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Article:
How Much Does A Website Cost? by: Steve Lillo To receive a complementary consultation and free quote for your website project, complete our project survey form located here. As a website designer, this is often the first question that I am asked by a new client. The simple answer is that it costs whatever you are willing to spend; anywhere from free to millions of dollars. A more productive process to address the issue of cost is to answer a series of questions. What are your needs, goals and expectations? What are the needs and expectations of your site visitors, customers and clients? Is your business already established with its unique brand/identity? What is required in terms of the skills, experience and level of design? Do you want to hire a high profile design house, a medium sized design studio, a small company or a student? What can you afford to budget for your project? We'll take a look at these questions to see how they influence the cost of creating a website, look at two simple examples and give you some ideas for coming up with a budget for your project. In general, the cost for a website will be based on how long it takes for design and implementation plus any additional costs required for hardware or software. While there are certainly no hard and fast rules, the more experienced the design company, the higher their hourly rate. Generally, the more robust and complicated the site needs to be -- whether for handling large amounts of traffic, for technically sophisticated programming and database integration or for specialized images and text -- the higher the cost. What are your needs, goals and expectations? What are the needs and expectations of your site visitors, customers and clients? It's important to address what your ideas are for a website and why you want one. There may also be details or uses that you haven't considered. The needs and expectations of your target markets are also important and will also address your analysis of your competition. A good designer will support you through a process to determine what is required to achieve the results you require. PlanetLink often provides this as a consulting service with a portion of the fees applied towards the actual design work. Projects can also be implemented over time so that the costs can be spread out. The more involved the needs of the project, the greater the cost. Is your business already established with its unique brand/identity? Websites on a tight budget generally don't address this issue. It's important that your website accurately represent who you are from the perspective of 'look and feel.' If the way your business is visually and thematically represented is structured and effective, then the process of creating the imagery for your website will ideally be an extension of what already exists. If the budget allows, for businesses without a unique identity or style, often the generation of the website is an opportunity to create print materials at the same time, thus saving costs. What is required in terms of the skills, experience and level of design? Do you want to hire a high profile design house, a medium sized design studio, a small company or a student? At PlanetLink we look at the process of website creation from three perspectives; artistic/creative, technical, and marketing. A good design company will have skills and expertise in those areas. In general, the more skilled and experienced the team, the higher their rates and the higher their minimum project fees. Some design firms don't take on a project for less than $'20
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