Website Tips
Professional web site design costs can vary from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars. As in many business purchasing decisions, you can expect to get what you pay for. If your web site is going to fulfill essential business processes, drive your business, and you base your purchase decision solely on price, you may be setting yourself up for problems in the future.
At the low end of the scale are web site “packages.” If you choose a web site development firm that offers a 4 to 6 page web site for $500 or less, you’ll probably get a template-based web site with very little customization and no extra functionality. If you just need to inform people of your hours and location and a few products, then that’s probably good enough.
That same basic type of site package with a customized design will usually come to around $900 to $1600. In most cases, the packages are just a starting point. Most web designers work based on your budget. If you ask how much it cost to design a website with 10 pages, you can get answers from $800 to $8000. It all depends upon the functionality you want to add. A better question would be, “How much can I get for what I have in my budget?”
Higher-end web site projects are usually priced on an hourly basis, because the amount of work it will take to complete them is harder to judge. This can range from $40/hour for basic HTML production to $140/hour for high-end development work. It’s a huge range, but the fees are reflective of vendors’ expertise and specialties. However, a medium-sized web site with a completely customized design, content management tool, and robust features and interactivity can easily cost $5,000 to $10,000, and up to $50,000 or more for large or very complex applications.
E-commerce is usually priced separately. Initial development costs for an e-commerce enabled web site start at around $1500 for the bare minimum. You can also expect to pay an ongoing monthly fee of $15 to $50 for a typical online store, depending on how many products you have and how many options are involved in the ordering process.
Basic site hosting can be as low as $10/month, although $15 to $25 monthly hosting fees are more common. Flash animation may cost $30 to $75 per hour.
None of these charges should come as a surprise - make sure they're spelled out in your contract. Professional web design can vary quite a bit in cost - so make sure you know what you're getting.
