[Closed] Building a web-based business: HELP!

The key to getting this right will be planning.
Decide what you want the website to do, first in broad details and then smaller and smaller points. And think about what you want the website to be able to do in a year, two years or three years down the line.
Getting the requirements specification right is crucial.

Another tip is to put yourself in the user's place. What do they want to do? What does the website channel them in to doing? Don't see it is a reflection of yourselves.

Also, I recommend doing lots of testing! Both of delivered functionality (i.e. requirement 2304 says X will happen if action Y is performed. Does it Y/N?) and also to get people who are not involved with the company/project using it at a very early stage so you can get their objective feedback. Also remember that you don't know better than them - they're the users, so they are right! Interactive wireframes are very good for this

More?

This. Ideally, you need a decent UX person to make sure the site design is intuitive and easy to use and navigate, a decent UI person to make sure it looks decent and a decent developer to make sure it works. Some people are able to overlap between these roles a bit but if anyone says they can do it all, they're lying (or they can, but they're crap at at least some of it). All these things are easy to do badly and hard to do well. A ballpark charging rate for those roles is £300-£500 a day, each.

Plus, where are you going to host it? How will you manage subscriptions?

I reckon you're looking at £50k, very, very, very minimum.

Talk to different groups of the target audience as they will want different things. Separate content from delivery mechanism. Build in monitoring and auditing from the very start so you can actually see what people are doing and not doing. Look at competitors to see what they do. Copy the good bits and avoid their mistakes.

And how much would I be looking at to employ a developer to help us work through our needs and get things in place?

You don't need a developer until you know what you want them to build. Think of it like a self-build of a house; the first thing you should do is speak to a skilled architect to help you work out what you want to get out of the house and how you'll live in it, not hire the brickies.

A ballpark charging rate for those roles is £300-£500 a day, each.

That's if you are employing freelancers which could be difficult to manage. Expect to pay £600+ a day for a small business with the right skills and over £1,000 a day for a larger business.

(I'm not dissing developers by the way, it's just different skillsets)

This is all really helpful. Thank you.

When you speak of hiring an 'architect' as opposed to a 'brickie', what kind of title would such a person actually have?

And are there any firms that do such things represented by people here on STW? Or are there firms you could point me to, at least by way of example?

Sorry for the naivete. We're just a bunch of under-employed humanities academics exploring how to move forward with something! /sheepish emoji

If I were you I would be looking for specialist e-learning specialists to help you out rather than good UX, UI, designers and developers - it's pretty specialist knowledge and you are talking about integrations that some people will already have great knowledge of so its pointless paying someone to learn about it on top of delivering it. There may well already be off-the-shelf products that can deliver what you need and can be purchased on a subscription basis.

BTW, many people in the trade will run a mile at the thought of Moodle - we won't touch it, but when we have dabbled a bit in some simple e-learning stuff, we have used Learn-Dash.

Darren @ in2itive.co.uk may be worth speaking to.

There may well already be off-the-shelf products that can deliver what you need and can be purchased on a subscription basis.

This is the first place I'd look. Most stuff already exists as a service in some capacity, so you have the choice to use what's already there, or spend huge amounts of money recreating it.

Ideally, you need a decent UX person to make sure the site design is intuitive and easy to use and navigate, a decent UI person to make sure it looks decent and a decent developer to make sure it works.

These things are nice in an ideal world but it's a luxury few people can afford. Most agencies will have a designer (who may or may not double up as UX) and a developer or two, working on any one project. Even if they had dedicated UX, the resources under any normal budget would be limited to say the least.

On the most basic level, if you walked into an agency today, I'd expect they'd quote you at least £10k, and it could be well over £20k by the time you get into the detail of the requirements.

You could half the cost with a freelancer. Or double it if you wanted dedicated specialists to design your system.

I'd always recommend checking examples of previous work as quality can vary wildly.

Start small, use free stuff, work out how big the market is and start from there.
Don't be afraid to use free web hosting / google class room/ vimeo etc. to cobble initial offerings together try things out.

Or maybe take on @Brant for a few days to come up with some ideas.

Others have made a good point that I missed; if at all possible, buy, don't build (to stretch my earlier analogy, if there's a house that allows you to live how you want in a place you want to live, why would you build your own?)

And are there any firms that do such things represented by people here on STW?

Rachel off here does this kind of thing for a living, she might be able to point you in the right direction.

But I'd definitely be looking first at some kind of off-the-shelf solution, what you're asking for seems (at least to me) to be something that ought to be already available for schools and private acadamies.

If there is a commercial underlying "thing" think about how you want to take the money in, what they charge you, how people might want to pay etc as I noticed that didn't get a mention but wasn't sure if it wasn't in or wasn't needed.

If it is commercial think about what else is out there, why you, competitor costs, what makes you different etcetera before you even start let alone spend £££

James

This really is a "how long is a piece of string" question. Your opening gambit is "I imagine this means needing:" - you need to stop imagining and work out exactly what you want. A custom site built from scratch is an entirely different prospect from spinning up a Wordpress instance and slapping a £20 theme on top of it.

By way of analogy, you could buy your perfect frame, hire a specialist wheel-builder armed with rims and a bag of spokes, etc etc, or you can nip down to Halfords and just get a perfectly serviceable bike. What you won't get is a ten grand bike for £300. Which of those is preferable to you, only you can answer.

If it were me I'd be tempted to start small using cheap / free wherever possible and build up if it's successful rather than remortgaging the house at the outset. You can always change it later. But again, you know your use case better than I do.

This is my day job, I'm a software developer for a university primarily dealing with websites/applications/elearning. Is it an existing university looking to move regular under/post-graduate degrees online with all the relevant staff involved and support departments, or more of a venture starting from scratch with small on-demand courses and minimal staff?

Again, thanks for all the suggestions so far. It's really helping me understand what I need to be thinking about.

This is the first place I’d look. Most stuff already exists as a service in some capacity

Any suggestions for providers I might take a look at?

or more of a venture starting from scratch with small on-demand courses and minimal staff?

@eastcoastmike

More this. The institution has been active for years and made little forays into the online world, but never made a 'go' of it. And clientele has fluctuated, but this has largely been a result of a lack of support, whereas that should no longer be a problem.

Sorry for hijack...

@jondoh

we have used Learn-Dash

Could you summarise your thoughts on learndash please?
You didn't happen to connect it to open badges did you...?

I’m not a developer so I can’t give technical opinions, all I can say is that our dev. team find it very easy to work with.

I just do pretty pictures and send invoices out 🤪