Over the years I’ve spent doing web design for professionals, there is a single question that get’s brought up time and time again: “Why are websites so expensive?”\u00a0 I would guess that 9 out of every 10 companies that come to me for design have a strict budget that they have to meet and most of their focus seems to be on one thing… cost.\u00a0 I’m going to give you a general insight into why custom sites might run a little more than a WordPress or Shopify theme (or something of the sort) and explain some of the things that go into a custom site by a designer that most people overlook.<\/p>\n
Now, there’s no question that price should be a concern when planning a web project.\u00a0 I understand entirely why people are concerned about pricing first as, since I’m a businessman myself, I would be wondering the same exact thing when inquiring about a service I need to purchase.\u00a0 I’m always extremely happy to answer their cost about websites when I can.\u00a0 Sometimes, I feel as if I sound like a broken record, however, since most questions are very difficult ones to answer and I end up replying something like, “That’s a difficult questions to answer as it varies for each and every business.”\u00a0 Then I let them know that I’d be happy to answer their questions and get them a proposal after we do a proper business discovery.<\/p>\n
“BUSINESS DISCOVERY?! All I want to do is get a price, can’t I just get that?” is probably the thought that\u00a0passes through most people’s head when they hear that.\u00a0 In fact, some people are quite verbal about it (but in a nice way, of course), and they all completely understand after I explain what I’m going to go over next.\u00a0 \u00a0But first, let me tell you briefly what Discovery is.\u00a0 Discovery, is a series of meetings where we discuss whatever business my clients are in.\u00a0 Most of them are small to medium sized businesses that specialize in many unique things.\u00a0 We typically start out by talking about the basics like where you’re located, how long you’ve been in business, etc…, then we continue to go deeper down the rabbit hole.\u00a0 We eventually talk about the process a business takes when providing a service or product and what all goes into it.\u00a0 \u00a0We will talk about your customers and what they need from you, and we will go over the current market their in.\u00a0 By the end of discovery,\u00a0 we are able to tell exactly what you need for your website or web project to thrive online.\u00a0 We will be able to create a development plan to get you there and create a marketing strategy to continue to attract the best visitors to the site.\u00a0\u00a0Doing discovery usually takes anywhere from 3 to 5 meetings on average.<\/p>\n
Now you may be wondering, why in the world would I waste my time doing all of this?\u00a0 The short answer to that question is: I want to be\u00a0fair<\/strong>.\u00a0 I want our business transaction to be fair on both sides, so we are each getting what we both need; you walk away with a great product that isn’t missing any pieces or\u00a0designed\u00a0carelessly, and I get fair compensation for providing such a service that almost guarantees an ROI in less than 1 year.\u00a0 There is something referred to, especially in web design, as “scope creep.”\u00a0 This is when things are missed in discussions and something additional that will require additional time is expected to be done in a project, and\u00a0it becomes\u00a0a problem when it happens after<\/em>\u00a0an agreement is signed.\u00a0 For example, let’s say I meet with a client who comes to me saying that he needs a website.\u00a0 Let’s also say that I only spend an hour talking to the client before proposing a price (like most designers).\u00a0 It’s impossible to\u00a0cover everything in just an hour about\u00a0any business.\u00a0 If I end up proposing\u00a0a price for a website and get a signed agreement from the client, then they bring up a week later or half way through the project the idea of selling a bunch of items in a warehouse that was not previously brought up in conversation, or I don’t quite understand their service offerings enough to highlight them on the site well enough for the client or their customers, it’s going to potentially cost me a lot of time, either doing or re-doing the work for the proposed price.\u00a0 Any additions to a project or missed information that needs done after a project is discussed and a price is made is scope creep.\u00a0 If scope creep happens, in order for me to be fair to my client, I have to honor the proposed price.<\/p>\n So why does it seem like a website is so expensive?\u00a0 It really just comes down to TIME! Most people who don’t design websites for a living don’t have any idea of what actually needs to go into a website in order to do it properly.\u00a0 Most people tend to have the mindset that you can build it in 30 minutes to an hour and everything is fine and dandy because they saw a Wix or Squarespace commercial.\u00a0 The reality is it’s way more complicated than that, and there’s a lot more planning, thought, and strategy into getting it all right.\u00a0 A website consists of several different things that come together.