How much should I charge for building a website?

20 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
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I have built a few websites for myself that are pretty good and a friend referred a friend to me to build her a website for her hair salon. It's going to be done using xsitepro with a custom header graphic I'm making for her. There will be quite a few photos that will need editing and we are going to do up some videos, similar to commercials for her salon as well. When it came to discuss pricing, I told her that I wanted to think about it for a few days and get back with her. She had no problem with that, but I have no idea what the going rate is. Do most web builders charge per hour or by project? I would think per project could get ugly with someone wanting every little thing changed. I got the basic color scheme and layout that she is looking for, but the rest will have to be figured out when the time comes. How should i price this? If you price it by hour, how do you estimate how long the project should take? When I build a website with xsitepro, I do it over several days and never really look at the time it takes.

Should I get this under contract for hosting, etc. too? Whats a fair price for hosting her website? This is obviously entering a new realm for me and need some guidance.

Any help in pricing this would be very much appreciated!!
#building #charge #website
  • Profile picture of the author shoeb000
    Well, you need to check out local prices of web designing services,
    You can try different ways to check out what you should charge:
    1] try to check out web hosting advertisements in newspapers and check out their rates.
    2] try online search for local web hosting FREE LANCER or small company and get idea about what they charge per website and what they deliver.
    3] Contact some freelancer or small company in your area and POSE yourself as customer and ask their quote for the said work which you are going to deliver to your client.

    Hope it helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ryan UK
    It depends on how much time you will be spending on it. As it is XsitePro you will be using, you are most likely going to be using a generic template. You shouldn't really charge too much if you are going to be using a pre-built template but if you were to hand crank the code yourself you would be able to justify a higher payment for your work.

    I would charge the work using a set price such as; $50 for homepage then an additional $20 for each new page. Charge a bit extra if your going to be taking the photographs/videos yourself. Get the money for the hosting/domain first as you don't want to end up with a hosting account billing you every month if the client doesn't end up wanting a website.

    Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author ProfitwithAdam
    Using xsitepro, I'm not using a generic template for this website. You can, but for this I am building the header graphic and adding panels to create the website so that it is 100% unique to her and what she wants. Everything is being built using xsitepro, but nothing is generic as the templates are.

    Are you saying I have to charge less because I'm using xsitepro and not Dreamweaver for example? For this website in particular, I can do everything using xsitepro that Dreamweaver can do. Its just a program that non-coders like me can use to make professional looking websites and because of this it shouldn't demand a different price. It would be silly to use a program such as Dreamweaver to do the same thing in Xsitepro, but charge more because you have to do the coding yourself. Seems wrong to me.
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    • Profile picture of the author Ryan UK
      The code generated using WYSIWYG website builders like XsitePro don't normally generate web standard HTML/CSS code. You can charge a good rate for your graphics if they are really good. However, charging someone top dollar for a website with bad coding ethics and structure compared to a website coded by someone who knows about web standards is wrong in my opinion.

      As a professional web designer myself, all of my websites are coded to the standards of the W3C. If you told your client that the website you will be building them won't meet web standards, I'm sure they would think you were doing an unprofessional job and would much prefer a website that meets the standards.

      For more info on web standards visit: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

      Originally Posted by ProfitwithAdam View Post

      Using xsitepro, I'm not using a generic template for this website. You can, but for this I am building the header graphic and adding panels to create the website so that it is 100% unique to her and what she wants. Everything is being built using xsitepro, but nothing is generic as the templates are.

      Are you saying I have to charge less because I'm using xsitepro and not Dreamweaver for example? For this website in particular, I can do everything using xsitepro that Dreamweaver can do. Its just a program that non-coders like me can use to make professional looking websites and because of this it shouldn't demand a different price. It would be silly to use a program such as Dreamweaver to do the same thing in Xsitepro, but charge more because you have to do the coding yourself. Seems wrong to me.
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      • Profile picture of the author Qualibid
        I no longer deisign web sites but when I used to do that, I charged at least $500 for the simplest static site.
        For the site you've described I would charge about 1500 (no programming, no flash)
        Since hosting is very cheap now, you can definitely add it to your packge.
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      • Profile picture of the author ProfitwithAdam
        Originally Posted by Ryan UK View Post

        The code generated using WYSIWYG website builders like XsitePro don't normally generate web standard HTML/CSS code. You can charge a good rate for your graphics if they are really good. However, charging someone top dollar for a website with bad coding ethics and structure compared to a website coded by someone who knows about web standards is wrong in my opinion.

