Web design fees

cianclarke

Just wondering what you have been charged, or if you are a web designer what do you charge for a basic five page package?
I'm setting up full time in the south east (so not effecting your Dublin client base don't worry! :P)

What I'll be providing is:
* Five pages of content
* Photography
* Email addresses
* Domain registration (www.yourwebaddress.com)
* Simple updates required throughout the year (e.g. changing contact numbers, current rates, menus, etc)

Hosting will be extra.
What price would you put on this?
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks

matu

Hi there I'm from the south east and I also looked into this I found that the going rate can range from €800 - €2000 for a 5 page website from other interent designers.

my own site at the mo can be found at www.lickmystyle.com

cianclarke

Wow, and here I was charing €175!!!
You're waterford based, looking at the website? I'm Dungarvan.
Do you know, would a basic HTML 5 page website, priced at ~€500 actually sell if I were to advertise this in the paper...? I'm only 17, looking for an income for the summer - but the pages I'm doing *are* professional, not WC3 but not far from it. Samples in the sig link under portfolio.

matu

Yes they are very professional looking I thing you could up the price a bit anyway on future sites.
My other site that I designed with Joomla as the cms is www.electric-circue.net

Rollo Tamasi

I don't understand what your sites have to do with him looking for a quote but 800-2000 is off the mark imo for a static 5 page html site that would take less than two days to make.

At a maximum I would say you could push for 300 (working out at about 20hours work multiplied by 10euro ph and then extra for the bother of organizing the domain and hosting), but then again there are a lot of clueless people out there who will pay over the odds for something which they have no knowledge off.

cianclarke

Wow, the rates really are all over the place! I was thinking €350, but I might go €300 just to sell because it's an add in the paper I'm doing, like so:
www.cianclarke.com/pic's/advert.gif

matu

yep as I said not what I would quote those prices but I have had a look around and seen what people are charging around the country and this is the rate that some of them push, I completely agree that this is a high price and I only said that he should bump up his price from €175.
€300 sounds more of a fair price you should go for that and nearly double your money cianclarke, but you are doing photography as well and this comes a price these days if you can do it right.

kjt

Cian, just my thoughts but Imo if I was publishing that ad for myself
I wouldn't put a price on it. If their interested, they'll call and then
you can give them a price. People will see that ad..€300 and want
- A domain
- 2 Email address
- 5pages done exactly as they want
(ofc you give the customer what they want but they might try
squeeze everything out of you seen as you've already quoted
them without knowing what they want)
- Lots of photo's taken for them
- Unlimited updates all year.....

+ make sure if you advertise you can do an online shop that you
will be able to do most things, php/asp coding tweaking, credit card
payments/ssl and so on

Maybe that's just me.
In my opinion €4/700 is reasonable for 5/10page website

Also you said that their close to W3c.... Why don't you put in that
extra effort and make them compliant? It always looks better, and
in the long run.. your portfolio too.

Best of luck with it Cian!

PauloMN

Agree with the post above on some points, however I'd still publish a price as lots of people will simply ignore the ad unless they have some guideline.

What I would do is be VERY clear with is the updates/support bit. That will eliminate (and possibly worse) any profit you make if you are not careful. I did a site for about €500 a few years back - about 10 pages, static but lots of images, and I had the guy on the phone to me numerous times wanting to change this and that.

Be upfront and honest, show them samples, get them to agree to a design. If they have a brochure it's better as you can just ask them if they want the site to match the brochure, and they can't them complain about colours, design, fonts etc..

Don't forget to factor in any other expenses you will have like travel to them if required, time spent on ancillary stuff for their site like scanning text in etc.. All adds up, and lets face it - €300, €500 is not a lot of cash these days.

It's a shame that this industry - like many other IT related industries - has become so cheap and so undervalued. Is there just too many of us unlike plumbers/electricians etc.?

PauloMN

One other thing - €10 per hour someone mentioned above... are you having a laugh? There is not point in doing web design if all you can get is €10 per hour.

No offence, but best get a job in McDonalds where at least you'll get a free burger for lunch.

chabsey

PauloMN wrote:

One other thing - €10 per hour someone mentioned above... are you having a laugh? There is not point in doing web design if all you can get is €10 per hour.

