The Cost of Developing a Commercial Website
A LinkedIn member posted a question in the "Answers" section, which read:
What is the average cost of developing a commercial website? (without hosting and domain name cost)
I have heard it can range from $1500 – $30,000.
What have you experienced?
As a website design agency, we are faced with this question daily. I took a few minutes to reply at the LinkedIn site and have reposted my answer here below. I think it’s an important question and something every business should consider.
Reply via Linkedin.
The secret question you are asking is, "What’s the best deal I can get, if I’m going to build a website for my business?". Don’t get me wrong, it’s a legitimate question. As the previous response stated, it depends on what you’re asking for. The range of complexity in web design is huge. Ask yourself, what do you want your website to do? What is the intended action I want a visitor to take when they visit my website? You don’t need a large-scale commercial website built using Flash if you are really just trying to sell a simple product… unless you are Sony, it’s wasted money.
If you were going to build a new house, would your first question to the builder be "What is the average cost of building a new house for my family?" We probably wouldn’t think of asking a simple question like that without first considering what your purpose for building the house is. How many rooms, is it for a family, what is the growth expected, will you need more rooms in a couple years (before you intend on building a new house) etc. Websites require no less planning then this. Sure, lots of 16 year old kids are running around building websites these days and you could get a great deal. But they are building websites… not businesses. Will your website convert on the goal you have set? I would sit down with someone who will help you think through your plan for your commercial website, not just what software you should use and how much it will cost. You could spend a ton of money and still not get the website you need, or you could spend a moderate amount and get your perfect online business. You get what you pay for these days. Not all websites are created equal. I’ve built many websites for $1500, as long as it fits the client’s needs.
Just remember, you are building a business, not a website. A website should fit snugly into your overall business objectives.
As they used to say in the days of dirt roads and horse drawn wagons… "choose your rut carefully… you’re going to be in it for the next 30 miles."
If you’re a member of LinkedIn, you can connect to me at: www.linkedin.com/in/durranijoe
From: rascalpants:
Posted on January 9, 2009 @ 2:49 pm
great answer to this question, and i have been reading over similar articles and posted the below to the same question…
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I have been working in the New Media Industry for 12 years now, and actually think your rates are spot on with a smaller web agency. $120/hour for a project is pretty fair, compared to what a national or worldwide ad agency will charge for their services. I have seen bid sheets with hourly rates more than twice that amount, and larger companies will most definitely pay these rates to insure the success of their brand.
Here is something to think about…
A local restaurant could have a web site designed and build for around $7K. It serves the needs of the local market enough and gives the local customer a view of the place, the menu, where they are located, and any special events that might take place. It only gets a few hundred hits a week, and that is fine. There were probably only a few design comps done, and the copy was written by the Daytime Restaurant Manager in the off hours. There is really no need for a backend, other than to send a basic email to that manager. It probably only took less than a week to be built by a few freelance designers.
Now think of national chains like Applebee’s, TGI Fridays, or something like that. They have hundreds of locations, and have the need to drive thousands of customers to their web site each day to see promotions and marketing efforts. Their branding guidelines are a 157 page book of rules and regulations that need to be followed to a “T”. There were 4 months of revisions on 35 design comps done by a team of 10 designers. And SEM team works with the team of copywriters who then must work with a team of attorneys to make sure the content is sending the write message to the right people and not getting the company sued. The site has streaming video, Flash applications and animations, integrated content management, guerilla marketing efforts like Youtube seeding and Facebook applications, Flash banner campaigns on every major new syndicate available, and a network of servers pushing all of this data with 99.99% uptime.
How much would you pay for that? $100K, $500K, $1M, $5M, or $10M?
A service should be priced based on how much money the client will make off of your abilities.