        As a professional web designer myself, all of my websites are coded to the standards of the W3C. If you told your client that the website you will be building them won't meet web standards, I'm sure they would think you were doing an unprofessional job and would much prefer a website that meets the standards.

        For more info on web standards visit: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
        Ryan, I am curious what specific reasons or "web standards" make you throw xsitepro under the bus as being an unprofessional website? Why do you say xsitepro uses bad coding ethics? Yes, I am taking this personally since I have been using xsitepro for most of my websites and thus saying they are unethical basically means I am unethical using it. Let alone you basically called me unprofessional above in your quote for using Xsitepro.

        Let me ask you this, Do you think that Adobe Dreamweaver is a professional web designer program? It would be tough to disagree that Dreamweaver is the number one program that all others are compared too and if your saying that a website built by Dreamweaver doesn't meet standards then I would question the standards the W3C has put forth. Furthermore, Xsitepro has the ability to export it to Dreamweaver. So, both of them are very close as far as the coding is concerned.

        I can understand your view if I was to build a site completely from start to finish putting in all the code, then yes that would take more time and therefore would have to be more expensive. I do not agree with someone using Dreamweaver or hand coded vs Xsitepro and having the websites look identical, that because a person used Dreamweaver or hand coded it they should charge more. That's ridiculous, because at that point your charging for using a different program not based on actual results of the finished product because they are identical.
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        • Profile picture of the author Ryan UK
          Thank you bucksuper for backing me up.

          I did not state that xsitepro or you were unprofessional. I merely stated, that building a website that didn't conform to web standards and selling it to a customer who doesn't know no better for the same price as a compliant website was unprofessional. My point was that experts in the web development industry would never dream of churning out a site in xsitepro then charge vast amounts money for their work.

          And regarding Dreamweaver, YES it is a professional web development software package but, hand the software to a beginner and you will see a website with bad code practices and structure. Oh and by the way, the W3C has nothing to do with how Dreamweaver is used for developing websites. The W3C can't help that amateurs use Dreamweaver's built-in wizards to create navigation bars with bad code. And yes, XsitePro and Dreamweaver can be similar as far as coding is concerned, that is if a website was coded by a beginner in both programs.

          Originally Posted by ProfitwithAdam View Post

          I do not agree with someone using Dreamweaver or hand coded vs Xsitepro and having the websites look identical, that because a person used Dreamweaver or hand coded it they should charge more.
          If I was to hand code a web standards compliant website (whether it be in Notepad or Dreamweaver, yes Dreamweaver can be used for hand coding) that you built in XsitePro and made it look identical. I will guarantee you my version will have no unnecessary code, load faster and the file size be much less. After all, Google like websites that can be indexed easily which can be done by building a website using web standards practises.

          Would you pay a plumber with no qualifications $300 to fix a leak? Or pay a qualified plumber $500 to fix it to a standard so it won't leak again?
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  • Profile picture of the author bucksuper
    Adam, have you got an example of a site you've designed. IMO pricing comes down to your skillset. The spot on, error free, sick design, bad ass sales verbiage, proper CSS, done right the first time rate is $100 an hour.

    From there you just adjust your rate down (if need be). Compare your work to others. Hopefully you send traffic to your own pages and know how they perform.

    I hope that helpful.
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    • Profile picture of the author getis
      As Bucksuper says you've got to try to get a balance between what you think your skills are worth in the marketplace and what you need to earn to make it worth your while. Once you've got an idea of your hourly rate you can start to work out (or make an educated guess) how long its going to take you.

      We find that clients always want a fixed price quote rather than an open ended charge for time. Make sure you draw up some sort of project specification where you very clearly state what you're going to do for the money and put time limits on modifications, etc. so you don't end up being strung along for months tweaking every last bit. We usually give clients 14 days for final tweaks. If they can't get their act together in that time (making sure you respond promptly) they start paying for mods.

