Daniel Vainsencher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> The costs above might (or might not. ideas for numbers anyone?) be an
> order of magnitude higher than the cost of simply maintaining a site
> with good foundations
OK, a slightly different angle, but in the good old tradition of
stupid back-of-the-envelope calculations:
Suppose the company in question is a credit card company. Let's say I
have a card of theirs free of charge (due to a special promotion via
my employer), and the only revenue the company sees from me is a fixed
small percentage of every transaction that retailers pay them. I have
no idea what the commission is, but let's assume that it is C per
cent, with 1% fiducial value [in fact, I would not be surprised if the
commission is something like 4%, but I don't know]. Assume also that on
the average my monthly credit card transactions sum up to T, with
fiducial value of NIS 5,000 - not too much for a family, is it?
The revenue the credit card company has from my transactions over a
year can be calculated as
R = 12*C*T = 12*0.01*5000*[C/0.01]*[T/5000] = NIS 600*[C/0.01]*[T/5000]
How much would a company pay for development of a web site? Rather,
how much *more* would the company pay to a qualified experienced web
developer instead of a high school dropout? Let's scale the extra *one
time* development expense (i.e. not counting maintenance), D, to NIS
15,000. Note that this number has absolutely no foundation, I hope
that web developers among us will be able to give a better estimate.
Now, let's say that making the site standard-compliant will help the
company gain (or retain) N customers like myself who use "alternative"
browsers (or are handicapped, or whatever). How large should N be to
stick to standards and break even in 1 year? We get
[D/15000]
N = D/R = 25 -----------------. [*]
[C/0.01]*[T/5000]
That is, if the company manages to keep 25 customers or gain 25
customers or some combination thereof by sticking to standards, it
will recoup the difference in one time initial development investment
in 1 year.
Of course, if the company stands to lose customers that absolutely
must have the latest four-dimentional animation IE trick of the web
site that shows them their transactions and maybe allows them to
download application forms, then N must be the difference. Most
likely, no one will ever complain about that.
Also note that there are other operational expenses per customer.
These are likely to be relatively small because of economy of
scale. You can add that to D if you want.
If maintenance of the site over the year is, as we assert, cheaper for
a standard-compliant site, the calculation needs to be adjusted by
decreasing D accordingly.
This does not take into account poorly quantifiable but often
surprisingly expensive items like reputation etc. Say they are
factored into N somehow.
Find out what C really is (note that N is inversely proportional to
C), and insert your favourite D and T into [*] to skew the argument
either way. Note also how D/T becomes a useful self-similarity
parameter in [*] ;-).
--
Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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