Web Design & Development - Pricing

The first question any WAHM or small business owner wants an answer to in regards to their website: What's it going to cost me?

The quick answer - Free to thousands of dollars. Why? The main factors are design quality and services provided, and who is providing the work. A local design student or your cousin might be cheap, but if you need professional quality, hire a professional.

Some things to think about -

• Hosting and Domain Name
• Logo Design
• Web Design
• Web Development
• eCommerce
• Content Management
• Blog
• Photo Gallery
• Search Engine Optimization

The long answer - It depends on what you and your business needs. Rates vary greatly from designer to designer and client to client. Some designers charge a flat rate, some hourly.

First and foremost, you need hosting and a domain name. Factor in $100 for a year of hosting with domain name registration with a company like Blue Host and that will give you all the emails, bandwidth, space and other features you need. Some web design companies offer hosting along with their web design and development, but in almost all cases, the hosting isn't as complete as you'd get with having your own hosting with a good company.

Then you need to consider what you need from your website. Do you need to sell products, highlight photography or other artwork, give potential customers a way to get to know your business? Do you want to be able to update the site yourself or would you prefer to have your designer do updates?

The typical wahm or small business usually is looking at needing a logo that will work for both their website and business cards and other printed items.

A custom web design (the graphics and layout you see when you visit a website) that reflects the business is better then a template, but does cost more. You can help your designer give you an accurate quote by providing colors you like and other websites you've seen that you like the look of, or features they have that you want on yours. Also have your content - pictures and text (and let your designer know what pages they go on) ready so it's there and waiting to be put on it's page.

For the website backend (what's going on behind the scenes that the visitor doesn't see) is generally the most expensive part. Just like a car, it's the engine that runs the website. A great looking website needs a great engine to make it run just as well. Coding using current standards, fast loading, search engine optimization (which the average designer don't do), and if you're using  a database driven website (such is the case with a content management or ecommerce website), the coding and database need to be done correctly as well.

Good search engine optimization starts with good coding and good content, but it's not the only thing. Quality link backs - where websites in good standing with the search engines link to your site, are a big part of the "popularity game". Keep in mind legal SEO takes time to give good results in the search engines.

Additional things your website might need, like a blog, can be customized to match your website.