How much should I pay to have my website designed?

[Val_Resnik]

I'm going to put up a project on elance, but I have no idea what I should list my budget as. It's a fairly basic informational site. It'll consist of a how-to guide (around 50 pages), and then another section of articles that I'll be writing weekly. There's no fancy flash or anything. I know zero about HTML and only a little about dreamweaver, so I'd need some mechanism that will allow me to add/edit the content, and also ad/remove/move banners and ads.

So how much should I offer? Thanks.

[kingdavid]

I dont know if you've ever used SitePoint contests before, but you can specify your web design needs in a thread (for $20) and specify a price, and have designers/coders submit their work for your approval.

This is great because you only pay for the design you accept, but you can see a whole range of designs for your site.

I've held a design contest there in the past for $300 which included unique logo/web design/coding. I had around 6 designers submit something. I was very pleased with the outcome.

[edited by: mack at 8:49 am (utc) on Aug. 14, 2006]

[opifex]

All interesting comments in this thread! Bottom line .... you don't always get what you pay for! Your best option is probably to contact a designer who lives in your area. FAce to face meetings to discuss your plans / vision for your site are always best. Review past work by the designer and agree on a price. As a designer, I have designed and maintained sites for people living in other areas and other countries ... a lot of headaches! A straight forward ... plain vanilla ... design for a "how to" should be relatively inexpensive .... DESIGN ONLY. Actually filling out the pages with content depends on the quality of the material YOU offer. This is the real expense .... more hours fixing your illustrations and photos equals more cost. And who updates the site? If the designer becomes webmaster .... maintenance hours come into play. If a third party does the maintenance and breaks the site ... who fixes it? Who provides the hosting, statistics, provides SE promotion, etc, etc .... I would charge about USD200 for design only for your site ... 50 pages ... USD20 per page to put them together and online with your chosen host ... the buck stops there. Maintenance costs would vary with the amount of work involved under a separate contract.If you maintain the site and break the site ... I become VERY expensive! A lot of CMS this and that bantered about ... any good site design has "CMS" as part of the design structure.

[Jim Catanich]

The above advice is good, but remember, this is a business and you must consider the ROI.

If you write the code yourself, you must know how to use the development tool, create the code (HTML, JavaScript, ASP/PHP), create good site navigation, enter product information, etc. Then you can FTP it up to the server.

But you still will not get traffic. See, you forgot the SEO/Keywords. So now you get to start over with your first redesign. But still no business. So lets take a shortcut "pay-per-click". Now you either pay someone to do it for you or you have to learn to do it your self.

Having been in the business for 12 years, the learning curve is more expensive than the cost of outside design.

But no tool or web designer will make this succeed without the SEO being designed at the start. Talk with a full service web design firm in your area that has a SEO team. They should be within a 1 hour drive from your home because you will be there all the time making changes, etc.

Oh, by the way, even after 12 years doing this I forgot. What database software will you be using? What operating system will you be using? There is windows hosting and Unix hosting. Will the database work on both operating systems and can the hosting service support both of them?

Remember, when you are going to spend YOUR money, it becomes BUSINESS.

I learned this the hardway. Don't you.

Happy Do-diligence

Jim Catanich

[edited by: mack at 1:46 pm (utc) on Aug. 11, 2006]
[edit reason]
[1][edit reason] No url's in signiture please. [/edit] [/edit][/1]

[Newbie56]

Please forgive my ignorance - but what does CMS stand for and what does it mean? TIA :-)

Newbie

[abbeyvet]

Content Management System

[Val_Resnik]

I ended up hiring an Indian designer for $1800. This includes site design, logo design, banner design, a custom CMS, SEO and 1 year support. The company has a separate branch that specializes in SEO, so I'm pretty confident they know what they're doing. They also had the best looking portfolio from what I saw.

I'm still in the initial phases of the project, but I'm very impressed so far. The design looks awesome, and the designer has been very responsive. SEO is also taken into account from the ground up. I'm pretty satisfied.

From the bids I received, it seemed that Americans wanted from 2K to 2.5K, while Indians and Eastern Europeans wanted from 1K to 1.5K. I figured getting 1.8K, including banner design, logo design, SEO and support was a good deal.

We shall see how this all turns out...

[Husameddin]

Hello
Why not get yourself an open source Content Management System (CMS) for free…