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How Much Should You Pay for a Web Site?
from Inc.com
Web designers agree
that site pricing falls into three broad categories: Basic,
Intermediate, and Complex. Basic sites usually entail up to 15
Web pages and little high-tech work. Intermediate and Complex
sites cost more because, among other reasons, they require
software engineers and computer programmers. Besides having
sophisticated e-commerce features, the pricier sites often
have detailed databases that mesh with backend systems. As a
result, building the sites requires lots of costly technical
labor.
See "The Price of Ignorance"
Do you want your site to perform online
transactions, and do you want it to electronically interact
with your software systems? If the answer is no, you most
likely need a basic site and should spend anywhere from $500
to $30,000 for initial design (what it looks like) and
development (how it works). But if the answer to either of
these questions is yes, then the price ranges from $2,000 to
$3 million, depending on now technologically elaborate and
tailor-made you want the site to be. If at most you want your
site to perform straightforward online transactions, you're in
the intermediate category and should not pay more than
$100,000. But if you want your site to electronically pump
those transactions into a custom-built accounting system,
you're in the complex category, and the sky's the limit on
what you might pay.
Most Web developers charge a flat fee
for design and development. However, to calculate the flat
fee, the shops first determine how much a site will cost them
to produce in hourly labor. Then they charge their customers a
multiple of that amount. Most shops charge about double their
labor costs. One way to avoid getting ripped off is to learn
precisely which labor costs are involved in the construction
of your site. Has the shop used database programmers? Java
programmers? HTML writers? The labor costs associated with
each of those functions depend on the skill of the techies and
the shop's pay scale. Most shops will gladly show you their
"rate card", a listing of hourly rates charged for particular
tasks (e.g., copywriting from $85 to $235 and hour; database
programming, $115 - $250 an hour).
Among the many other factors that
influence Web-design rates are region, shop overhead (i.e.,
rent and employees), and level of service provided. Some shops
offer phone tech support, as well as marketing, public
relations, and logo design, to complement their customers' Web
pages■
See our rate sheet.
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