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"How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers

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Re: "How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers

#21

Post by bradleyland »

I know it's trite, but when people ask me, "How much would you charge me to build a website?" I always reply with something pithy like, "Between $100 and $100,000."

What's more interesting are the responses. It's almost like a litmus test for who I'd actually want to work with. A person that I might actually want to work with will laugh and acknowledge that the question was ridiculously vague. A person that I don't want to work with will show some level of frustration and will usually dismiss the remark, pressing for a greater level of detail. I'll talk to the individual with a sense of humor and even a basic level of introspection, but the person who is frustrated with me isn't getting very far.

Re: "How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers

#23

Post by sokoloff »

citricsquid wrote: post #19

"How much do you charge?" = bad "What is the average of your x previous invoices for x?" = good Sure I might charge by default $1k for a logo but the chances of $1k being billed every time are slim, every client is different. The average invoice price is the most valuable metric. Every designer will say they charge $5k when they charge $1k because it makes them feel good.

Median is probably an even better measure here than average.

Re: "How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers

#24

Post by bphogan »

So, if it's not coding, not even HTML coding, then this isn't about websites. It's how much do you charge for a PSD file. In my experience that's a pretty useless metric. Converting a PSD to HTML can be trivial if you just use an export tool, or it can be incredibly time-intensive if you do it by hand and turn it into something dynamic.

I haven't had a straight-up "Design me a website" contract in years - it's always been applications, or a Wordpress theme. Is there actually still a market for simple static web sites anymore?

Re: "How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers

#25

Post by dorian-graph »

csomar wrote: post #2

I wonder how templates stock sites like Themeforest affects the designers business. Now to start your web app, you don't really need a designer, but just $20 or less and you get something very good for the little money you put.

Like with some of the others here I 'test' clients to see if they're someone/a company I would like to work with. For others who refuse to believe that websites are hard can cost more than $200 I refer to templates.

So, templates are good for some people/companies. It's the same with any product/service, really. There will be those who just want the cheapest x and are indifferent to quality, investing in their purchases, etc, and are happy with knock-offs and things that will break down in a few months.

Re: "How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers

#26

Post by sambeau »

When freelancing I tend to work a simple system.

  £250:  An update to content - an evening or two's work.
  £500:  A tiny static site with some original design.
I then slide upwards for jobs I don't want and down for people I like. I've never gone above £5000 for a 'homer'.

I also have a mate-rates scale that appears below this:

  Free: Family. Charities I like. Updates + tiny static.
  Bottle of Wine: As above but close family friends.
  Bottle of Whiskey: As above but good friends.
If I get a request for a bigger job from friends or family I tend to pass them on to a developer chum these days — experience has shown it's for the best.

Having a fixed, doubling scale like this works well. Each next price needs to be big enough to make a difference to me as I am essentially very lazy and I like my free time. Also, I am a terrible soft-touch and would probably charge everyone mates-rates if I didn't force myself to do this.

Re: "How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers

#28

Post by anons2011 »

sambeau wrote: post #26

When freelancing I tend to work a simple system. £250: An update to content - an evening or two's work. £500: A tiny static site with some original design. I then slide upwards for jobs I don't want and down for people I like. I've never gone above £5000 for a 'homer'. I also have a mate-rates scale that appears below this: Free: Family. Charities I like. Updates + tiny static. Bottle of Wine: As above but close fami…

Sounds very reasonable, I am definitely going to up my rates, but if you've worked with someone before with cheaper rates, how do I try and up my rates?

As for a dynamic site, I mainly use Wordpress as my CMS of choice, usually great for clients as they find it pretty straight forward to go in and add/update content, add pages etc.

Another thing I have found now that I am working full-time is the absolute top-most importance for proper functional specs, as well as proper bug tracking software, emailing constant changes gets to be a real pain, and pretty hard for you to track which ones have actually been done.

Re: "How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers

#29

Post by RegEx »

I don't know why so many people here feel compelled to act so rude towards potential clients. Why do people get so defensive when it comes to their pricing that they have to offer the prospect analogies instead of direct answers? We all know the pricing is relative to the project. If you're tired of getting emails from people asking how much a site is, don't be afraid to state your minimum price on your site. Setting up pricing filters is good - being rude to those that may be ignorant to our process is not. You might say "Well they should do research!", but their google queries will be met by articles spouting equally obscure analogies on what a site could cost.

Re: "How much does a website cost?" – a survey of web designers

#30

Post by ralphsaunders »

Asking "How much does a website cost?" is a bit like asking "How much does a car cost?", and of course the answer is "it varies, how much are you looking to spend? What do you want of the car/website?". Surveying various designers under the pretense of addressing this question is price fixing.

The fact that the designers were asked their prices on the criteria that "All prices are for design only, i.e. they don’t include any sort of coding (no HTML, no CSS, no Javascript, no PHP, etc.)." is rather telling with regards to experience.

Design doesn't stop at the mockup stage — anyone who has designed & built the front-end of a website knows that the design continues to evolve outside of Photoshop. The nature of the web dictates a website must be flexible so it can accommodate different browsers and resolutions. It's very difficult (read: expensive) to design for a dynamic medium in a static work space, and it's disingenuous to call a static, non-interactive image a website.

This post would be better titled "How much can one charge for a website mockup?"

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