By far, the most important member of any web project team is the client. More often than not, the small marketing team, which is sometimes an army of one, is faced with fitting in what can end up being an additional 4 to 6 weeks of work within a three to four month period of time. Because web projects, unlike print projects, aren’t part of regular resource planning, clients don’t have the track record to calculate the time that needs to be devoted internally.

If you are the “army of one” or small team in charge of your company’s web redesign, this article should help equip you to make your case for the time you need to maximize your investment. If you are a project manager, share this with clients to help them understand the level of effort required on their end.

Planning, Definition, & Discovery

This phase of the project is where you blue print what goes into the site, including the navigation or site map and the desired functionality. Some firms call it Definition. Some call it Discovery. Some may require completion of an architecture and scope document before design even begins. If you have good metrics on your existing site informing what stays, goes, gets promoted or demoted for the new site, you can make your site architecture process that much more efficient. With a well written RFP (and there are folks out there who can help you with just this step) you should be able to establish/confirm the scope of a project relatively quickly.

While there can be some variation depending on the sheer size of a site and the complexity of functional elements, you can ballpark the following amount of time:

Site Architecture

  • 8-12 hours of initial internal time, hashing out what you need on the site. Add 2 to 4 hours for each distinct department or stakeholder who needs to be part of the conversation.
  • 6-8 hours meeting and review time with the site architect/user experience consultant from the vendor side.
  • 6-8 hours revision time internally. Add 2-3 hours for each distinct department or stakeholder involved in the revision process.

BASELINE TOTAL – 20-28
ADJUSTMENTS – 4-7 hours for every additional stakeholder in the process

Scoping

  • 36-48 hours pre-sale – preparing your RFP (hint: don’t try to cover every detail in your RFP), reviewing contracts, interviewing vendors, hiring vendors.
  • 4-6 hours internal review time, making sure you’ve captured all functional elements, understand the site that’s being built for you, and ensure that any and all items stipulated in the contract are clear in the scope document. Add an average of 6-8 hours for every feature requiring technical specifications. Add 2-3 hours for each distinct department or stakeholder involved in the process.
  • 4-6 hours meeting and review time with the vendor.
  • 4-6 hours internal revision time. Add 2-3 hours for every feature requiring technical specifications. Add 1-2 hours for each distinct department or stakeholder involved in the revision process.

BASELINE TOTAL – 48-66
ADJUSTMENTS – 8-11 hours for every technical feature. 4-6 hours for each additional stakeholder

Design

The design phase includes wireframing the site, including any user interfaces required for functional elements (such as ecommerce, product finders, forums, portals), and applying a graphic design treatment. Typically, once the wireframe itself is agreed upon, the process is divided into a minimum of two phases – Home page, which establishes the overall look and feel for the site, and Interior, which establishes the overall look and feel for general content pages and any specialized interior elements, such as ecommerce or portals.

Wireframe

  • 1 hour of review time with vendor for initial wireframe
  • 2 hours of internal review. Add 1 hour for each additional stakeholder.

BASELINE TOTAL – 3
ADJUSTMENTS – 1 hour for each additional stakeholder in the process

Home page

  • 1 hour of overview with vendor on branding and messaging
  • 4 hours internally establishing site taglines/messaging
  • 1 hour for initial design review
  • 6-8 hours for internal review and revisions. Add 1-2 hours for each distinct department or stakeholder involved in the review/revision process

BASELINE TOTAL – 11-13
ADJUSTMENTS – 1-2 hours for each additional stakeholder in the process

Interior

  • 1 hour initial design review
  • 4-6 hours for internal review and revisions. Add 1 hour for each distinct stakeholder

BASELINE TOTAL – 5-7
ADJUSTMENTS – 1 hour for each additional stakeholder in the process

Specialized pages (portals, ecommerce, forums, blogs)

  • 1 hour initial design review per instance
  • 4-6 hours for internal review and revisions. Add 1 hour for each distinct stakeholder.

BASELINE TOTAL – 5-7
ADJUSTMENTS – 1 hour for each additional stakeholder in the process

Content

Content creation is the mother-load of all activities on the client side, even if a copywriter is engaged. This includes creating copy for the pages themselves, coming up with appropriate images in some cases, and often tables or other content that requires special care. In my nearly two decades of working on web related projects, content delivery, whether copy or product data, is the number one delay for completion. Budget time early and often to make sure you stay on track.

For an average 50 page site, you’ll at least 60 hours to create the copy, plus whatever review time is required. That’s nearly impossible to fit in the week before launch, and if your vendor is implementing content for you, they may not even start development of your site until they know your content is ready to go. If you are implementing content yourself, factor in learning time, and the time it takes to start and restart, faced with the frequent interruptions you’ll likely face during the process.

