Standard Web Design Prices

[dansbanners]

Hi,

Are there some typical or standard web design prices? Such as $50 per page or $25 per banner or whatever it is?

Please advise. I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

[dansbanners]

Hello everyone,

Seeing that there's been no reply to this thread, is that an implication that there really aren't any "standard web design prices"?

If that's the case, then where could I get some input or ideas on how much to charge a customer for my web work?

I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

[Wassercrats]

I did an advanced search for the phrase "should I charge" in the Web Design and Content forum at webhostingtalk.com (http://www.webhostingtalk.com). There were lots of results.

In programming, some beginners charge dirt cheap rates last I heard. Web design would be even cheaper. Basically, nothing's too low for a beginner. I didn't read the replies at webhostingtalk.com though.

[Matt]

You charge what you can, based on your experience, your confidence, what the market will bear, and whether it'll pay the bills. I think the more important decision is whether to charge on a per item basis (i.e per page), per project, or per hour (you didn't specify). Sometimes you price projects high if you think it is going to be a hassle to work with a client. Sometimes you price projects low if a client is easy to work with, passes you a lot of work, and/ or always pays on time. If things are slow you might take on a lower end project that you would normally pass up. If you're busy, you take the better opportunities.

[McDuff]

In several European countries, the practice is that, on their website, web designers offer a "basic web site package", around 6 web pages including a contact form and some other things (often also one year web hosting). They then show you rates for further work like more pages, adding forums, advanced web design, making websites SE friendly, etc, etc. Prices are mostly a mix of work paid per hour and a rate for the additional pages.

In short, they lure you with a cheap basic package, and then you start "paying through the nose". The difficulty is in finding out which designers are amateurs good in the basic things but a disaster in the follow-up and the real McCoy for a reasonable price.

A basic 6-page website without hosting would probably cost here around 250-350 EUR ($ 300 - $ 450, thanks to a lousy exchange rate). Work and extra pages start at $20 a page or per hour, for forum management and other complicated stuff both the hours and the rate per hour and skyrocket.

[esc]

Hi McDuff,

The prices you give in your posting are far to low for Europe. These are no real prices, perhaps if you work with off shore companies in third world countries with very low income, or you are a schoolboy or student and earn pocket money and do not rely on you income.

If you speak a little German, have a look at gulp.de and use their hourly rate calculator (http://www.gulp.de/kb/tools/money.html) for existing projects from their database. If I enter ‘IT allgemein’ (general) and ‘web design’ it shows a rate between € 60 and € 70 with a somewhat increasing trend over the last 10 years for freelancer and companies doing professional web design & development. This is also my experience here in Austria.

Of course there’re a lot of factors which impact your calculation, as complexity and quality of output, size of the contract, etc., if you do design and development or just enter content into a CMS, is it a fixed price project or are you working on budget, what is the communication overhead, etc.

Normally you have two constraints to watch in your calculation, namely what is the highest price the market will support and what is the lowest price you can afford to work for.

If you are an adult professional trained person in a central European country you probably need € 1.500 to € 2.000 for your living per month, probably more, if you have family. With this income you will be on the lower end of the income scale. If you are self employed double this to compensate for your taxes and other costs which you will have by running your business. Then watch the rate at which you can produce billable work. You naturally cannot bill every hour of your work. You have to work on your bookkeeping, care for your equipment, train yourself on new technologies, etc. etc. Just write down every minute of your work, what you probably need to do anyway and do calculations (Joel Spolsky (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/) recently had a discussion in his blog on how to do this and how to calculate good estimates for projects). Let’s assume 50% billable work. If you further assume 160 hours per months you get a minimal rate of € 50 per hour.

If you can add a further web page to an existing web site within one hour, this will be the price of a single additional page. But do not forget the time for communication with your customer, proof reading, perhaps image manipulation (resizing, cropping, etc.). Add time for the average errors you will encounter, eventually for link checking. Do new content elements show up which are not in your design for now and you have to extend your CSS, eventually have to create some new micro formats? If you can do this within one hour, € 50 for an additional page will be the lower limit.

Erich

[McDuff]

Hi Erich,

You are hitting the snag we always get caught in right-on. Working in the Czech Republic, everybody things we still should work for peanuts, which I don't like as daily food :wink:.

Seriously, real top professionals are expensive and in EU projects or for bigger companies, you can charge the amounts you mention. Unfortunately for us small or not full-time designers (but good for small companies or single entrepreneurs) there are enough acceptable designers out there who will do the job for the basic prices I mentioned.

Like said, the basic site will cost you 300-500 EUR, but a decent site for an "SME" (small-medium enterprise) will quickly set you back anywhere between around 1000 - 2000 EUR (without flash intro, but who need those).

I personally would not pay more than that for a site unless it had a very well worked-out design including forum and/or shopping cart (and then prices really start fly).