Indeed, however even with SEO consultants brought in, and even a Snake Oil Consultant or two, the $40 million pricetag is insane. Obviously $10k is no where near realistic when it comes to all the planning between however many stakeholders there are in the site, as well as figuring out ads management and what not.
Realistically, we would all still be shocked if they had paid $2 million total.
Considering how important this is to the future of the NYT 10 million would have been completely reasonable. Don't forget sometimes a 1% better solution can really be worth 100 million.
It's only reasonable if that $10M actually buys you something more valuable than what you get for $2M, even by 1% as you state. I think many of us are questioning whether that could possibly be the case.
I'm genuinely interested in hearing some ideas of what $8M of extra investment could buy in this case?
I'm not denying that regardless there will be a hefty price point on accomplishing something like this in a major organization such as NYT - but there are still limits on how much seems fiscally responsible. Even at $10 million being a possible reasonable number, it's still a fraction of the $40 million spent.
OK, answer me this: who in the organization has the technical know-how to decide how to solve all the SEO and usability issues; and the authority to do so?
If there's nobody even close, then they will have massive spec churn.
Actually the NYT has a pretty sweet tech lab with a crew of guys very knowledgeable about this kind of stuff. Some of the stuff I saw in there was years ahead what I've seen elsewhere.
Of course, actually getting buy in from the organization as a whole is the hard part. Technology is always the easy piece.
Again, I am not disagreeing - there are certainly tons of things that can factor a major price increase - whether it's outside consultants, tons of meetings to iron out office politics, getting input from all stakeholders, etc.
But at a $40 million price tag, someone somewhere is either dropping the ball, or someone is taking serious advantage with billing far more than reasonable for their services.
Realistically, we would all still be shocked if they had paid $2 million total.