Websites, how much do you expect to pay?

[accountancyextra]

I see the tech we provide as the easy bit in one sense. Wrestling down what clients really need and helping them create something of value is the challenge. We're just completing a 'simple website' and we are at over 150 hours and counting. I would expect a bottom feeding web co to look at the finished project and say "we would have charged £99.99 for that you were ripped off mate" because they didn't see the whole picture.

It's like people who ridicule logos and say they could have done it in 10 minutes, utterly clueless.

Just my two cents.

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Well said!!!

 

[pete_m]

I see the tech we provide as the easy bit in one sense. Wrestling down what clients really need and helping them create something of value is the challenge. We're just completing a 'simple website' and we are at over 150 hours and counting. I would expect a bottom feeding web co to look at the finished project and say "we would have charged £99.99 for that you were ripped off mate" because they didn't see the whole picture.

It's like people who ridicule logos and say they could have done it in 10 minutes, utterly clueless.

Yeah, absolutely. The actual technical development of a decent website (or decent logo, or whatever) is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[woodss]

I especially like the part about the £3,000 blog website. Heh.

Nah I'd just charge it out to someone else who'd do it cheaper than me, and pocket the difference. Ka-ching!

 

[Cabling Engineer London]

Ahem,

That's really an unfair question to post. How much largely depends on the nature of your business and how competitive your marketplace is. I'm no expert but I'd expect an estate agents website with a database, full content management system, image gallery and portal feeds to cost more than my site which is a free template theme from blogger!

 

[woodss]

In all seriousness, and without the debate degenerating into a slanging match, it seems you're offering the online version of an "off the shelf" website. While that is absolutely fine for some, for others it is wholly lacking.

You cannot possibly extrapolate the satisfaction of your clients to the conclusion that web development is dying and not required, simply due to the fact that you personally would be unable to provide more bespoke services, either due to a lack of knowledge and ability, or even wanting to.

It's fine to build a business which provides a basic service but a basic service won't cater for those with higher aspirations for their business - and that's when real development kicks in. As well as real prices.

*Please* don't kid yourself otherwise. Aside from anything else you'll be denying yourself a decent living by devaluing your own service.

By the way, what happens to you when a developer decides to offer Wordpress installations for half of your price? What if that same developer CAN perform necessary updates and develop bespoke plugins, a service that you cannot? Bang goes your business. You're limiting yourself (and your clients) to what you know, on the assumption that there will always be something you can just slot into place. Risky.

Example: I can easily do your Wordpress installations. Can you build bespoke stuff to compete with me if I decide to do that? Hope so.

 

[Graemem]

Ahem,

That's really an unfair question to post. How much largely depends on the nature of your business and how competitive your marketplace is. I'm no expert but I'd expect an estate agents website with a database, full content management system, image gallery and portal feeds to cost more than my site which is a free template theme from blogger!

It's really an open question, it's just to see how people value the website they want and how their valuation stands up.

In all seriousness, and without the debate degenerating into a slanging match, it seems you're offering the online version of an "off the shelf" website. While that is absolutely fine for some, for others it is wholly lacking.

You cannot possibly extrapolate the satisfaction of your clients to the conclusion that web development is dying and not required, simply due to the fact that you personally would be unable to provide more bespoke services, either due to a lack of knowledge and ability, or even wanting to.

It's fine to build a business which provides a basic service but a basic service won't cater for those with higher aspirations for their business - and that's when real development kicks in. As well as real prices.

*Please* don't kid yourself otherwise. Aside from anything else you'll be denying yourself a decent living by devaluing your own service.

By the way, what happens to you when a developer decides to offer Wordpress installations for half of your price? What if that same developer CAN perform necessary updates and develop bespoke plugins, a service that you cannot? Bang goes your business. You're limiting yourself (and your clients) to what you know, on the assumption that there will always be something you can just slot into place. Risky.

Example: I can easily do your Wordpress installations. Can you build bespoke stuff to compete with me if I decide to do that? Hope so.

Like I said earlier, I don't plan on offering cheap wordpress sites forever, I won't be doing it much longer at all. I'm working on a new idea that will use prebuilt software with plugins/modules idea but still offer bespoke high quality websites. The cheap wordpress websites is just to fill time really.

I just don't think theres a need to build a bespoke solution for every client and to do so isn't giving them the best service. Why not capture these small clients when they're starting out with their basic website then be there when they need to grow and do something bespoke?

 

[woodss]

You're assuming I don't. They're bread and butter.... you then sell them the bespoke stuff when they need it, something you can't provide.

 

[Graemem]

You're assuming I don't. They're bread and butter.... you then sell them the bespoke stuff when they need it, something you can't provide.

Told you earlier that wasn't true, I think your just trying to insult me here...

HTML, CSS (HTML5, CSS3)
PHP, MySQL
Javascript/AJAX, (I'd list jQuery but that's hardly a skill)
Java/C

Could easily pick up any other language if I had a need/want too. I run/set up my own servers, so I'm pretty capable when something goes wrong here too.

You're assuming because I do cheap websites I don't know anything, not true at all.

I'm not trying to argue with you here, in fact a lot of what you've said in this thread has been quite interesting and useful.