No offence, but best get a job in McDonalds where at least you'll get a free burger for lunch.

Aldi now pay €10.75 an hour to stack shelves.

Rollo Tamasi

PauloMN wrote:

One other thing - €10 per hour someone mentioned above... are you having a laugh? There is not point in doing web design if all you can get is €10 per hour.

No offence, but best get a job in McDonalds where at least you'll get a free burger for lunch.

the guy is 17 and is only starting out. I think it's a fair price. If i was looking for a developer i would pay for expierience, which the OP doesn't have, he only has two sites in his portfoilio. If he had more sites, and showed more diversity in his coding and design then the 10 quid a hour would go out and the window of course.

cianclarke

Rollo - if you checked, my portfolio consists of eight individual sites, where did you get the number 2 out of! I think that counts as *some* experience.
Diversity in design - fair enough, but I'm strongly of the opinion that simple works, particularly when it's a small business in question such as a bar or a B&B, there is no need for anything fancy. I present all clients with 3 layouts to choose from - they always go for the simple header with collage of three images, links under that, and text under that.

kjt wrote:

Cian, just my thoughts but Imo if I was publishing that ad for myself
I wouldn't put a price on it. If their interested, they'll call and then
you can give them a price. People will see that ad..€300 and want
- A domain
- 2 Email address
- 5pages done exactly as they want
(ofc you give the customer what they want but they might try
squeeze everything out of you seen as you've already quoted
them without knowing what they want)
- Lots of photo's taken for them
- Unlimited updates all year.....

+ make sure if you advertise you can do an online shop that you
will be able to do most things, php/asp coding tweaking, credit card
payments/ssl and so on

Maybe that's just me.
In my opinion €4/700 is reasonable for 5/10page website

Also you said that their close to W3c.... Why don't you put in that
extra effort and make them compliant? It always looks better, and
in the long run.. your portfolio too.

Best of luck with it Cian!

Thanks for the reply, and the well wishings!

Regarding the online store, I'm just chancing my arm with that one, hoping somebody will be happy with either a paypal store or a modified version of OS Commerce, both of which I can do no problem.


Regarding the comments about WC3, I'd love to and I'm hoping to when I redesign my own site, but it seems like so much work for *no* reward - the client doesn't care if it's just a B&B or the likes. I'm pretty sure I'd need to be using CSS layout tables, which is a whole new thing to learn for me - and nobody else locally seems to bother with this as far as I can see.

PauloMN wrote:

Agree with the post above on some points, however I'd still publish a price as lots of people will simply ignore the ad unless they have some guideline.

What I would do is be VERY clear with is the updates/support bit. That will eliminate (and possibly worse) any profit you make if you are not careful. I did a site for about €500 a few years back - about 10 pages, static but lots of images, and I had the guy on the phone to me numerous times wanting to change this and that.

Be upfront and honest, show them samples, get them to agree to a design. If they have a brochure it's better as you can just ask them if they want the site to match the brochure, and they can't them complain about colours, design, fonts etc..

Don't forget to factor in any other expenses you will have like travel to them if required, time spent on ancillary stuff for their site like scanning text in etc.. All adds up, and lets face it - €300, €500 is not a lot of cash these days.

It's a shame that this industry - like many other IT related industries - has become so cheap and so undervalued. Is there just too many of us unlike plumbers/electricians etc.?

Thanks for the reply! I'll have to post a price methinks, just to get the sheer quantity of customers that I'm after with this "package". I figure my hour count is about right, and there is maybe two days work in each website if only the client was as fast in coming back to me. €300 would be, I think, a fair price.
The above advert is working out at around €55 for a week, but I haven't really enough space to say all I want in the advert. Still, I'll put it in for a week, maybe two - and see how the response goes. Deadline for submission is tomorrow morning... I'm thinking €300, plus hosting - and give them the option of going elsewhere for that.

Thanks!

matu

http://www.cianclarke.com/portfolio.htm
try click on the images to see more site that cianclarke has done you must have been giving an opinion on the thumbnails, click in and see the full sites.

well I think the 8 sites were alright there was nothing wrong with them and if it was what the people wanted who is to argue.
you should do as said above get yourself a price list for each section i.e 5 page site €350, photos €100, hosting €150, cms €100 etc....
I have seen this done with other design companies within Ireland and their work was just as good as yours, 90% of web design in Ireland is pure crap and needs to be looked into.
What is the story with everyone that goes to college to learn internet design just ends up doing mostly flash sites or not having any understanding of how colour works on the human brain. There is just no skill involved it seems as if they have been taught one way and that is the right way.

kjt

If you want a hand with a few w3c bits just pm me if your like.

