Web Companies – Why Do They Make It So Difficult?

Over recent years Channel 2020 has provided an increasing level of advice and project management for web development within public and private sector organisations.

During this time, we’ve been stunned by how many web development companies have their clients well and truly over a barrel.

Following painful experiences in the early days where clients rang rings round web companies because of poor contractual relationships, web developers licked their wounds and came out fighting.

The main problem comes when clients become dependent on their web companies. Web companies have got good at making it difficult for clients to bring in other developers or to undertake work themselves. Clients are faced with huge and unreasonable costs for making changes because their web supplier holds all the cards. Often the main problem is that web companies are pretty savvy when it comes to contracts. Clients have to be careful about who owns IPR, dependencies on ongoing support and maintenance, inflexible hosting contracts, warranty conditions and how easy it is for alternative developers to take on parts of the site- and the list goes on and on.

When you look at the costs of most web build projects, more and more of the budget is taken up with layers of project management and laborious sign-off processes than actually just technically building the site to a clear specification.

What is becoming clear is that clients must get their web development agreements carefully checked out before committing themselves to years of potential misery. Lawyers understand contracts- but they don’t understand the implications of getting stuck with a supplier who is more interested in protecting their position rather than doing a great job.

2020 can be very useful here. We can make sure that clients follow a critical checklist to set out strict requirements from their web developers. As a result, some developers will run a mile. Let them. There are plenty of fair-minder companies that are more focused on long-term relationships with clients- giving good value for money and understanding that clients will need to build in some form of competitive procurement for future development services.