As this mini-series on pricing has demonstrated, establishing the cost for a website project is multi-faceted. We’ve already discussed how the make up of the client team, page count, content density and complexity, and design all factor into price. In this video I’ll describe how advanced features contribute to project costs. These include: eCommerce, advanced events and calendaring systems, membership accounts, and API integrations with third party platforms.
Each one of these features could have its own video, since they all have plenty of factors to uncover. But we’ll just hit on a few of the most pertinent requirements.
But keep in mind, as requirements get more advanced, there is a corresponding increase in the trust building effects of strategic Q&A. The more involved the use case, the more the client will need to rely on their developer. And so the clearer you address these issues, without blinding the client with technical jargon, the greater the opportunity to build trust.
The most common advanced feature is eCommerce. And thankfully, at least in the WordPress environment, there is a robust go-to solution. WooCommerce is built and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress itself. WooCommerce powers over six million stores including shops for top brands like Home Depot and UPS. WooCommerce, out of the box, is quite robust, but when you factor in its various extensions, and the over 6,000 third party plugins available, there is rarely a use case WooCommerce cannot satisfy.
That said, WooCommerce is a pretty big engine to install, and if a client’s transactional requirements are relatively simple—they might need something as robust as WooCommerce—a simple Gravity form, with a payment processor add-on like Stripe may be enough to get the job done. So asking strategic questions about the scope of e-commerce helps to fit the client with the right tools.
Another common advanced feature is event calendars. Regarding events you need to ask questions like: “Will events be ticketed and require payments? If so, will the event system need to track the sales and stop selling tickets once the available seats are all full? How many events on average are held on a monthly basis?
Again, the WordPress environment has several high powered event frameworks to meet all these kinds of requirements. And with so many extensions and add ons a robust calendar system can be deployed within a low code / no code approach. The key is asking the right questions to match needs, with the right framework and configuration.
Some websites sell membership subscriptions, or perhaps offer member-only content for registered visitors. And once more there is a wealth of options for adding membership frameworks to WordPress. Whether it’s a simple registration system, or a more robust Learning Management System requiring paid subscriptions, these kinds of advanced features can be set up without the need for advanced custom coding.
The last item I’ll cover in this video is third party API integrations. Most commonly this involves pushing web form data, or email marketing subscriptions into a CRM like Salesforce or Hubspot, or into email marketing platforms like MailChimp or ActiveCampaign. Again, because WordPress has such a robust secondary marketplace of plugin developers, we can often find tools that have API integrations built right into their native capabilities. But of course, if a third party platform is unique or specialized we can always write a custom API. That’s usually where the “low code” part of our low code / no code philosophy becomes necessary.
Last point on third party integrations—over the past couple years we’ve seen some pretty advanced WordPress frameworks emerge that can even replace the need for some of these third party CRMs and email marketing platforms. For example, FluentCRM offers a complete Customer Relationship Management system and an automated email marketing right within WordPress. If a client doesn’t already have a deep investment in a third party CRM or marketing platform, this kind of system can turn a basic WordPress site into a complete Marketing Operating System.
There are many potentially advanced features to ask about and explore in the website proposal process, and educating your prospect on the options and alternatives is a huge opportunity to build confidence and trust.
In the next video we’ll wrap up our pricing series by addressing the topic of website accessibility and how the various levels of compliance can impact the cost of design and development.
So until then…
Be Clear. Build Trust. Win Clients.
