Tech/Development Pricing ??

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi

I've submitted some site change request to a clients dev team and they have got back with a rather large quote thats left me gobsmacked, so i want to run it by any of you to get your feedback ?

Creating/integrating a dynamic xml site map @ £3450

Fixing Crawl Errors & Warning reported by Moz report (i..e adding canonicalisation tag to each page to deal with dupe content and a few other small/misc items) @ £4850

Setting up/enabling ecom tracking in Analytics @ £910

Setting up 1 events based goal in analytics @ £490

Are these prices even plausible ?

Cheers

Dan

[ThompsonPaul]

Yea, no... You're not crazy. Those prices are.

Absurd doesn't even begin to cover it.

What technology is the site using? i.e. WordPress, some proprietary CMS, or ???

Paul

[LynnPatchett]

Hey Dan,

I have obviously been (seriously) under-charging for analytics setups

That being said as Paul mentions it does depend a bit on the platform/cms etc... those prices might just be expensive (which is relative to the company and is their right if they can support and sell it) or simply taking the p**s (which is just a bit mean spirited).

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks for confirming TP !

Yes its a bespoke custom system, only has cms for new content pages, all existing main site pages meta data etc needs to be hard coded, have asked for editable functionality for this so i can add/edit titles, decrip & body copy etc but they have quoted £1750 for just that request

The main site pages didnt come with meta descriptions, the site only had an html site map no xml one, all the main content pages had same title (hence dupe titles), no canonicalisation (so lots of dupe content).  And the main pages didn't have any copy (or space to add).

Client was told it was a best practice site and seo friendly, i take it from the above i can be confident telling the client its not & well within rights to request many of the things needing doing like fixing crawl errors & warnings etc should not be chargeable since needed to make best practice when it wasnt originally ?

Cheers

Dan

[david.smith.segarra]

Those prices are pretty high but I have been quoted similar prices also..

I suggest you fish around for an agency with a good reputation that will meet the prices you have in mind.

Linkedin Is good for that I've found

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi Lynn

As i just replied above to TP , it is a custom/bespoke system and they are an established capital city firm.  The main site pages didnt come with meta descriptions, the site only had an html site map no xml one, all the main content pages had same title (hence dupe titles), no canonicalisation (so lots of dupe content).  And the main pages didn't have any copy (or space to add).

Client was told it was a best practice site and seo friendly, i take it from the above i can be confident telling the client its not & well within rights to request many of the things needing doing like fixing crawl errors & warnings etc should not be chargeable since needed to make best practice when it wasnt originally ?

Cheers

Dan

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks David but client and developer well integrated & established relationship and if site was supposed to be best practice & seo friendly then i would expect any crawl errors & warnings etc to be fixed for no charge.  Bit more tricky for new stuff like adding goals & ecom tracking

[BlueprintMarketing]

They are 100% possible but only if you're using an absolutely outstanding search engine optimization company one that comes to mind is distilled.net, Seer interactive in less you are actually paying the guys that write books then you're most likely being overcharged especially for implementing that one analytics thing that's high however if you're using one of the best then that's the cost of doing business I would also love to see how much work to your site actually needs

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

Check out distilled.net, see your interactive, Portent.com, evolving SEO, authoritydev

tom

[BlueprintMarketing]

If your talking 10,000 sku's Magneto can be very expensive and very time-consuming

[Dan-Lawrence]

thanks Tom but im talking about developers not SEO companies

[LynnPatchett]

Yeah, doesn't sound too best practice! If the client and dev firm are in an established relationship then I guess all you can do is suggest what needs to be done and if asked an opinion on the price or the work done before then say it seems a bit lacking in some areas and the prices now seem a bit high. At the end of the day, if the client is willing to pay the price then I'm not sure it is worth getting too involved unless specifically asked....

[BlueprintMarketing]

You're paying a lot and miss the site has many tens of thousands of pages to create a dynamic site map should not cost anywhere near that

GregReindel.com

he has done everything from the e-commerce to run-of-the-mill Garrisonbespoke.com is an example

I would say he's a very fair and honest developer that works very hard and actually does this storage and I'm not getting anything to say this. So if you'd like a recommendation for a developer I know that there soon going to be called authoritydev.com however right now it's just the name.

Webdevstudios.com is a outstanding place as well.

