website design considerations

How much should I spend?

The big question. First, let’s understand the basic areas that add to the cost of a website.

• Overall design
• Typesetting and content treatment
• Back-end requirements
• Overall code

Overall Design

This is the look and feel of the site, the interface, the navigation schemes. They can be basic to a ground breaking award winning design. It should be homogenous to your Corporate Standards and Marketing and Advertising. If you do not have these items firmly in place, we may need to spend more time to develop one. Many bigger companies are opting for simpler interfaces, putting more time and energy on the content. Content is King.

But, if your site does not have a lot of great content and tools, you may want to opt for a fancier interface. This is especially true if you are a new company and want to create a more memorable look and start to establish Corporate identity and branding.

Typesetting and content treatment

Again, content is King. Good writing, graphs and tables, photos, interactive items may add to the viewers experience and to build confidence. Remember, they are here for the content so put you effort into this. We can do everything form what we call a basic copy and paste, bold this and that to, really spending time reading the content, using font styles to highlight certain things, building graphs, better looking tables, etc. Generally, for most pages, the difference is about a half hour per page on the basic end to about 2 hours per page on the high end.

Backend requirements

This often is what makes a website smart. For you and the viewer. Smart forms, searches, password protected areas, interactive display of information all make a website a better visit. Yet, they are usually not cheap, running from hundreds of dollars per item to thousands of dollars per item.

Overall code

Does the site work? Any bad links or images not found. Is the site set up logically and utilize current accepted coding practices? Has the website been optimized for speed and ease of maintenance? Is it scalable. A lot of website designers may be good artists, but do they have what it takes to build a good working web site? We often cringe when we view other web designer’s work. Sloppy, shortcuts and bad practices often lead to problems down the road. We’re here to help you if you are one of these website owners. We do it all the time.

With the above factors in mind, you should then look at your competition. How good are their sites? You will want yours to be as good or better. That’s simple enough. You should also consider the potential rewards. Increase sales, less cost on printed materials be produced and mailed, and also valuable info on customers wants and habits. For some companies, just one sale makes the cost mute. We are often amazed how that a company’s website budget is less than the cost of the President of the company’s desk!

OK, some rules of thumb;

1. If your business has only a few employees and does less than 250,000/year, you should be around $800-$3,000. (Number of pages, back-end requirements, etc can affect these estimates)
2. If your business has less than 50 people, and does less than 10 million a year in sales, around $3,000 - $8,000.
3. If your business has more than 50 people, more than 10 million a year, and/or has stiff competition, consider around $12,000 to $30,000.

Again, there are many factors involved here and there is no one price that we can give. It is good that we truly understand your budget. It is not so much to “pad the bill” but to offer you what you should have that you can afford. Consider the purchase of a car, say a Jeep Grand Cherokee. They offer many models, with different capabilities ranging in price from about $28,000 to $48,000. Knowing that you want to spend around $30,000 allows us the knowledge so we do not try to sell you the model with the 6.1 Hemi engine going for about $47,000.

How long does it take?

Generally speaking, most website design projects usually take about 3 months. We have done them faster, but it requires that all your copy be ready at job start and for you to really stay on top of things. In reality most people can handle the pace. 95% of all sites we have built, that wanted a fast turnaround time did not launch on time due to the customer not getting us content and responding quickly to reviews. Consider too that we a re talking about custom work. Moving it to quickly doesn’t allow us, or you, to live with the site and design long enough to really get a long term understanding. Unfortunately, we do not have a special button that inserts brilliance. It takes time, not just brute hours onto the job, but calendar time to think and reflect about decisions.

What differences are there between web site developers?

Website designers fall into a two basic groups, front-end or back-end. Front-end designers are more interested in look and feel, corporate identity, branding, messaging, while back-end designers are more interested in the back-end applications such as ordering systems, and password protected areas as well as items like code ethics.

In reality, you need both! But, if you are looking for a stronger front-end, what people see, a front-end designer will be better. If you are looking for complicated back-end systems, then go with a back-end orientated company.

Freelancers versus Studios.

Freelancers can often give a better price than a studio. Their overhead is low. But, how long have they been doing and most importantly, how long will they be doing it. Having been in the website design business for awhile may have provided them with the business experience required to do a job properly. Things like estimation, documentation, etc. may be affected by a “newby” It is also an indication if they will be around to finish the job as well as maintain your website.

The traditional studio can be expensive. That fancy building, the model behind reception, and the fancy work stations are all being paid for by you. They also need to keep on staff more people than needed to handle immediate requests from demanding clients. They also tend to add to the bill by having a lot of meetings with a lot of staff. Hey, making a font 20% bigger on page 26 doesn’t require 4 people at $150 hour. They may also try to add on things like maintenance or copyediting that you don’t need. For back-end design companies, they may require for you to have their expensive web hosting.

Sullivan + Wolf Design is somewhat a combination of a Freelancer and full blown studio. We are a virtual company and can add talent as needs arise. This keeps our costs low. We try to avoid expensive meetings and know when to spend money and when not to. We’ve been around since 1989 and plan to be here for a long time. We have worked hard on listening to your demands and real needs and have formed a Studio that is the best of both Worlds. We hope you take the time to see the difference and why we have serviced so many companies

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