I gotta agree here. I’m no expert by any means, but assuming I were, I still wouldn’t charge that amount for the incredible length of time for me to currently make a webpage.
I bet you would if you were running a business dedicated to that kind of work. You’re charging for more than just your time - you need to pay for your computers, your own web hosting and software packages, your electric and water bill, your office and other overhead costs, including support staff, your time to not only design the page, but meet with the client initially and again after you have a tentative design, and to implement any changes the client asks for and present a “final” draft (and make any changes again after the client sees the final work). Especially if you had another artist/designer working for you to whom you had to pay a regualr salary, plus payroll taxes, plus benefits, as well as spend your time supervising that employee.
As a freelancer doing a side project, or as someone who doesn’t intend to make a living by web design, you have the luxury of charging for your time only. If you were in the business and doing it for a living, I don’t think you’d be doing it for long if you sharged much less than that.
Then perhaps a better solution for the OP would be to hire a skilled freelancer to take on the project. IMO, the offer made by the designer is already too high for too little, especially considering that the OP’s business isn’t even sure if a website is necessary and would even recoup its own costs.
Well, I’m sure the situation I envisioned for myself is different from the situation the webdesigner in question has. Despite this, I believe the price is excesseive, regardless of whether it’s the standard for the industry or not.
Well, if you do decide to go with it, for goodness’ sake don’t have only a Flash option (like the dePINHO webpage).
Few things are more offputting than having to download software just to view a web page that, realistically, should be straightforward.
I already have all the Macromedia stuff enabled, but it still annoyed me that there wasn’t a frills-free option - when I’m looking for something specific, I resent having to wade through bells and whistles.
With all due respect to Gaudere, whom I trust is very experienced in producing and selling web design services, consider the opinion of one who is very experienced in buying web design services: The price is way too high.
If nothing else, at least get a second bid.
Buying web design servies is like buying any other sort of design/art services. You can pay $500 for a TV ad or $1 million. You can pay $5 or $500 or $5 million for a commissioned portrait. You can pay $100 or $10000 for interior design. And these can all be fair prices for what you get. What you get for the higher price is (hopefully) a better, more professional job that makes it worth the money. The designers you (John) are looking at are not A level–I wouldn’t hire them to produce a 1000+ page dynamically generated site with with online CC signups and over 1 million in online ad sales, for instance–but they look like a solid C+ or B. You can go C level and get a lower price; you might luck out and get a A level of a C price.
A professional commercial site does take time and experince and design skills; you don’t expect someone with a hammer and nails to be able to build a dresser like the one a furniture maker with 20+ years experience can do. You need to know about design and layout, information architecture and user experience and user interface; color theory, photo manipulation, etc. The actual production of the site does not take long, if you know what you’re doing; I can knock out a fairly complex 20 page site in under four hours from a mockup (though I’m the fastest designer I know). It’s talking with the client to determine their needs and wants, deciding on the customer you’re aimed at and what they’ll want, determining what pages you should have and how they should be organized, studying competitor’s sites, deciding on the design, adapting the design per the client’s request while discreetly preventing the client from forcing you make hideous design choices, getting approval and content from everybody you need it from, actual production of the site, adjustments after production per the client, launching and testing the site. Plus you pay for the years of study and practical experience that make a professional (almost always) better than someone who’s just learned it or has noodled around a bit on their own.
I agree about getting a second quote though, just because you should always do that unless you don’t have time or want to deal with the hassle and are willing to risk it. You might luck out and find someone better for cheaper.
I understand what you’re saying, Gaudere, but face it - the pages the OP is talking about are the Web equivalent to a brochure. The bulk of the work is going to be the layout, not the tricky programming behind it or the database design or the intricacies of the user interface.
So what you’re left with is that the bulk of what you’re paying for is the talent of the graphic designer building the site. And as Gaudere pointed out, you can design a brochure yourself, or you can spend tens of thousands to a New York Ad agency to do it for you.
From what John posted, he’s looking for something professional but it doesn’t have to be on the cutting edge of design. Given the simplicity of the desired design, and the complete lack of any sort of technical issues (no flash, no database backend, no forms, no php, no cgi, etc), the price quoted is high.
Domain Registration takes 30 seconds and can be done for a little as $8/year. For $20/month hosting, I hope you’re getting a fair amount of bandwidth. Most small businesses I deal with pay $5/month through VerveHosting.net. “Hosting Set Up Fee”? That sounds like “Hmm, we can get another $50 easy!”