You should try some css, it won't take too long to get the hang of
and in the end it will save you hours of work.

If you want a hand, let me know.

matu

Yep kjt is right css is the way to go it would save you a lot of time and make it a hell of a lot easier. With people here willing to help you you cant go wrong.

cianclarke

Thanks KJT! Much appreciated. I'll be working on making my own site W3C standard starting wednesday evening when I have time off. In the meantime, is there any sites which tell me in summary what i need to do for W3C?
Will this thingy tell me if things are right or not:
http://validator.w3.org/
Some of my sites seem to be okay, the only thing they seem to find wrong is my lack of "&" in meta tags.

kjt

Yup thats the right site to check your pages.
If you have an error it will give you the line
where the error is and if it can, show you
exactly what is wrong.

If find if you watch what you doing while
making the site you won't have a problem
troubleshooting it when it comes to the validation.

It's mostly just things like % and & signs, once you
have them in as ascii youu should be grand.

I'm heading away Friday so mightn be too much help
to you with your site. If you want a hand Wed/Thur
tho, just pm me and I'll try my best!


EDIT: If your going for html4 w3 standards you can check here
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
But I find that would just wreck my head trying to read all of that.

Try just make a basic page, put it through the validator on that link you
had and then try fix it, error for error. After 10/20pages you'll start
to see where all/most of the problems stem from and then when your
making the sites after that you'll change it as you go along.

In the end you'll have one/two/ or if your lucky no errors at all and you'll
get a lovely rewarding green "This Page Is Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!"

Rollo Tamasi

didn't see the other sites, my mistake.

cianclarke

Yeah at the time the first few examples I gave were some of the poorer ones...!

GoneShootin

We tend to charge roughly 700euro for an "average" 4-6 page static site. It's difficult to tell a customer exactly how much a site would cost without doing some proper requirements gathering, but that would be our ballpark figure.

JoeB-

Hi

I think your sites are grand, definitely not the worst. One criticism would be image sizes, some small logos are 30K and some pictures are over 150K, I'd consider these a little large, you need something like photoshop which will squash them down.

Your prices are way too cheap in my opinion, much cheaper than the best price companies can offer, reasons include the fact that companies need to use legally registered software, registered photoshop etc and they will not be able to employ staff for €10 / hour, in fact it will likely cost a company up to €40 / hour to have a designer at work. But if you try to charge more than €20 / hour you will get undercut by schoolkids yourself!!!

I can't see any reason why a technically competent 14 year old couldn't create a web design company which would be very successful before he was eighteen. Apart from the fact he wouldn't have the time because of school and girls....

CSS is the way to go for layout, very easy to learn, check out
http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp
for a great tutorial which should help.

You need to get a Mozilla Firefox browser for free and get add-on extensions to help web developers, brilliant, very useful. (On page html and css validation, show hidden page elements, show image sizes, show css styles, show form elements etc etc)

It's all about how good you are, in my programming experience I find that some people are much more capable than others, some people can come up with new and innovative solutions effortlessly and repeatedly and learn new technologies very quickly, if you are a person like this then you should make a fortune! Basically the point is that some individuals can be ten times more productive than others, the IT industry has absolutely no comprehension of this and doesn't understand how to select the best candidates, I have known many college IT students and IT graduates who didn't understand basic things about programming.

Good luck.
Cheers
Joe

Custom pine furniture, Ireland.

Rollo Tamasi

any 14 year old kid with a cracked DW is calling themselves a designer nowadays and it's destroying the industry imo.

