second project cost less than $6,000, took only 32 hours, and had a project duration of less than a month. And the number of pages produced is more than that of the first project.
The website is developed using web standards. Once I made the template, it was very easy to modify it. I can focus on tweaking the content and interface, or individually at any time. I don't think I need to emphasize how much of a difference this made.
Obviously, I spent less money on this project. And, with the time it took me to do the first project, I could do almost 12 projects similar to the second one, so you can imagine how much benefit this has for me. In doing so, I can both save money for my clients and improve my own cost assessment of the job (gaining more revenue).
Return on Investment (ROI)
I think it's now clear that developing with web standards saves time and money. I have to admit, it takes a while to learn and master new knowledge, especially when patching CSS to adapt to IE will add time to the project, but even so - it's worth it.
To further illustrate this point, let me talk about a hospital project we just completed. The benefits are not as tangible as the items above. This is a site that is serving a large number of people, and we need to deal with a large amount of existing legacy content (content creation is very difficult). I also list some data of the project, but this case is not the same as the first and second projects.
Project Three:2004
data
Pages: 65 pages
Time spent on me: 65 hours
Time spent on web development: 15 hours (it took about 8 hours to complete initially, and about 7 hours to adjust and modify later. Content production was long and difficult, about 30 hours, mainly due to modifying the original code)
Total project days: 32 days
Total cost: $6500 (My cost was $100/hour, total $6500, $1500 of which was for web development.)
Details
This project was expected to take much longer than it actually was completed. Because our web development team sits between internal customers and external users. We have to design the page details well, but also cannot stop the daily maintenance of the content. We are very likely to make a mistake.
Because I built the site using CSS, it allowed me to work on the content before the design was fully completed and allowed the site to evolve. I spent a lot of "my time" on this project. Pay attention to the difference between "my time" and "web development time". If I spent more time on web development, this project would not go as smoothly. .
Ideally there would have been more interaction with clients and users, but our web development team had to work through terrible circumstances to keep the project moving forward. Development based on CSS and web standards allows us to do this. Finally, the biggest obstacle was overcome and we started converting the original content. Frankly speaking, it took us a lot of time to complete, but luckily we had more time and we were able to deliver the project before the deadline.
True, the project wasn't perfect and I had to wait to see if the design was finalized. If it weren't for the power of CSS to help ease design and content changes, the project would likely have been delayed, adding to the hospital's costs.
All the work took just over a month, which is amazing among the hospital projects I've done. The help and promotion of web standards for the project has had a positive impact on our approach.
Summarize
When you analyze the above example it is very simple to conclude: web standards can save you and your customers time and money, they are not a silver bullet, but a huge step in the right direction.