A website is extremely important these days and if you don’t have one, you might be in trouble. You might also think that it’s a simple solution if you just go up to someone and have someone make a web application for you. However, there might be problems that will come up with web application development. This list is made for you to realise that there might be problems in achieving the best application for your company but don’t fret! The team here at ThunderQuote strives to ensure that you get your services in the best way possible with no hiccups whatsoever.

Problem 1: How much is it going to cost?

The way web design and developers used to work, they couldn’t tell you what any given project would cost. One part of the problem is that they didn’t know what you want to buy, or how much detail work would be necessary before declaring victory and calling the project complete. 

Solution 1: Agree to a budget up front.

Web design and developers can tell you if a budget is reasonable for what you’re trying to accomplish. If it’s tight, we can help you prioritize features, and make sure the critical ones are done first before the budget is exhausted.

Problem 2: Undefined Requirements

If you’ve hired anyone in web application development in the past 15 years, you’ve probably learned that you need to be extremely specific and detailed about what the finished site needs to look like, and how it needs to operate. The overall cost of the project can change substantially based on seemingly minor requirements that end up making some existing platform a bad choice.

Problem 3: Changing Requirements

You get part way through a new web application or development project, and realize the requirements overlooked some critical feature you really need, or didn’t specify clearly enough something about the source data. Now all work comes screeching to a halt as the web design and developer needs to renegotiate their contract, add a change order. The customer is unhappy because they’re paying more, and the project is late. The web design and developer is unhappy about having to stop what he’s doing and talk business—so all too often they’d just throw in the work without doing this.

Problem 4: Strict Requirements Prevents Adapting To A Better Solution

Web design and developers get half way through building a site, and realize that if they had chosen a different approach or platform, the end result would work much better for the client. But they’re far enough down the path of the current development to back up, and their original approach does fulfill the requirement. They’re unhappy delivering a site that could be better, and their customers end up with a clunkier, less than optimal site—but it’s easier than going back and renegotiating with the client.

Solution 2, 3, 4: Scrap the requirements.

Requirements serve one purpose: they are a stake in the ground that one side can use to extract more work or more cash out of the other side. This almost always generates resentment, and they’re also largely unnecessary for small web projects.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s important to have a clear agreement about what is being purchased, and what is being delivered. The problem is, there are a ton of variables, and many of them are not discovered until the project is well underway. Doing the groundwork to identify all the possible pitfalls of a project is probably about half the actual work of a project—and in most cases, that’s far more of an investment than the client wants to make without an actual result.

Instead of having hard and fast requirements, help your customers identify goals and rank them by priority. Start with a previously-finished configuration, and use the budget to modify that configuration towards the goals.

Problem 5: It Takes Forever to Launch

Once you’ve decided to create a new website, identified the requirements, gotten the vendor all lined up and started, something funny happens. The web design and developer disappears and you, as the customer, have no idea what happened. Two or three weeks later, you decide to call, and they’ve done part of it—but had other clients asking for work and so they haven’t gotten to it yet.

Two months later, they’ve gotten close, and there is something to look at, but it still needs a lot of polish. So the hard-core back-and-forth starts happening—and then the requirements document starts getting in the way. Four months down the road, you’re starting to work on content. A year down the road, there’s a little push of effort, and the site launches—but nobody’s really that happy about it. The web design and developers have forgotten about all the cool little tricks they employed to make your site do something slick, and you’re tired of thinking about it.

Solution 5: Start from a pre-configured installation, on a platform that’s easy to modify

Any competent freelancer or web development and design company that’s any good will be great at juggling a bunch of clients. With a stack of different requirements, and unknown length of time to implement, it’s really, really difficult to schedule out projects. They don’t know when one is going to be finished so you can start the next one. Many projects take longer than they thought. And meanwhile old customers are coming back with little changes they want done.

It can easily become a time management nightmare. So how do you manage time? Set up some constraints. A site sitting on a development server hidden away from the public is absolutely useless. Lots of extremely successful Internet startups started with a crappy site—people come to web sites for the content, the interaction, the stuff that’s on there. The good news is, the more often you update the site, the more reasons you give your visitors to come back—especially if you’re updating it based on their feedback. Don’t blow your entire load at once—but get that site out early and be prepared to update.

There are many ways for you to start working on fixing certain problems that come with web application development. Always have a clear mind and a great plan before you start anything. The best advice we can leave you with is to ensure you have contingency plans as well. You never know when things might go wrong and a Plan B will definitely benefit you in the long run!

If you need a contingency plan fast or a vendor to work on your project now, head on over to ThunderQuote for all your sourcing needs.

 

ThunderQuote is the most comprehensive business services portal in Singapore, Australia and ASEAN , where hundreds of thousands of dollars of procurement contracts are sourced every month by major companies like Singapore Press Holdings, National Trade Union Congress and more.