April 24th, 2007 Add Your Comments Bookmark and Share

To most people this is going to appear like shooting yourself in the foot, but I believe I come from a school of business that is quite rare these days, I like to think of it as being honest. As far as I’m concerned there are a lot of “Web Design” companies out there trying to do what the dodgy garage mechanic has been getting away with for years! When you have a customer who is not entirely sure what they want, don’t understand what is involved then you can go down one of 2 routes, be honest and price according to the work involved (and maybe get some referral business) or secondly rip them off for everything you can because they wont know any better. If you’re looking for a new website but don’t know what’s involved I’m going to help you avoid the second type of “business”.

Now I know that I’m going to over simplify things a bit here, it’s more to give you a taster of what to look out for on any quotes or estimates you recieve. Also keep in mind that this is based very much on a small/medium business marketing website in the UK/Isle of Man, website design companies and labour prices for a local company in your area will vary. Anyway, some things to look out for on any estimates you recieve:-

  1. Domains & Hosting – They are charging in excess of £100 a year for non-managed hosting, and more than £5-7 for a .com .co.uk domain name. The truth is that hosting space is not expensive, you can source a hosting account with some of the largest hosting providers in the world for approximately $50-$60 (Around £30) a year and often less. Beware of companies that tell you that you need Windows .net hosting just because THEY can’t develop in the cheaper linux/PHP environment. .net is good for large scale applications but for simple form submissions and the like there is no need to pay that extra for Windows Hosting. If your Web Design company is quoting more than £100 a year for hosting then it’s time to question them and find out what added value they are giving you to justify the markup. You can buy a .com or .co.uk domain name for between $5 -$10 (Around £4.50) per year, again if your Web Design company is quoting more, ask why? A domain registrar, is a domain registrar, why have they not sourced a best value registrar for you?
  2. Look And Feel (Concept Design) – 2 Days work. This is about how long it should take a reasonably skilled artist to come up with a couple of “original” designs. How much do you think it is fair to pay for 2 days work? I’d suggest that anything over £5-600 needs questioning. It’s also worth remembering that most “original” designs are based on an existing design. There is also the possibility of saving costs by buying a pre-made template from one of the many talented free-lance graphic artists/template deisgners on the interent. A general template will cost around $40-$60 (£20-£30) whilst a unique one sale only template will cost around $1000 (£500) upwards. These templates tend to be from people who are well known, highly respected and make they entire living from selling their own art/design work and not somebody who has been employed on the cheap because they have a NVQ in art. Think carefully before commiting to these design costs, a bought template that you pay to have modified is a much more cost effective solution and the results are often better. Certainly question anybody charging in excess of £1000 for concept designs.
  3. Template Development – This involves taking the concept design, chopping up the images and creating a template for your website (Yes that’s right, your concept design does not involve the creation of your web template!). A website deisgner is required to create clean, browser compliant code. Again for a fairly simply website that maybe has 1 design for the home page and another similar deisgn for the content pages then this is no more than 2 days work. If your estimate for template development work is over £1000 then it’s time to start asking questions again. Now if you’ve gone with the option of buying a template then this is all part of the package, I know some Manx Web Design companies charge in excess of £2000 just for concept and template design, the alternative is a £20-30 template (from a choice of hundreds) and 1 days customisation to give you your unique website. Local company or web renowned designer, the choice is yours.
  4. Site Structure – If you see this seperate to template design then run! Your website structure is the way in which pages link together to both benefit your visitor and the search engine robots that visit your website. A well thought out site structure should help to give a good conversion ratio of visitors to customers as well as help the serach engines to find a correct placement for your web pages in the search engine results. Most importantly your site structure is totally dependent on what pages YOU want to include as part of your website. Your structure should be encompassed in a website map that should be reflected in the menu system you use to navigate your website. To any website designer that has knowledge of search rankings, Google’s Page Rank algorithm and experience of designing marketing webistes that drive customers then the website structure should be almost second nature and be heavily in mind when designing/utilising a template. I personally would never charge for designing a site structure as once the customer has decided on what content they wish to include the structure will in the main take care of itself, especially for small to medium business marketing websites.
  5. Customer Feedback / Form Submission – Whilst taking enquiries and orders from customers is what most business websites are about, as long as you are only wanting an e-mail to be generated and mailed the actual technology behind this is very simple. Most website design companies will have a store of form submission scripts that they can simply “plug-in” to your website. Even writing a new one from nothing is a minimal task for any PHP/.net programmer. Whilst you should expect to pay a little more than you would for a standard web page if you are being quoted hundreds of pounds per form then I’d be concerned. If you’re requiring some sort of database system in the background then although more complicated you should not expect to pay more than £500 for anything that does little more than store basic customer details. It is possible to have complex systems deisgned and built through the various rent-a-coder style websites on the internet for less than $1000 (£500) so keep this in mind when looking at quotes for simple database functionality.
  6. Logos and logo design – New business logo for your new website, a lot of website design companies will try and pull this one. If you have an existing company logo then I’d really query the need to change. If you do want a logo then look to pay not much more than £100-£150. A quick Google search will find any number of logo design companies from various places around the world all with huge catalogues of sample work that can design your new custom logo for £100 or less.
  7. The Dreaded Everything Else / Rest Of The Site – What can be a very simple way of adding hundreds to even thousands of pounds onto the cost of your website. Whether it be a Sitemap that you’ve already paid for or the addition of terms and privacy policy pages that you’ve neither asked for or can be sourced for free from numerous places on the internet it all helps to add that little extra to the overall price.

So that’s about it really. For your non shopping cart small business marketing website that can accept enquiries and simple order information then expect anything between £1500 – £3000 to be reasonable. Much more than that then personally I would question the quote heavily. Remember that costs in your area may be different but I hope that you find this as a useful indication to website design costs.

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Paul B