The Merlin Media 'Build Me a House' Metaphor

In much the same way that a contractor needs to know a lot of things before they can give you a price to build a structure, any reasonable web or interactive disc designer and developer is going to need to know a lot as well.

If you want to build a house, the contractor is going to ask you things like:

Where are the plans and what do they look like?
Where will the house be built?
How big will it be? How is it oriented on the property?
How many floors? How many stairs to get up/down?
How many rooms? How will they be laid out?
How many windows in each room? What brand and how large?
Where are the doors to be placed? How big is each one?
How will people enter/leave the house?
How high are the ceilings? Any special detailing?
What kind of heating and air conditioning?
What kind of materials for the exterior?
Same thing for the interior including paints?
What kind of wiring is needed? Special wiring?
Where do the lights go? What kind of lights?
What custom features do you want? Where do they go?
When do you want to start?
How soon does it need to be finished?

...and a lot of others.

Well, the same thing goes for practically any interactive project. Everything that must be accomplished in a project needs to be accounted for, either up front (so that a bid can be prepared for known elements) or early on in the project (so that a final cost can be determined as soon as possible from an initial range of costs). And like building a house, if you change your mind part way through, there are almost always going to be changes in the costs.

So the more you know up front, and the more you can articulate to us, the better it will be and probably make it possible for us to give you a price.

Otherwise, you might get an answer of 'it could cost as little as $2,000 and as much as $45,000' which isn't what you want to hear. And we don't get many contracts giving out that wide a range of costs.

We want your business, sure. But we want you to understand that you can't just come to use and say, 'build me a website' or 'make me a CD' and expect us to be able to tell you how much based solely on the question. So if someone in your organization has asked you to find out how much a website or CD costs, explain the 'build me a house' metaphor to them.

Or ask us to.

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