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How Much Does A Website Cost?

The Total Cost

Simple 5 page site: $960 - $3000

Complex, large scale sites: $10,000+

All designers quote their price for a project up front. What they usually don't give you is the break down of how they came up with those numbers.

Where do those numbers come from?

Price = Cost of services/hour multiplied by the hours needed to complete those services.

When you hire someone to create a website, you buy a service not a product. Web design service is similar to wedding photography or home renovation. Although you end up with a finished product, you are actually paying for the materials and expertise to create that final product.

Cost of services is determined by an hourly rate.

Cost vs value

The price you pay for a web site should be determined by cost not value.

The cost for the designer to create the site should determine the price of a web site in a competitive market, not the value that client derives from the finished product.

I own an mp3 player which I use to listen to various learning tapes when I commute. The value that I have derived from that mp3 player is in the thousands of dollars over the years.

This doesn't mean I'm going to pay thousands of dollars for an mp3 player. Competition determined the price for my mp3 player and its competitors to be around $150.

Similarly, if a web company says that your web site will save $50 in customer service calls per day, $750/month, $9000/year. Should you being paying $9000 if it cost 60 hours to build the site at $50/hour. $9000 for $3000 of expertise and labor is a huge markup.

The value the designer may place on a site is only meaningful if they have no competitors that can offer a similar solution that will also save the client $50/month.

Supply and demand determines fair market value. Competition drives the price of the web site down to it's marginal cost, i.e. the cost for the designer. More competition requires suppliers of services to reduce their price closer to cost in order to stay competitive.

What you're paying for

You are paying for five things when you hire a web designer.

• Meeting time
• Design time
• Coding time
• Content time
• Miscellaneous time and padding

Meeting time - The time it takes for designer and client to meet and discuss site goals, content development, site aesthetics and to establish timelines and deliverables. This might be spread out over several meetings and phone calls.

Design time - The actual time that the designer is sitting in front of a computer creating the design for your site and making client changes.

Coding time - The time it takes to convert the design composition into clickable HTML.

Content time - The time it takes to markup the content into HTML and adding that to the site.

Miscellaneous time - Time dedicated to other tasks, like setting up hosting or registering domain names. This time includes things like uploading your site. It's also padding for scope creep.

The numbers break down

Depending on the skill level and experience of your designer, the price range is $40-$80/hour. Here's the break down for a simple five page site:

For low-level experience - $960

• Meeting time - $40/h x 4 hours = $160
• Design time - $40/h x 8 hours = $320
• Coding time - $40/h x 6 hours = $240
• Content time - $40/h x 2 hours = $80
• Miscellaneous time and padding - $40/hr x 4 hours = $160

For high-level experience - $3000

• Meeting time - $50/h x 6 hours = $300
• Design time - $65/h x 24 hours = $1560
• Coding time - $60/h x 10 hours = $600
• Content time - $50/h x 6 hours = $300
• Miscellaneous time and padding - $60/hr x 4 hours = $240

These are extreme ranges for a simple five page site that doesn't require application development.

It's true that you can buy a web site for cheaper, but this article is about how much you "should" pay, not what's the cheapest price I can get a website.

As with any service industry, it is true that you get what you pay for. The object for a client is to shoot for the middle trying to find the best balance between experience and price.

That was just the intro

In the next sections, I explain what you're paying for in each step of the website process and differences between hiring on the low-end vs the high-end.

I explain skill level and experience on a service by service basis. I'll look at the intangibles such as knowledge, reliability and reputation and how that adds into the pricing structure.

Next: Strategy and Solution