The Cost of Posting Content on the Web

In one of my previous jobs I ran a website that spent more than $1.5M annually posting information. This figure includes the cost of infrastructure, IT support and e-communications experts. The investment helped ensure all online products were implemented according to policy and industry best practices.

Added to this cost was the contribution from content authors, and communications and marketing advisors who help create, manage and coordinate content. The bottom line is that it takes effort and resources to ensure that your Web presence is valuable, of high quality and meets your organizations communication objectives.

One of the more time consuming and costly aspects of my teams work included the ongoing requirement to coordinate and facilitate posting information to our Web site. This responsibility included ensuring posted informati complied with a Common Look and Feel policy which required that all Web products be coded into HTML (HyperText Markup Language).

Even today it many cases it takes takes to prepare, code, add metadata, provide QA (quality assurance) oversight, verify links and post information an institutional website. Time that varies as to the complexity of the content.

I recommend that anyone planning to put up Web content must allow adequate time for the preparation of the content for posting. Here is an example of the time it took my team to code and convert various types of Web documents for posting

• A SIMPLE one-page document with straight text - no tables or images or multi column format will take 15 minutes to code and convert.

Example: 30 page WordPerfect document = 7.5 hours

• A SEMI-COMPLEX DOCUMENT with text, simple tables, and a bibliography, colour blocs will take 30 min /page to code and convert.

Example: 30 page document = 15 hours

• A COMPLEX DOCUMENT with text in columns, multi-row/column table(s), footnotes, and colour blocks) will take 90 min/page to code and convert.

Example: 30 page document = 45 hours

Note: These examples do not include the time needed to design or layout a Webpage or add special features or functions.

Therefore, people in your organization should always give advance notice of their Web needs. In doing so you will give your Web publishing team time to recommend the best method for getting the information online and set a realistic timetable for production.