Carrying forward the marriage metaphor, it should be obvious by now that special care should be taken during the courting process to ensure that yours is truly a match made in heaven. A thorough discussion of vendor selection and negotiation is beyond the scope of this book; however, some basic points can keep vendors and developers out of a bad relationship.

The first step for the in-house manager seeking a developer is to call around and get recommendations. That s not to say you should hire your buddy s college-age son who s fantastic with this Web stuff. Those days are long past, if they ever existed. Look for referrals of companies with experience in building the type of site you re planning. They don t necessarily need experience in the same industry. More important is the technology underlying the site. The nuances of various industries play out in the area of content, which generally comes from the client anyway. As an example, the sort of experience you might look for is development of an e-commerce site running on a UNIX server, with an Oracle database and Cold Fusion as the development tool.

Second, beware of exceedingly low cost estimates. Although developers who want your business will attempt to quote a competitive price, some unscrupulous developers have been known to quote extremely low prices simply to get the job, believing that once the website is sufficiently underway, they can ask for more money as it proceeds. This scenario does not lend itself to...