Christine Harmel, founder of The Interactive Resource, is a self-described 'digital matchmaker.' She talks with companies looking for a Web developer and links them to the right Web developer for their needs. Formerly with developer U.S. Web, Harmel has interviewed more than 200 Web developers in New York and Los Angeles to build her knowledge base. She gets paid a finder's fee by developers, the same one by each to avoid favoritism. Her clients include Kaiser Permanente, MGM Interactive, and the State of New Jersey.

What leads you to match a company with a Web developer? 
Budgets are really the main thing. A Web site in the $20,000 to $50,000 range is entirely different than one in the $75,000 to $100,000 range. I get companies to articulate their budget up-front. Then I can manage their expectations and start talking about appropriate developers for them. You don't want to get a developer that does $75,000 sites to do a $50,000 site for a company with that budget. Neither party will be happy in the end: The developer feels it didn't make any money, and the client feels like it didn't get what it wanted because the site doesn't have the bells and whistles it imagined it would. The other half of the equation is chemistry. A matchmaker adds this to the mix--after seeing [the client company's] technical know-how. Do they need a developer who's very client-service oriented? Or is the client a former programmer, and they just want someone who speaks to them on their level? Or a client might say they want a developer that's going to make them a priority. That's a good reason to go to a boutique shop--then you're a big fish in a small pond, rather than on bottom of a list of 100 clients. 

What indicates that a company will need hand-holding?
I have five years of experience in this business, so I can sense where they are on the scale. Someone's sense of comfort vs. discomfort about the Web comes out in their language. If they start using lingo, I know they're doing their homework. If I sense trepidation and nervousness, it can indicate that. A lot of time it's someone's job on the line; they've been saddled with this responsibility purely accidentally because they know a little about the Web. They're not experts in Web projects, and I assure them they don't need to be. 

Can you give an example of how this matchmaking works?
I have a client who wants to build an online stock trading system, information-based, for an equity index. He needed to find a developer with experience with financial-transaction sites. I only brought him to one pitch because the developer was perfect for him: They have only ten people and only do financial sites. The two principles are from Wall Street technical companies and specialize in high-end financial trading systems. They're not very prominent, so it would have been hard to find them, because they don't advertise or market themselves much. 

What kind of mistakes do companies make in finding a Web developer?
I don't know if it's mistakes; it's more mismatched expectations. They're trying to feel each other out because it's a negotiation. The client can't show all their cards and say, 'We have $100,000 to spend. Spend it all for us.' They ask, 'What will this cost us?' Meanwhile, the developer is thinking, 'How much money does this person have? Are they in the ballpark for the kind of site we do?' So if the developer wants the project, it guesses low. It accepts a project that the client then wants to revise several times. Doing it becomes a nightmare: It's lots of work and no money. As for the client expectations: If they run a small company, have $50,000, and need something the boss will love, they need to have the right expectations of how much time, money, and skills it takes to build this. If some of those things are off, they need to be aware of that. 

How can companies and Web developers avoid a bad relationship?
Set a tight scope of work from beginning: This is what we're building, and there can be two rounds of revisions only. Period. Unless you want to pay more. In my experience of building Web sites, a tight scope of work keeps expectations where they need to be. What often happens is that you're three months into the project and the client has learned enough to want to make changes. They seem small to the client, but it's a lot of work. A client manager should explain, 'We can change the color, but it will take this much time and will cost this much.' With a tight agreement, you know how to go about this. Without that, it's all open to interpretation. It helps to anticipate those grey areas so everyone's happy and ready to get going at beginning. Once you're into the project, you need to be able to look back at something written to guide your course and compare where you are to the goals you set. 

You see a lot of budgets. What's the trend for costs of Web sites?
Sites are getting more expensive, mostly because of more added functionality like databases that collect information and slice and dice it. We're going from brochureware sites to ones that have business functions. For a typical small company site, it costs $10,000 to $40,000. The site is technically not complicated. It might have a form that collects data to let users subscribe to your newsletter. But it's mostly HTML and company info. A bigger company or department site, with more pages and features, costs $50,000 to $125,000. A larger corporate site costs $150,000 to $2 million. Harmel: christine@interactiveresource.com