What's the best workflow for creating websites fast & cheap, but that work as needed?

Question

Have some ideas, but for now I'm going to leave it description as the question.

If you have any questions, just ask -- thanks!!

UPDATES:

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Guidelines:

1. Workflow makes the most frequent tasks easy, and less frequent tasks achievable.
2. Workflow covers 80% of the tasks.
3. Solutions use smart default settings.

Focus of the Question: The focus is the production of front interfaces; HTML, CSS, JS, generic content/graphic source, etc. Also, I figure that if the workflow required a CMS that the template would be based on existing one implementable on a given system.

Again, thanks for any and all post!! -- Any real answers will get an up vote by me, and I will select an answer. Cheers!

Answer 1

To expand a bit on John Conde's reply: "Good, fast, cheap. Pick any two."

I'd say that a static site built on a free web template with minor customizations (colors, column widths, background images) will suffice for 80-90% of small businesses. Get the client to fill out some kind of questionnaire, then do most of the thinking for them and show them your work every week or so for their feedback. If you want to produce fast and cheap websites, that's as much workflow as you and they usually need to consider; otherwise, the website will not be fast, and if it's cheap then it probably means you lost money for the amount of effort you put into it. Most clients who who care about implementing workflow on their website are not in the "we want a site fast and cheap" camp.

Edit: do you mean the workflow that you use to create the website, or the workflow that the client uses to achieve his business tasks with the website?