Copywriting

In house

  • 1.5 hours per page for the first 25 pages. 1.25 hours per page for the next 25. 1 hour per page for 50+ pages.
  • .75 hours per page for review and revision cycles, if required, with an additional .5 hours per stakeholder.

BASELINE TOTAL (50 pages) – 68-105
ADJUSTMENTS – Additional .5 hours per stakeholder

Outsourced

  • 5 hours per page.
  • .75 hours per page for review and revision cycles, if required, with an additional .5 hours per stakeholder involved.

BASELINE TOTAL (50 pages) – 25-62
ADJUSTMENTS – Additional .5 hours per stakeholder

Content implementation – In house

2 hours per page for first 5, 1.5 hours per page for next 10, 1 hour per page for next 35, .5 hours per page for pages beyond 50.

BASELINE TOTAL (50 pages) – 65

Call outs

1 hour for every 5 pages of content (identifying what goes on what page, what the “hook” is, which items are tied to lead generation)

BASELINE TOTAL (50 pages) – 10

Forms

2 hours per form (identifying form fields, writing intro copy and thank you pages), with an additional 1 hour per form integrated with Salesforce W2L.

BASELINE TOTAL (3 forms) – 6
ADJUSTMENTS – Additional 1 hour per form for Salesforce integration.

Images

1 hour for every 10 pages (assuming that 20% of your page content will use images of some sort)

BASELINE TOTAL (50 pages) – 5

Development

During the actual programming of your site, you may or may not have specific day-to-day tasks. Unless you have some custom elements being built that require your review, your primary involvement will be QA after the site is handed over to you for final review. Even if you are doing content implementation internally, you will still need time for final review.

Site QA

.25 hours per page, with additional .25 hours for each additional stakeholder involved

BASELINE TOTAL (50 pages) – 12.5
ADJUSTMENTS – Additional .25 hours per stakeholder

Custom Development QA

1 hour for every 10 hours of estimated development time.

BASELINE TOTAL (Basic password protected client portal) – 5

Launch

At launch, much of the work is already done. But a frequent tripping point for clients is making sure they allocate an hour or two of time on launch day for their IT crew to make any necessary DNS changes. If you plan to host your own, make sure you know exactly where the site will be going and who is responsible for setting it up in the new environment.

DNS Changes

1-2 hours

BASELINE TOTAL – 1-2 hours

hosting in-house

6-8 hours

BASELINE TOTAL – 6-8 hours

Management

While less and less frequent, sites still launch with no one to manage or use the marketing tool, or even a plan for how online marketing fits into the mix. If you haven’t started to plan how you to integrate online marketing into your mix, these numbers will be useful in helping you budget resources, or make the case for more. These numbers are predictive rather than prescriptive, starting from the basics to more advanced online marketing activities, and represent a more typical B2B case than a B2C site – fewer prospects/leads but large sales. B2C sites require a greater investment of time to be effective marketing tools.

Content updates

2 hours per week

BASELINE TOTAL – 104 hours per year

Analytics review

4 hours per week, plus .5 hours for every 10 pages on your site

BASELINE TOTAL (50 pages) – 300 hours per year

Blogging

4 hours per week

BASELINE TOTAL – 208 hours per year

Search Engine Optimization

4 hours per week, plus 1 hour for every 10 pages on your site

BASELINE TOTAL (50 pages) – 468 hours per year

Social Media Marketing

10 hours per week (including monitoring and responding)

BASELINE TOTAL – 520 hours per year

PPC Advertising

8 hours per week

BASELINE TOTAL – 416 hours per year

Building Towards Success

While these numbers vary slightly from project to project, site to site, company to company, my hope is that this will help you get a better idea of exactly the importance of your investment in a new site. The money you spend invest in outside vendors is critical. But your time and brain share is the most valuable contribution during the project, and thoughtfully executing an online marketing plan post-launch the greatest factor for your ongoing ROI.

To add it all up, for a typical 50 page site, you’ll need to budget at least 30-40 hours to get to your vendor selection, and a bare minimum of 160 hours during the project itself. Running the site post-launch for maximum ROI requires a 1.5 FTE commitment. Put into perspective from an ROI standpoint, if you invest $40,000 in your vendor, $10,000 of staff time during the project, and $150,000 staff/consulting time per year after, if your average sale is $50,000, with a margin of 20%, your site investment and online marketing investment pays for itself in year 1 with 20 additional sales. Factoring in shorter sales cycles and the 24/7 marketing value of a good site, most of eMagine’s clients pay for their sites within 6 months of launch.

If you are an army of one, or simply don’t have additional marketing resources to help you execute after launch, eMagine can help you establish and execute an effective online marketing approach before, during content implementation and/or after launch. If you just need a better site and CMS for your existing efforts, we’re happy to help there. And if you are just looking to get your head around what the real internal time investment is to help you plan your web project, our hope is that this helps you realistically assess the commitment necessary.