Costing a website or webapp: A guide for the non-developer

I won’t cover how estimates are produced, or how to conduct the actual project management – these are covered in loads of good books such as James Shore’s: “The Art of Agile Management“. What I want to cover here are initial techniques that you, the stakeholder, can do to help get the best estimated costs for your webapp or website.
The question “how much does it cost to build my website or webapp?” is like asking a builder “how much does it cost to build me a house?”. It totally depends of your requirements. As with all estimates, Requirements Are King.
“Requirements” are based on 2 fundamentals:
- Your understanding of what you want
- Your ability to communicate the requirements in a easy to understand way, and continue to communicate them as things change.
Even given detailed schematics, for custom, original projects that may change once building has started, the best any bricks and mortar builder can do is to provide a good initial estimate and then keep you updated as the project progresses. Web-app production is no different.