If I had a dollar everytime someone asked me .... 'How much does a website cost?', well I'd be on some exotic island rather than sitting here in my office answering this question. Finding out the cost of creating/designing a website leads you on a rather elusive journey. Most designers don’t publish their rates, and good luck getting a company to tell you how much they paid for their site.

As with any product or service offered, "you get what you pay for." Spend too much, and you’ll be accused of wasting money like those $300,000 logos you read about; spend too little, and you risk ending up with a crappy website “designed by my 19 year old nephew” or "well meaning college student".

A recent study of forty designers were surveyed with a couple questions about their pricing strategies, and I hope the results will help you get a better picture of design prices.

Some stipulations regarding the following survey:

• All prices are for design only, i.e. they don’t include any sort of coding (no HTML, no CSS, no Javascript, no PHP, etc.).
• The sample size was very small (40 designers). Keep this in mind while viewing the results.
• This survey only selected experienced and skilled designers. So yes, you can probably find cheaper prices elsewhere (but not better designers!).
• The survey was conducted by an international site, and this plays a big role in pricing. A designer in Bangalore will not charge the same as a similarly skilled designer living in San Francisco. That does not mean you should always go with the cheaper designer, since other factors (time difference, cultural differences, reliability, etc.) will also come into play.

Here are the results for Logo Design:

Here are the results for Website Design:

Some Guidelines on Pricing:

As I always tell my clients when they ask "how much does it cost?", that question is comparitive to asking a contractor, "how much does it cost to build a house?" Of course, the price of new home construction cannot be answered accurately without knowing square footage, number of bedrooms, bathrooms and interior features. Hence, the same is true when building your website; the cost is based on the features you need/want for your website. For example, how many pages do you need, what functionality is required, and what design features are wanted?

Here are some differences of types of websites that can vary greatly in pricing:

• Interactive Database Website: A complex interactive site has a large amount of back-end programming. More complex sites feature a greater level of interactivity and database integration. Most complex corporate sites consist of data driven content and dynamically generated pages.
• E-commerce Websites can range from very simple to very complex. There are quite a few things to consider when preparing to budget an ecommerce site.
• A "Brochure" Website simply means a website that serves as an on-line brochure that gives general information about your company products and services. A brochure site does not have complex database programming, e-commerce, or lots of interactivity. It basically serves as an on-line advertisement that features graphic design. This kind of site is a great start for a company and can be expanded in the future as your company grows. In this day and age, it is essential for a company to have an on-line presence as well as a basic corporate brochure site.

The important thing is to make sure the web developer is worth the rate they charge. Always check with the designer's past clients and remember - you really do "get what you pay for". Startup Production offers original, creative and template-free websites with custom design, custom programming and excellent customer service for very affordable prices for the small to medium sized businesses in this economy. Call us to get a free estimate today.