$50/hour for changes, on the other hand, sounds entirely reasonable. In fact, it’s interesting they throw that out. Most places will base their bids on an hourly rate, and in most cases, the hourly rate charged for “a la carte” work - like alterations - is their max rate. Given the bid of $3350, that works out to about 67 hours of work at $50/hour. There ain’t no 67 hours of work there, unless logo design takes 40 hours. (obviously this is a WAG on my part - they may base their bids on an entirely different formula. But most people figure out how many hours the work will take and base their bid in part on that.)
Actually most freelancers I know base their rates on a per-project rate. And you’d be very surprised how long it takes some people to design a web site. Honestly, if you’re a designer, cranking out a site and you have to work with more than one person on the company’s end, you’re looking at quite a few more hours than those required to “just slap something together.” First, there’s the logo - this person is going to make them a wide variety to choose from. It’s not just one logo design, it’s six. Then the Web site. Perhaps it’s just a few things to toss together, but you also have to consider actually making the graphics, all the extra meetings that go into finding out what these people actually want. That takes even more time if they don’t know what they want yet, and you have to help them formulate an idea. Then you actually have to implement those ideas, bring them together in a Web page, then have the powers that be all agree on it. They don’t like it? Back to the drawing board. They have nitpicky changes? Some of those changes can take hours to make to get them just right. It’s not just a question of throwing something together. If the designer has any sort of business at all, they’re probably a perfectionist and will spend a lot of time on the little things that you might think can be thrown together quickly, but really can’t.
Then there’s the content. I’m only harping on this because as a copywriter and sometime web designer it’s what I have the most experience with. It can take forever to create copy that these people will be satisfied with. Even if they’re the ones writing the copy, they often need help, or the copy is often so horribly written that the designer has to comb through for spelling errors.
The whole process isn’t just dumping everything on the page - anyone with a few extra minutes could do that.
Yes, but their per-project rate is based on time. At some point, they sat down and said “OK, in general, a logo takes me X amount of hours to design. Some take more, some take less, but I’m going to average it out and charge $Y for a logo.”
And I know putting together a professional looking Web site isn’t trivial. I’m just saying that $3350 for 9 HTML pages seems excessive, given that the Web part of it (not the logo, I have no knowledge in that area) isn’t going to take all that long to put together.
>>It can take forever to create copy that these people will be satisfied with
True. Which is why I state on my bids that the price includes one first draft, and two iterations of changes. If they want to fiddle with the wording and design for weeks on end, they pay extra.
But what about making graphics from scratch? A lot of Web designers include that as par for the course in the overall design. That takes a while. So does figuring out what a company wants in the first place, especially if they’re not sure.
Also, it’s not like you’re hiring just some average Joe to do the site for you. You’re paying a specialist, someone who has not just the education and experience to do this for you, but also has all the professional design software, like Quark, InDesign, and PhotoShop. Quark alone is $900; PhotoShop is $650; and InDesign is $700. If said specialist is doing this full-time, he/she has to pay not only living costs, but business costs as well. That person needs to recoup their software and office supply costs, and the cost of the time they spent doing admin, marketing, accounting, invoicing, in meetings, talking to the client, etc., as well as get paid for their actual product. Most people recommend charging for basic living costs and business costs, then another 10-20% so you’ll not only just stay in business, but will actually grow.
To design a Web site, the designer must:
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Complete administrative duties like make phone calls, meet with the client (often several times) to determine the scope of the work, then create a proposal outlining the work. Once that proposal is accepted, the designer then:
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Purchases the domain and hosting package
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Plans his/her work, possibly providing the client with a chart of some sort of timeline, making changes to the timeline depending on the client’s needs
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Creates the images (or manipulate those purchased by the client, if available)
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Places the images and text in a publication software
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Storyboards the site
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Optimizes the images
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Programs the site (in other words, transfers the site from publication software to actual Web pages)
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Sets up a prototype
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Tests the site for defects
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Makes the site live
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Gets feedback from the client, then repeats steps 8-10 if there are problems or changes.
Yeah, it just takes a few minutes to slap up a site on the Web; however, if you’re going to go through the design whole process (i.e., storyboarding and prototyping), it’s really not so simple as putting up 9 HTML pages. You can skip a couple of steps, like storyboarding (some people do because a professional license for a publication software to do storyboarding can prohibitively expensive, especially if you’re just starting out), but lots of people prefer not to. And most businesses insist on owning the copyright to their designers’ work, so if you’re purchasing intellectual/creative rights, then that will be included in the cost.