When it comes to web development, 37Signals has said it over and over again: Design First. And there have been countless other web firms who have backed this up and possibly even said this same statement before 37Signals made it popular. But this message hasn’t yet passed down to the customer level. To customers, design first is a project development approach. To them, it doesn’t really impact their work or process. Why should it?

Why is it so important for a customer?
Because it helps reduce development costs.

On average, a 30~40% reduction. The reduction comes from removing the unknowns that Web firms use apart of their quote calculation. Quotes are traditionally provided to customers in response to an RFP or similar. And this is before any actual design work is initiated or ideated. Companies that send out an RFP are asking firms for a full website quote, from start to some ideal finish. And companies who can’t afford or don’t want to go through the lengthy RFP process, just simply ask for a design and development quote from all their local firms. Then they make a choice by looking at the following in descending priority: a) Cost, b)Time to Complete, c)Past Experience, and d)Actual scope of work.

So when web firms take a stab at creating a quote, they take into account all the stuff they do know.

Needs a CMS, check.

Needs a search tool, check.

Requires a shopping cart, check.

So now I have my knowns listed. What are my unknowns?

What type of CMS is the best for this site? I don’t really know.

How extensive are the search parameters? Not really sure.

What type of shopping experience are they looking for? A good one?

And the natural response for Web firms is to use their past experience of building a CMS, a search tool, a shopping cart and put in buffer time. Buffer space for this feature, buffer for this functionality, overall buffer in case project changes on a whim, etc.

So the responses that a customer receives is inherently bloated. Bloated atleast two to three times the actual cost of development if all the unknowns were removed. And this all resulted because Web firms don’t know what to expect. If at the end, the project turns out to have a huge scope and all the features talked about by the Web firm - the cost works itself out. But in most cases, the project turns out much smaller than what the Web firm anticipated. So the customer ends out losing, both in cost and time. Yes, even time!

In the past few months alone, DBoost has been asked whether or not we were trying to low ball a company due to the estimates we’ve been providing. Try to maybe sneak in to the running of an RFP process since we know cost is the first thing a customer looks at. But the answer is of course no. We just don’t include the buffers into our estimates. We try to keep it real. We honestly don’t know how much time it will take to develop the back-end. It could be as simple as utilizing an existing CMS and plugging in your data. Or it could be as difficult as creating a Facebook style social networking application. How can you know without designing the interactions?

Most RFPs and web summaries don’t show design. They don’t have any interactions included in them. And very few of them ever have layout diagrams. They only show possibilities of what can be done through hierarchical content.

So just like you wouldn’t hire a contractor to build your expensive house before the architecture plans were completed, don’t hire a Web firm without knowing what you want them to provide. First figure out the design and user interactions. Pay a Web firm to do that for you and have your “architecture” completed. Then if you want to hire them for development, they won’t have any unknowns. And you can cross check by showing your “architecture” to other firms. Do it the right and effective way. Save some money and time!

Seth Godin sheds light on this a little further in an article entitled “How To Create a Good Enough Website“:

Start with design. Don’t involve the programming team until you’re 90% done with the look and feel of your pages. It’s cheap to change design if it can’t by supported by programming, and cheaper and faster to have design done in Photoshop before you commit to cutting it up and coding it.

I’m going to go out on a limb and beg you not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there’s one that you can start with? If your organization can’t find a website that you all agree can serve as a model, you need to stop right now and find a new job.

Not a site to rip-off, but an inspiration. Fonts and colors and layout. The line spacing. The interactions. Why not? Your car isn’t unique, and your house might not be either. If you’ve got a site that sells 42 kinds of wrapping paper, why not start by finding a successful site that sells… I don’t know, shoes or yo-yo’s… something that both appeals to your target audience and has been tested and tweaked and works. No, don’t pick a competitor. That will get you busted. Pick a reasonably small but successful site in a totally different line of work. Say to your designer: “That’s our starting point. Don’t change any important design element without asking me first. Now, pull in our products, our logo and our company color scheme and let’s take a look at it.”