The Internet is here to stay much to the disgruntlement of libraries, newspapers and phone book companies. Children learn not only how to reference books, magazines and encyclopedias but also websites in the reports they turn into their teachers. News papers have been hit hard not only by web sites carrying the news for any viewer but also by social networking sites that make everyone a reporter. Phone books are becoming a thing of the past when people can simply google a business name or industry with a city to find a location, a map and a phone number. A website has become imperative. Unfortunately, most businesses do not understand the cost of building a website. It is important to understand what it takes to build even the simplest of websites.
Simple websites that carry a business name, location, contact information as well as information about the business are fairly quick and simple to put on the internet. Anyone with necessary skill set can download an open source free template, modify the contents and upload it into a directory at a hosting company. Point the domain name registrar’s nameservers to the hosting company nameservers and tada a website is born. Bear in mind that these types of websites are bare bones and provided all content is provided will take 4-8 hours to modify and upload. You should expect to pay appropriately for the required skills. Expect more than minimum wage but not top programmer prices. Even at $10 per hour it’s an $80 website. Be aware that this type of work will probably range from $15 - $25 per hour. Budget a minimum of $200 for the project. Do not expect the website to collect emails or have a form that a site visitor can fill out.
Also be prepared to have all written content in text files ready for copying and pasting into pages by the developer. You should not expect a developer to write your content for you. If you do, expect to pay for the time at a higher rate. If there are any additional pictures needed for the website, have them ready and tell the web designer exactly what page they need to be placed on and with what page. For $200.00 you are not paying someone to think for you. You should also not expect anyone to work more than 8 hours on a project of this size, nor expect free changes to the position and content on the website. After all, you wouldn’t expect a painter to come back and paint your house a different color for free just because you didn’t like the color you originally picked out.
What if you want a unique layout for your website? There are two options. The first is to purchase exclusive rights to a template on places like Templatemonster.com The key is to remember that the template prices can be quite high depending on how many times it has already been purchased for download. As of today, a full site with no downloads previously purchased is selling for $2850.00 while downloading without an exclusive license is $63.00. On the other hand you can pay a professional web designer to create a mockup in Photoshop and then hand code it for the layout. Depending on skill and how many changes you make to the layout, expect it to take 8-16 hours to mockup the layout and hand code it. It may take longer for a less experienced css and html coder. In either case, expect to pay anywhere from $35.00 to $75 per hour. The amount you pay is in direct proportion to the designer’s skill level. The better they are, the more expensive the hourly rate. Remember that an experienced coder can finish coding faster than a less experienced coder.
Be aware that at this point, your content has not been included in the design. Adding content will take the additional 8 hours for a simple website consisting of 5-10 pages, providing you supply all content and graphics. You can of course have the web designer write your content. Writing and formatting good quality content describing your business would take anywhere from 1-3 hours per page. A custom, exclusive layout with 5-10 pages of content would cost anywhere from $400 for a very basic design with your supplied content up to over $3000.00 for a complex custom layout with content written by the web designer. The total man hours worked may be from 16 hours to over 50 hours worked.
At this point you have a website that tells people what you do and how to call you, drive to your location and email you. If you want them to submit information at the website that gets emailed to you, that requires another skill set. A web developer will program a form that submits its contents to a program on the computer where the website lives. This program will put the contents of the form into an email, call up an email server computer to mail the contents directly to you. Depending on the server and potentially available free open source scripts the web developer may use one or build a newer safer script that cleans the entered form contents so hackers cannot take control of the website’s server. This takes skills that are not always present in every web programmer. Expect to pay anywhere from $20 to $120 per hour depending on the skill level of the programmer. Always remember you get what you pay for. Programming a simple form that collects less than 4 pieces of information should take 2-4 hours depending on the complexity of the questions. A simple form would be $80.
Of course websites can do a lot more than present information or capture information to send to an email. Any time a web site owner wants to capture visitor content or input and edit content on the website it requires more programming and a place to store the information. Storage is done in a database like MySql or Microsoft SQL Server. Both work well on the internet even though they are not the only data storage possibilities. Good database design is an art form all by itself.
If you want content of any sort stored, it must be stored in a database. You will need to account for a page to insert the data, one to edit data and one to view the data. This is the simplest of explanations. It does not consider security of any sort. To create a single table of information in a database with the required insert, edit, and view pages requires 2-8 hours of work, based on a very simple amount of data. Any data that repeats for a field or requires the site to attach it to any other data would require additional tables and additional programming.
Expect to pay $35 to $120 or more per hour depending on the programmer’s skill level. Many times a highly skilled programmer will accomplish the development faster and cheaper than a beginning level programmer. While it would be easy to say you could expect ot pay a specific amount based on your expectations of how data will be collected, edited and retrieved, it is not always that easy. Many other factors and calculations can affect the internal work done on the data in a database. Correctly programming a solution can affect its stability, security and speed. It pays to use capable programmers. Each project will require careful planning before the actual programming occurs.
The alternative that fits most small businesses is to use a previously developed Content Management System or an Ecommerce shopping cart package. Many Content Management Systems come with an ecommerce cart preinstalled while others have modules that need to be carefully installed. There is a wide array of Content Management Systems available both commercially and as open source projects. In either case, modifications take a skilled programmer. While Open Source projects are attractive, modifications can take time. Simply changing the way a current function operates can take a considerable amount of code and database modification. Implementing a new template can require a programmer to open multiple code files while making modifications.
The cost of template modifications and/or how the application runs is impossible because time is relative to the skill set of the developer, the codebase of the project and the database structure. The more capable the programmer, the quicker the project will be completed but also the more expensive the hourly rate of the programmer. Another aspect to consider is the familiarity the programmer has with the content management system or ecommerce shopping cart. Generally customizations can run from $2000.00 and up depending on the requirements of the project.
The cost of a project can be miniscule compared to the potential ROI even based on the numbers presented here. Most experienced web design companies let go of clients who balk at paying out a few thousand dollars. The reasoning is simple. If a client cannot afford a few thousand dollars they will not be able to market the website to get the necessary returns. A $2000.00 website with appropriate monthly marketing could net $10,000/month in income. Are you ready to spend a minimum of $3000.00 and have a monthly marketing budget of $200 - $300?