How much should a website cost?
How much should a website cost?
How much should a website cost?
I'm often surprised by the reaction I get when I quote a price to a client. A common perception is that designing and building websites is easy, so can't take much time, and shouldn't cost much. You could argue that plumbing is easy, after all, it's just joining pipes together isn't it? But try saying to a plumber "I'm not paying that, sorry, I thought it would be a fraction of that price". You won't get very far.
The process of building a site starts from the very first conversation we have. Ideas start to form, different technologies are considered, research into your field of business takes place, and a considered solution to your website requirement is ultimately achieved.
Then we have to work out what this will cost, in terms of time, and write a proposal document particular to your project. All this can take a few hours to a few days, depending on the project. Assuming the quote is accepted, we then move to the design stage. Stock photography sites will be pored-over, and Photoshop trickery will ensue. Your logo will be integrated into the design, so they look like they were made for each other, or your logo may need to be designed from scratch.
All the little details of the design take time to create: subtle gradients, little rounded corners, tinted background panels these don't create themselves. All need to be made by hand and assembled in Photoshop to create a visual representation of your site, including its navigation/menu systems, and all the other fancy features you asked for.
Chances are your homepage will have a unique layout, separate from the rest of the site, so further designs need to be created to illustrate how the other sections of the site may look.
On a good day, the designs are accepted first time. On a bad day, we're off on the wrong foot, and it's back to the drawing board if so, jump back two paragraphs if not, we can start on the XHTML & CSS, which will ensure your site displays consistently across as many browsers and devices as possible. Now, there are automated tools that will take a design and "chop" it into HTML for you, but this is an approach suitable only for amateurs and hobbyists. The code created will be ungainly, and be a nightmare to amend, should you wish to add to the site at a later date. A simple way to spot a site like this is to choose "View Source" from your browsers menu. If the bulk of the code contains a lot of , , and tags then either it's a very old site, or it's been built by someone using one of these automated tools. If it's your site, and you paid a lot of money for it, you may have been better off spending 14.99 on a "Teach yourself HTML" book and knocking your site out in a couple of weekends.
Far better to leave it to the professionals. It takes time to get an eye for it, but a good XHTML coder should be able to spot the best way to assemble a site before typing the first line of code. The end result will be clean, streamlined code, using validated XHTML & CSS (again, "View Source", if you see a lot of ,,, tags, then chances are, it's been built properly).
Images will be optimised for the web, which will further speed up download times. You'll then have a site that's as "future proof" as possible, and one which shouldn't break the bank should you wish to update the design in the future. Then, if your site needs a content management system (CMS) there will be programming involved.
This ties the "front end" of the site (the part the public sees) with the "back end" (your secure admin area) via a database. So, the database needs to be set up with all the fields and tables relevant to your site, and security permissions need to be applied. The front end of the site is then reflected in the back end so you can alter the page content, pictures, etc. On a simple level, you may just have control over the basic site copy. On a complex level, your site may have unique requirements that need a lot of bespoke programming.
All this takes time. Have a look at the programming section the next time you're in a bookshop, do you really fancy sitting down and memorising one of those 5 thick manuals? No, that's what you pay us for! Once we've developed a version of the site that meets your requirements, we'll then need to get it online. This involves buying the database, running scripts against it to replicate our development database, setting up the hosting space, then uploading the whole site for you to review.
Obviously, you're delighted at this stage, and all that's left to do is provide you with a document explaining the workings of the CMS. There's no "one fits all" document for this, as all CMS sites are different, so these need to be written, with screengrabs taken of all the pages in your CMS, and assembled by hand, then printed or saved as a PDF for your perusal. All in all, it's a time-consuming process. But luckily it's an enjoyable one, otherwise we might all be tempted to become plumbers.
Please bear this in mind, and don't be too shocked when you find out we can't build you a website for 50. We've got mouths to feed too you know!
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