When you say “I want a website like examplewebsite.com, how much will it cost me?” you’re setting yourself up for failure. And if the developer or agency actually responds instantly with a cost estimate, they’re being unprofessional and setting themselves up for failure as well.

6 reasons why a reference website is an inaccurate way to estimate your website cost & effort:

1. You cannot gauge the amount of effort that has gone into building this reference website.

What you see is generally not the result of a one-time effort. The website would have undergone many revisions, updates and changes. It is impossible to capture and understand by just looking at it.

Good websites start with a strong foundation and build on it over a period of time. Even if you’re copying, it still takes some time to understand the nitty gritty. Don’t expect any good designer or developer to do it in half the time.

If you were copying a business model of a known company, would that mean you start to make the same revenue from day one. Most likely not.

2. What you see on your browser is just one layer of the website, the visual layer. The backend technology, logic and features are invisible at first glance.

3. A “simple” looking website can have the most complex algorithms and technology behind it. The best example of this is Google’s home page. The beauty of google is that it has made search an easily accessible and usable feature for every person on the internet without complicating or burdening them with technical details that go on behind the screen.

4. Since it is difficult to pinpoint the effort required to build a reference website, using that to come up with a cost for your website would be erroneous. At best, it could give you a ballpark estimate, but keep in mind that your cost could vary wildly.

5. Everything is a copy.

If you’ve spent a lot of time on your business idea, it would warrant a similar time and effort on your website. That’s where a good agency comes into the picture to help you with your website planning and strategy.

If you really like this particular website, then copy the ideas and not the website itself.

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal – Pablo Picasso

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

6. You end up building too many things at once. This reference website may have started simple and added features and designs changes as time changed based on their learnings. If you were to blindly copy it, you are creating more options for a bigger failure. Instead, focus on building a strong foundation and get the basics right. You can add the nice to have features later. 

For better website planning, read our blog post on how it can save you time and money down the line.

Why do customers fall into the trap of a ‘reference website’?

It’s the easiest way to start planning and generating ideas for your website design. But also more significantly, most of you don’t believe you can create website requirements yourself.

Not understanding the importance of good requirements: Good requirements are fundamental to building a good website. Most times the clients feel that this is not their area of expertise and is something very ‘technical’ the developer/designer can handle.

Requirements need not be technical at all to begin with. To put simply, they are your business goals translated into website objectives.

If you do not have a clear view of what the site should look like, then the developers have to sit down to translate the business goals into objectives for the website. Without clearly defined business goals, you don’t get clear requirements. Assumptions are made, features are developed and websites are built to only result in dissatisfaction.

Believing that web design is easy: Another common misconception that clients have is the website layout and design are child’s play. With DIY website builders like Wix and Weebly, people expect websites to be created within a few days.

There is also this expectation of developer/designer to get it right in the first go. To get an idea of what goes into building a website, you should read our article: Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a good website. Agreed anyone can make a website, but a truly great one isn’t easy.

It’s not our job: The clients think that requirements and layout are not their responsibility. Once you’ve paid the money and hired someone, he/she will do everything.. If web designers or developers do not know the reason for creating the website, then they will never be able to satisfy their customers. What customers must know is the first few steps involved in building the website and taking a particular course of action, is in their hands.

68% of IT projects fails because of poor requirements. Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about creating good requirements.

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What is your take on this idea of using a reference website?