Website cost

[NY_Pizza]

I like looking at the various sites that you guys have listed on the other thread … I’m getting ready to have one put together myself, and am wondering what would be a fair price to pay to get it set up. I’m looking at probably 6 - 8 pages that you can go to off of the main page - the individual who I’m thinking about using to do the job has done several others that look quite nice & professional - she’s not with a company, just does them as an indy on the side from her other job. Since she’s also a friend, neither of us seems to want to risk making the other upset by talking money. Not really looking for too many specifics, just wondering what a fair amount per page would be?

 

[Sammy-B]

Hey NY Pizza~
We had our website professionally done. It cost me $4,800.00, but was well worth it.
Our previous website was done “to save costs”, and it showed. My first website was done nearly 8 years ago.
Keep in mind, it is 2007 and nearly everyone uses the internet. In todays market, your website is almost the same as seeing your store for the first time. What kind of first impression does it make?
We felt that our website needed to give the customer roughly the same feel - a snap shot - of what our store was like.
Don’t tell the customer you have a product of the highest quality on a website that looks like you value “cheapness”.
I know many loyal customers who have ordered from our restaurant - using our website - who have never stepped in our store. They have mentioned time and time again that the quality of the website was a big reason they ordered to begin with.
Consider your website almost like a virtual store.
Just My Opinion…
Sammy B.

 

[abatardi]

Really depends on a lot of things. If she is using just downloading a template and not really coding anything (most likely) then I wouldn’t pay more than a couple hundred bucks. If there are custom graphics involved that she has to create the price moves up… If there is dynamic functionality involved that she has to code then it moves up quite a bit more.

You can browse sites like rentacoder.com and elance.com to get a better idea, but if she has done several of these before then I don’t get why it’s an issue… find one you like in her portfolio and just ask her how much she got for it and go from there.

Also, who is hosting the site, who is setting that up, and who is managing any site changes going forward? Are you responsible for all that or are you going to talk about some type of maintenance agreement also?

Edit: The $5k figure above that Sammy paid is probably close to what I would charge to do a full custom job on the side… dynamic site, layout, graphics, etc. The last project I did was for a friend was doing some very custom shopping cart functionality and database work for a wholesale site he was setting up… Took about 30 hours and the “friend” rate was $1k.

• aba