      Best of luck.
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  • Profile picture of the author bucksuper
    Adam, IMO ryan's just trying to help you out. By ethics he means a lot of wysiwyg editors insert code that does not conform to w3c standards for HTML or XML. He's not trying to say there's something wrong with xsitepro from a moral ethics standpoint. Kinda funny actually lol.

    I made a couple million bucks using front page back in the day and people told me it was junk. Eventually I started hand coding but it definitely served it's purpose and I absolutely didn't care what people had to say :-)

    Point being... Work with what your comfortable with. Yea xsitepro might not spit out compliant code but as long as people hit your sites and take the expected action that's all that matters. You'll know when the time comes to upgrade your software.

    Ok I'll get off my soapbox now :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author ProfitwithAdam
    I guess, to answer the question, does it really matter which way it is done as long as the website does its job? I mean if it makes you feel better knowing your website loads faster (We are talking less than a second more max) and the file size is smaller and may not have extra code, in the end does it really matter as long as the web user's experience is good and the website does what you want it to do?

    Now, if I could do the code by hand, than maybe I would if it did in fact load faster and the other stuff you mentioned over Xsitepro. But, if you recall from my first post that I was asked to do the website for a friend of a friend. I am not marketing myself as a web designer. I do think though that I have enough experience to do what she wants and would charge a fair price based on what I think is fair for my time.

    Out of curiosity, where did you learn your coding from? Professional College or Institute or on your own? I have a copy of Adobe Dreamweaver, but have never bothered with it as I don't know how to do code. I would like to learn, but I am more of a fan of structured learning, not trial and error. That is why I am asking, not to be a smart ass, but to see where is the best place to learn to be a professional web designer. You said you were a professional web designer, so I figured you would know.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ryan UK
    I started learning by buying books from established publishers. I learnt HTML first then went onto CSS. Amazon is a great resource for tech books. After I got those two nailed down I focused more on graphic presentation and layout. You need to have a good creative mind to design a good website, learning Photoshop can help you with the design aspect of a website. I am now currently learning PHP and Javascript, all from reading technical books.

    As for establishing yourself as a professional, it helps to have some qualifications in a IT related education whether it be general computing or networking. For me, I started off like you have, doing websites for friends of friends and family. Once I was confident with my skills I felt it was time to offer my services to the public. After doing some freelance work and building a solid portfolio I submitted my resume to different web companies and got a job offer from one.

    As for web design related qualifications, I'm not aware of any that are nationally recognised. I think employers and clients look for experience and your ability to complete websites to an industry standard.

    Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author ProfitwithAdam
    I sent an email to Tech Support at Xsitepro asking about W3C Compliance and the issues that Ryan posted above. Here is their response:

    "Hi Adam,

    Thank you for your email.

    XSitePro uses the HTML 4.01 web standard.
    This standard has been around for a while, so those who want to use the latest standards are sometimes disappointed.

    The reason we have kept to this standard is that it is the best supported standard for all devices (computer, portable devices, braille readers, text to speech readers & etc). This allows your website to be accessed by the greatest number of visitors.

    XSitePro is also optimized to give you the best SEO possible. This is because we are far more interested in what Google think of the website (the major traffic provider at the moment) that W3C. If this breaks some standards, fine!


    XSitePro is designed in a way to ensure that websites appear correctly in all browsers, as Internet Explorer is not standards compliant it means that XSitePro has to compensate for that. Most of the biggest websites have to do the same thing. Have a look at this link, it is the W3C checker for amazon.com;

    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=www.amazon.com&charset=(detect+automatic ally)&doctype=Inline&group=0

    When I checked there where 683 errors and 111 warnings.

    With XSitePro we have created a software package that is capable of managing multiple projects with multiple web sites in each project. There are no limitations to how many projects, or websites you create.

    It will keep everything in an easy to manage and well organized format that allows you to add pages at lightning speed, make changes to existing pages whenever you like and even change the whole look and feel of the site in just a few minutes rather than the hours or days it would take with other software such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver.

