You want to start a classifieds website and you want to customize it, but you don’t want to be manipulated and dragged around by distrustful developers and scammers out there, so what do you do? keep reading to find out.
Okay so we’ve been at this for a while now and we come across many cases when clients ask us to do a customization for their websites, then they compare prices with freelancers and pick the lowest price possible. It’s economic! I agree, but only for the time of the purchase, because at the delivery time they would realize what a waste of money and time their decision had brought to them. Then they would contact us again for the same job. Sometimes the price might even be higher, yet the final product doesn’t match what the client wants and they get back to us again.
So we decided to share some ideas on what you should do when planning to customize your website and how to pick the team to do it for you.
Getting your requirements ready:
Let’s say you asked me for a fruit, and I told you “Okay give me 5 USD first and I will give you a fruit” without even knowing what kind of exotic/normal fruit you want. So, don’t ever take a developer seriously if they give you their price without knowing what you want to build first.
Normally, any decent developer would ask their client what they want before starting to do anything, the keyword here is “project requirements” which is a standard document, not very well known to normal internet users but it is essential if you want to have your website built exactly as you want it to be.
Your first steps would be to get familiar with what you want, invest some time in thinking about your project and write down notes whenever you get new ideas, then contact your developer once you have everything ready.
Pick wisely:
Let’s say you posted a job at Elance or freelancer to build a classifieds website, not knowing what budget to give and giving some serious details. An hour later you would find around 45 proposals are already there (if not even more); sent from developers from all around the world, some copying texts and pasting it at that box and others genuinely read your proposal and replied. So how do you pick from all of those? That’s where this article gets really useful in regards to classifieds website.
You should know some facts before even starting to pick:
1- A classifieds website built from scratch would cost tens of thousands of dollars.
It is really impossible to get an affordable price for building a classifieds website without relying on some already existent script (e.g. Open Classifieds). Because developing all of the needed features and functions from scratch would cost a lot of time and money, and it may not even be up to your standards.
2- Any website developer would be able to build a website but a classifieds expert would deliver a better product.
A classifieds website building expert would know the ins and outs of a classifieds website and what exactly a client would want, an expert would also give properly placed pieces of advice that could have a huge impact on your website appeal.
3- A developer with already existent clients doesn’t mean that he’s good (they have to be happy)
Having happy clients should have a big impact on choosing the developer, how would you know about that? check reviews and testimonials, sometimes by just looking at their showcase and checking out the look and feel of the websites they made would give an impression of what your project might look like.
4- On time delivery.
having a deadline is necessary but it doesn’t guarantee the delivery, we had cases when we hired freelancers without getting the job done at all! it is very frustrating, but how can you prevent that from happening? deal with a reputable company/team, developers who fear for their reputation would definitely give you a job that you would be satisfied with and in the designated time period. And even if you’re not so satisfied they would do their best to live up to their reputation and provide you with your preferred outcome.
5- Don’t get distracted with the price.
Pricing is a tricky issue, lots of developers compete on low prices, some other ones decided to compete on a different pricing level and they tend to give much higher estimations for the jobs they do. But, a better price doesn’t mean you will get a better job done, and a cheap price doesn’t necessarily mean bad quality. In website development you really need to trust your intuition and how you feel about the developer, if he’s telling the truth or if he’s exaggerating with the price.
At Open Classifieds we tend to be very transparent when it comes to communicating with our clients, we give fair pricing, deliver on time and with more than expected good quality, this is not only because classifieds is our area of expertise, but also because we care about our reputation and our users.
Find out more about our customization services Start here
[jetpack_subscription_form]