\u00a0 You have to plan the outline of the site, a map of all the sites pages, strategically design where the content goes and what order it should be in, come up with a color scheme and overall user interface, you have to make all the buttons, forms, and custom apps work, make sure it’s mobile responsive, and much more.\u00a0 All that and there’s even more you have to do just to get you a basic site that you can launch.\u00a0 If you want the site to rank in Google for the terms you need, you have to add on a whole new layer known as SEO, which involves keyword research and strategic optimization of the site, it’s keywords, and elements.\u00a0 Want to do any marketing or Facebook advertising with the site?\u00a0 Well, go ahead and add another complex layer in order to get the website market-ready.\u00a0 I’ll release another post soon to break down what all a website needs to have for success.<\/p>\n As far as pricing goes, I generally base fixed-price project proposals off of my hourly rate and how long I expect each job, or phase, of the project to take.\u00a0 After doing this for over 6 years, I’ve gotten pretty good at speculating how long a specific job will take me.\u00a0 I determine this by breaking the web project into several smaller pieces then adding everything together.\u00a0 I get these pieces of the project from doing Discovery.\u00a0 And I avoid scope creep and provide fairness and quality by avoiding it.\u00a0 It all ties together.<\/p>\n On average, I would say a typical website for a small business takes about 80 hours of work on my part.\u00a0 To elaborate, that’s equivalent to working 9-5pm for 2 weeks straight.\u00a0 If you want to think about this logically, think about your personal income for 2 weeks of work, assuming you work 40 hrs. a week.\u00a0 If you expect a website for cheaper than that number, you might have a few screws loose.\u00a0 Over the weekend (yes, this past weekend), I conducted an experiment and also launched a new product at the same time.\u00a0 I searched for weeks and found what I believe is the best website builder on the market.\u00a0 I’ve never used any website builders to build a live production site before, so I figured the first one should probably be my own site and built a site from scratch using it.\u00a0 Just to see how long it took me, I planned to do it in one sitting.\u00a0 It took me roughly 10 hours from beginning to end to do it correctly and make sure everything was set up in both the front and back end.\u00a0 You may be thinking this is a relatively good time, and when you look at it, you may be thinking it looks great, but you have to factor in a few things.\u00a0 1: I didn’t write most of the content since the project developers just provided it to me.\u00a0 2: It’s only a 1 page site and 3: All images, logos, color scheme, and much more are already done.\u00a0 Also, what wasn’t done was in my head; I didn’t have to learn about a specific product or industry, I didn’t have to present my ideas and get approval for them, I just did it, and what I needed to come up with, I did.\u00a0 I had a clear objective, and I stuck to it.<\/p>\n You may be thinking, “Well, I can do that myself.”\u00a0 My response to that is “I guess you can…”\u00a0 It’s true.\u00a0 You can make your own site using a builder.\u00a0 It will be online and you can tell people your URL to go to in order to see it, and you might even be able to sell products on it.\u00a0 But I guarantee you it will not be done correctly.\u00a0 And in the 10+ hours, assuming your site is only 1 page and you get your’s done as fast as I did, you might have lost out on more money than\u00a0if you paid someone to design it.\u00a0 Think about what that 10 hours could have done for you.\u00a0 That’s all the daylight in a single day.\u00a0 If you spend a week on it, how much money did you not make while you were spending time on your site?\u00a0 What about if you spent 80+ hours on a large site that has more than 10 pages, how much money did that site cost you then?\u00a0 Only you will know.<\/p>\n In summary, there’s a lot that goes into a website that people overlook.\u00a0 The main factor, however, is time which is what most costs for services in the world are based off of.\u00a0 You can pay someone more with the experience needed to do what needs to be done correctly, the first time, so you don’t have to revert back and fix mistakes or simply have a site that isn’t performing as well as it could for you.\u00a0 You could spend time making your own site, and if it’s the first site your company ever had, it is a very good starting point, but whenever you’re looking to take your business (and website) to the next level, it’s best to leave that work to professionals who deal with these things each day and who stay up to date on technologies and requirements for modern computing.<\/p>\n Until next time,<\/p>\n Dan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the years I’ve spent doing web design for professionals, there is a single question that get’s brought up time and time again: “Why are websites so expensive?”\u00a0 I would guess that 9 out of every 10 companies that come to me for design have a strict budget that they have to meet and most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-web-design"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morthub.com\/stage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}