Like JoeBallantine said you should get firefox and some development extensions. The ones i have installed are:
The web developer toolbar - very handy
FireFTP - upload your files to your server
Colorzilla - eyedropper tool
Window Resize - resizes your browser to user defaults
HTML Validator - checks your code
SpellBound Development - spell checker
UnPlug - download media files
All-In-One Sidebar - cleans up your extensions and stuff

You can search for them here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions.php?app=firefox

heggie

everyone is telling you to learn how to properly build sites, which is fine, and good advice, but the major thing you need to do is learn how to appreciate aesthetics (if thats even possible to learn?) Or decide on your career choice - designer OR developer, sure both is possible, but i would concentarte on getting one aspect up to scratch rather than be poor at both.

leftofcentre

I agree with heggie. What good web developers have is an eye for design. Only about 5% of web developers have this ability.

If you do not have it, you need to team up with a designer.

matu

leftofcentre wrote:

I agree with heggie. What good web developers have is an eye for design. Only about 5% of web developers have this ability.

If you do not have it, you need to team up with a designer.

very true. there are some good sites on the net that just lose interest very fast due to the poor design that goes into them, the problem is tho that most of this people that develope these sites dont want to be told what to do and how it should look.

eoge

Jasus... Some serious under-pricing going on here. This hurts entry-level contractors trying to get first-time clients. Established web firms and freelancers have no difficulty charging €3k+ for basic brochure sites. Businesses pay much more than that for a (static) page in the Golden Pages. Just gave them a call and for this year's book in Dublin, the cheapest (no colour) full-page ad costs over €16k. And that's Dublin-only. For less than a quarter that price, any business can have (with decent SEO) their page returned for relevant searches from all over Ireland. And this isn't just a boring, one-page print ad, it's a full-colour, multi-page brochure site. It can do things an ad in the Golden pages never could.

So... to the guy charging €175 (Golden Pages charge €201 to use a bold font in a regular listing!), raise your rates! Don't underestimate the value of the sites you're providing to your clients.

Here's a few good resources to help you decide what to charge and how to work out your hourly rate. It's a whole lot of reading, but well worth your time.

Pricing Web Work - What Should You Charge? [Find Clients]

Freelance Pricing Part 1 - Set Your Rate! [Find Clients]

SitePoint Forums - Who pays $4K for a brochure site?

Sitepoint: Pricing Web Jobs

Pricing a Project - Blue Flavor (This one's especially good.)

Good luck.

The Corinthian

The real secret of charging is probably down to two factors - the nature of your client and your professionalism. Of the former, different clients have different expectations. In Ireland, in particular, some SME’s seek to get you to do an entire eCommerce-enabled Web site for €200 and a Mars bar. These are also the same guys who will then try to stiff you. A classic tell tail sign is that they immediately moan about even the smallest of costs and attempt to cut every corner, but especially will try to tell you how to do your job (not to be confused with their imparting what they want from the site). This is because they really see what you’re doing as something that no doubt they would be able to do if they had a bit more time - so they don’t have a lot of respect for you.

My advice; unless you’re very experienced at swimming with these sharks, move on. You don’t need the headache.

Others are more professional and are not afraid to put their hands in their pockets, however they will not unless you are professional too. This means that you must maintain a professional relationship from the onset - contracts, consultations, documentation, structured deadlines and payment schedules, etc.

Your client should be aware of your project process and that once they sign off on a functionality spec that any changes will cost them. Additionally, they have to understand that there are milestones in the project - if you don’t deliver you don’t get paid, but if you do then they can’t turn around and ask for additional changes before paying you what they owe you.

I cannot stress enough how important coming across as a professional and not a kid is. This is a business after all, so behave like a businessman.

eoge

The Corinthian wrote:

I cannot stress enough how important coming across as a professional and not a kid is. This is a business after all, so behave like a businessman.

This is excellent advice and something I need to try harder at too!

py2006

matu wrote:

Hi there I'm from the south east and I also looked into this I found that the going rate can range from €800 - €2000 for a 5 page website

Your completely mad!

The Corinthian

py2006 wrote:

Your completely mad!

He's not. The higher end prices might be a rip-off, but then again we don’t really know what the client gets for their money. They simply might want to deal with a firm that they can relate to and they know won’t disappear if they have to concentrate on repeating their Leaving Cert.

After all, had you ever really wondered why ‘blue chip’ consultancies can charge so much, especially in light of the fact that they will often simply outsource to cheaper firms?

As an aside to this, pre-bubble pricing was crazy; I priced a glorified brochureware site (with a bit of WML and a simple CMS) at just over £145k back in 2000. And the client paid too.