    If I can be of any further help, do let me know.

    Best regards

    Ben."
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  • Profile picture of the author ProfitwithAdam
    On another note, here are the top 10 websites and their score as far as the W3C is concerned:

    1) Google has 35 errors and 2 warnings
    2) Facebook.com has 9 errors
    3) youtube.com has 111 errors and 4 warnings
    4) yahoo has 160 errors and 32 warnings
    5) windows live has 29 errors and 14 warnings
    6) baidu.com has 4 errors and 3 warnings
    7) wikipedia has 1 errors and 1 warnings
    8) blogger.com has 14 errors
    9) msn.com actually passed!! Amazing!!
    10) Twitter.com has 13 errors and 71 warnings

    Also, my wordpress blog that isn't fancy has 71 errors and 61 warnings

    Also, the warrior forum you are reading this has 37 errors

    Also, ebay has 203 errors

    So, all in all, I am not that worried about the W3C compliance rules since it appears a very high number of top sites are not in compliance.
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    • Profile picture of the author ronperkins
      Originally Posted by ProfitwithAdam View Post

      I am not that worried about the W3C compliance rules since it appears a very high number of top sites are not in compliance.
      ...at the end of the day it is more important to me to give the user the best experience you can which ever browser they are using and to do this you simply cannot be fully compliance with W3C...
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  • Profile picture of the author Brett2000
    Ryan,

    I think employers and clients look for experience and your ability to complete websites to an industry standard.
    No they don't, they look for a website that produces results (if they're smart)! Your price is based on experience, and how well you can produce a design that achieves the desired results.... keep in mind, many clients have no idea what the desire results should be!

    So, there you go.... Unfortunately it's up to those of us who know what the results should be, based on actual statistical data and markets (Quantcast for example) and search engine queries, etc. to define those results for the clients - and pray the client can guess that your knowledge is worth paying for... That's where it leaves us, sadly those with degree in Computer Science (such as myself) and many others suffer at the hands of those with self-taught knowledge, but only because we apply a little more theoretical skills into 'finding/researching' and 'achieving results' for the clients.

    I create unique and fully custom XSitePro templates, my prices however do not include adding content into the sites, because 90% of the time, the clients take forever to get back to you on how they want it, or they do not know what they want in the first place, so you see, it's best to leave it to the client to write their own content, with a little guidance from you (or a SEO master), so they can achieve their 'desired results' that they do not know anyway.

    I hope that helps you... good luck...
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  • Profile picture of the author luis23
    I will say check your competitors.

    Be honest about how their designs look and your designs look.

    If you think you can beat them try to copy their prices. If not lower them.

    Create a good combination of Price and Customer Service that's your key.

    With the time you will growth and you will be able to have more knowledge and decide in what leagues do you want to play.

    Big Leagues = Big Money
    Low Leagues = Low Money
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  • Profile picture of the author IndigoJack
    How much to charge for a website?

    Your rates should be relatively cheap to start with in order to build up a portfolio of work and experience.

    You should have a bottom line that you will never go below - or you may as well be a charity. For example: £195 is our bottom line and it includes the domain name +1 yrs hosting.

    We scale up the cost depending upon how many pages they want and whether any fancy elements are to be included.

    We consider the top line to be a shopping cart website that we add the products to for the client - time consuming - so that is our top price and every other website type is priced somewhere inbetween our bottom line and an all singing & dancing shopping cart.

    At the very start we bundled website packages and priced them based on pages small, medium & large and then add-ons were extra and these were clearly priced too. Clients liked this - what they don't like is prices being a bit of a mystery.

    Prices can always be adjusted as you go along but starting too high is almost as bad as starting too low.


    I hope this helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author Brett2000
      Hi,

      I should mention here, one huge advantage of designing in XSitePro is that you have the option of designing the template only (for a lower fee), and then letting the client add their content to the pages.

      This is one reason I've switched over to this type of development work as a supplement. It lets the client get started for a much lower price, and you still look good. Of course, you can only do this if you are designing with Template Editor software (such as XSitePro), and/or WordPress - which also let's you do that, but to a much lesser extent.
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