I hope this help,

tom

[Dan-Lawrence]

thanks again but im not after recommendations, im talking about the general principle and approach in regard to it

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks Lynn

Client doesnt want to pay for anything they think should be included as best practice since original dev was quoted as going to be best practice

Cheers

Dan

[Carlson]

Just to give you something to gauge how expensive their prices are. Setting up a single goal in Google Analytics shouldn't take any more than 30-60 minutes assuming the goal is using existing pages.

[Dan-Lawrence]

the sites pages are dynamically generated so they have either quoted for an option to create a special page/another step in the process to provide a unique url or adding an event as a goal (with the event being the clicking of a 'submit order' button) but i cant see how this second option would take more than 30-60 minutes as well

[BlueprintMarketing]

This is not a recommendation it is a standard price pack can be found on the Internet directly rule company in order to complete these tasks a you should use as a reference

Setting up/enabling Ecommerce tracking in Analytics @ £910

Setting up 1 events based goal in analytics @ £490

Google Analytics Setup - Ecommerce Websites

https://www.tweaky.com/services/google-analytics-ecommerce-setup hypothetically let's say the goals are going to be set up in Google analytics well the price 100% Money Back Guarantee @ $297

and this is a fraction of what it covers

• Setup Ecommerce Tracking

• Setup Goal Tracking (3 Goals)

• Setup Conversion Funnel

• Setup Custom Reports (3 Custom Reports)

• Setup Advanced Segments (3 Advanced Segments

Let's say they need to install a 2nd analytics program to track events based goals worst-case scenario these other prices and the top one is for e-commerce the 2nd one is if you have a software as a service business

KissMetrics Setup for Ecommerce Websites (KissMetrics is all the event-based and a very high quality analytics program)

@$299

Now let's say hypothetically they wanted to send out for software as a service using kiss metrics event-based analytics time my software tells me it will take a developer 3 hours that cost from the same company

I highly doubt this is what they're talking about but let's make it worse case scenario or most expensive scenario.

KissMetrics Setup for SaaS Businesses

https://www.tweaky.com/services/kissmetrics-setup-saas

@$599

hypothetically they now want to combined kiss my trick's with Google analytics according to this and I believe it because I've sent out both programs it takes proximately 10 min.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-combine-kissmetrics-with-google-analytics.html

In order to get prices on all analytics software setups with 100% money back guarantee from a reputable company check this link

https://www.tweaky.com/services?tag=Analytics

Now

Creating/integrating a dynamic xml site map @ £3450

3,450 British Pound (GBP)is equal to5,596.935 United States Dollar (USD)GBP-USD Exchange Rate of 1.6223 as of 16:48:43using http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GBPUSD:CUR

I will save you the time some of the generators might cost $25 most of them are free cost @ $-$25

https://code.google.com/p/sitemap-generators/wiki/SitemapGenerators

or it is for a CMS

http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/creare-dynamic-sitemap-seo.html

http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/3306

If they want to do it the hard way without a generator which I doubt they do

http://www.bradshawenterprises.com/blog/2008/writing-dynamic-xml-sitemaps-using-php/

Fixing Crawl Errors & Warning reported by Moz report (i..e adding canonicalization tag to each page to deal with dupe content and a few other small/misc items) @ £4850

it is entirely unrealistic of me to actually think that I would know exactly what all the errors reported were however if it is simply a create the proper canonical tag like so and adding it to the page that has the error.

http://moz.com/learn/seo/

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/

I have no idea rather not they will actually solve their duplicate problem with the canal however if they do not hear us and information on what it would take

http://moz.com/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

if you truly want to know if what sounds like very inexpensive work being performed for extremely expensive prices I would query the people below not because I'm recommending them but because they have done consistently great work offer a 100% money back guarantee and do this sort of thing every day. They would give you a price that is realistic and then you could move on from there.

https://www.tweaky.com/

https://www.tweaky.com/projects

I hope this answer was more helpful than my others and gives you a bar to gauge where the pricing should be.

There price is in GBP The price in the examples is in US dollars

making it even less use one of the two links to find the real cost

https://www.google.com/finance?q=gbpusd

http://themoneyconverter.com/GBP/USD.aspx

So the cost in USD of Setting up/enabling Ecommerce tracking in Analytics @ £910.00 GBP = $1,476.91 USD

with the @USD/GBP = 1.62298 exchange rate.

I hope this help,

Thomas

[Dan-Lawrence]

Many Thanks Tomas for that very interesting information, its a very good reference and i shall frequently refer to it

Thanks so much for taking the time to write such a thorough comment

Have a great day !!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Happy to help.

All the best,

tom