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Questions, questions, questions...
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - August 25, 2000

The good thing about participating in a community of marketing and new media professionals is the enormous depth and breadth of knowledge of the members. It has been suggested that some of the UKNM list gang together and form they're own start-up with the shared brain power it ought to be awesome, well, if the ego's could be tamed. This week there were a bunch of useful questions asked, kicked off by Michelle Booth with, "Does anyone have any industry figures for the average cost for development of a website - with e-commerce in the UK?"

Michael Reidy, with a hint of regional bias, responded, "How long is a piece of string? Contrary to the big London agencies, you can get a lot for £5000."

Chetan Damani added, "I have an European average figure, produced by Activmedia - $76,799 don't ask me why it's in dollars. The others were. US - $33,580, Australia - $6,626, Other - $11,605. But these were 1999 figures, I haven't seen any 2000 ones yet. Source : Business 2.0, Oct 1999."

You may be wondering how much an agency's swanky London offices are adding to your bill. Mike Vincent suggested, "£50,000 - £100,000 for a company with resources (offices, hardware, software, art department) etc. dependent on scale and time frame. How much you want to spend on wages, as content can be the most costly part £200,000 for a start up. But for simply the design and set up of a site it's, back end, e-commerce, database etc. I'd say £30,000 upwards (with a development period of 3 months) Source: is purely from my own experience. The 'industry' generally won't provide a price list. Some have the overheads that come with recognition (flashy offices in Knightsbridge etc.), and some don't. I'd suggest ringing round, try a couple in London and couple a bit further north. There's too much hype down here to get an overall view of the market place."

Every so often, well quite frequently, an agency invents some new jargon. If they're really good, it'll work it's way into everyday use and then everyone has to find out what it actually means. Janet Hoy asked about the latest buzzword she'd come across, "I have a brief for creative design for banners and buttons ... and 'overts'. Not wanting to look completely stupid at my first meeting, what's an overt anybody?"

James Closs answered, "I'd guess and say its one of those DHTML ads the appears 'floating' over the page. New media 'call my bluff' anyone?"

Mike Butcher fleshed things out a little more, writing, "As far as I know, the Lateral agency came up with the phrase to describe their 'in-your-face' banners which did things like warp the web page. An example of this was the campaign they did last year for the Lynx deodorant brand. Hope that helps. I'm not sure but I think they also apply the term to dynamic HTML ads which crawl across the screen - IE flat Eric for Levi's."

Simon Firth asked a more technical question, "I have heard that XML is the way forward in terms of web design and development. Please could someone explain what it is all about - definition, benefits etc. and perhaps highlight some examples of web sites that have incorporated XML."

Sarah Clelland provided a pretty thorough response, "Really basically, as far as I understand, the 3 key benefits are: 1.Extensibility - web solutions which are built using XML can be enhanced easily. At the moment the time and costs involved in scrapping all or part of your existing solutions and building new ones to meet demands in new technology and devices are very prohibitive. XML eliminates the need for rebuilding from scratch. 2. Backward capability - XML allows your new, extended technology to be compatible with older software. 3. Critical mass - XML is being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is embedded in WWW technology, which should help to ensure that it achieves critical mass as the key language of the future. There's loads of general info at www.xml.com".

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