Looking to get a website designed

[Scientist]

Does anyone know roughly how much it costs ($$) to get a website up and running? The website doesn't need to be too complicated, just a place that clients can come and see what services I offer. I also want it to be 'google-able'

Also, any referals for someone who can do a good job at this?

Thanks.

[GroceryBagHead]

Well it really depends. It depends on what exactly you want and who you going to hire to do the job. If it's something fairly simple expect to pay anywhere from $100 to $500 for a quality work.

I'm currently looking for fulltime employment as a webdesigner/developer (just finished my degree) so I'm sitting at home at moment. If you want you can PM me, maybe I can be of help.

[Sanhedralite]

www.onyxservers.com (http://)

[Div]

Check out some of the freelance websites (like elance.com). You should be able to get a basic brochure site for under $300.

[Canucklehead]

Sounds like what you want is a "static" webpage. Kind of like a brochure but online instead correct?

For it to be google-able do you mean
1. easily found when someone does a google search, or
2. your site should be searchable

If you meant 1. - then you should take a look at the keywords that relate to your service and make sure that it is included in meta tags (http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/mk-metas.html) - this is pretty easy to do as you can see.

If you meant 2. - bit more difficult but not impossible.

You're looking at about $300-$500 per page. If you can supply all the pictures/text/logos and rough layout it will save you money 'cuz you're saving the web designer time.

The recent school grad sounds like a good bet - give the student some "resume-able" experience and you get a RFD!

[gmark2000]

http://www.designoutpost.com/

You set the price you want to pay, then a series of designers compete for your business. It cheapens the value of the design industry but you can see the results (http://www.designoutpost.com/forums/) are terrific in many cases. Designers overseas can do things so cheaply.

I used this site to purchase a logo.

[Aquanaut]

Hi there,

If you are okay doing some of the work yourself, web templates are a very cost-efficient and professional solution. There are many companies offering templates, and you should be able to purchase a non-exclusive template for about $50-60. FYI, I used the folllowing company: http://www.templatemonster.com/

You'll also need web hosting and maybe domain name registration. I'm sure there is a lot of information about these somewhere on RFD.

[formalentity]

Ygpm :cheesygri

[lindmar]

Hi there,

If you are okay doing some of the work yourself, web templates are a very cost-efficient and professional solution. There are many companies offering templates, and you should be able to purchase a non-exclusive template for about $50-60. FYI, I used the folllowing company: http://www.templatemonster.com/

You'll also need web hosting and maybe domain name registration. I'm sure there is a lot of information about these somewhere on RFD.

template monster sucks. The sites are lame and outdated. If you need some help I can help. Let me know.

[weales]

Some things to consider when meeting a designer or design firm.

1. Ask them how many years they have done JUST web design. If they mislead and answer "I have 15 years in marketing" and try to tie that in with web design, forget them.

2. Ask for thier portfolio. If they have none, laugh, give them the finger and walk away.

3. Ask them if the billing they do is hourly or if they do it as a package. If you hear $100/hour, don't run away, ask them how much time it will take. Package deals in the long run can be a good thing. Some will include maintance on the site for x months/year.

4. Have your content done before hand or expect a very unhappy designer who can't spell worth **** or expect to bend over as they'll charge you a lot of money for being a copyrighter and still have spelling/grammar mistakes.

5. if #4 applies to you, find someone who is a copyrighter or if a design firm, see if they have a copyrighter inhouse who ONLY DOES COPYRIGHTING.

6. RFD'ers who say they'll help you out can be a good thing.

All I can think of and yes I am a designer with 10 years under my belt and no I won't ask you if you want a $10 dollah website :|

[cdnNick]

I'll throw my 2 cents in, weales brings up some very good points. Especially, the one about having your content ready to go. It makes the planning and designing much easier.

I have a client that I have been chasing around for 2 weeks to get some info out of them and I have not received a thing. Normally, I would not charge for communicating with the client but its at the point that I have to.

A simple site can be created in a 1 or 2 if you know what you want and can explain exactly what it is to the designer.

Not too much good comes out of using templatemonsters services. Most of their sites are poorly coded and can be used many many times unless you pay for the unique price.

[tragu]

A full custom static (no programming) website with up to 10 pages can cost you anywhere from $500-$1000. On the other hand, you can get just a custom layout designed by a professional for less than $250. Once you have the layout, you can add pages as you need. To do this, the layout has to be flexible. Templates are usually not flexible.

Furthermore, don't go for a website that has fancy animations or heavy graphics. Go for a simple and clean website, where you can present information about your services effectively. After all, web is an information medium.

By the way, don't just spend all of your budget on creating your website. You need to maintain your website. You also need to promote it to get results from your website.

I hope that helps.

Best regards,
Thuva

[Spidey]

I design websites for small companies as well.

My link below has more details and my portfolio if interested

[fantom]

All I can think of and yes I am a designer with 10 years under my belt and no I won't ask you if you want a $10 dollah website :|

Most importantly, try not to fall into the "years of experience" trap...

I saw some web designers advertised here that have been in business for 5-10 years, and they are still stuck in the past... their designs and coding is great, according to 1999 standards. Search engine marketing and optimization? What was that again...?

Someone might have 10 years of experience on the surface, but they might just have 1 year of experience repeated 10 times (they've been doing the same thing over and over for 10 years)... ask them what have they accomplished for their clients, how well did they get the job done, testimonials from clients confirming that, etc.

And beware of the ones that charge per hour or per page or whatever... it's a matter of providing a right value and solution at an agreed cost, regardless of the number of pages or hours supposedly spent on the project ;)

With that said, if you're looking to spend less than $500 on this website, I cannot help you.

[Spidey]

Most importantly, try not to fall into the "years of experience" trap...

I saw some web designers advertised here that have been in business for 5-10 years, and they are still stuck in the past... their designs and coding is great, according to 1999 standards. Search engine marketing and optimization? What was that again...?

Someone might have 10 years of experience on the surface, but they might just have 1 year of experience repeated 10 times (they've been doing the same thing over and over for 10 years)... ask them what have they accomplished for their clients, how well did they get the job done, testimonials from clients confirming that, etc.

And beware of the ones that charge per hour or per page or whatever... it's a matter of providing a right value and solution at an agreed cost, regardless of the number of pages or hours supposedly spent on the project ;)

With that said, if you're looking to spend less than $500 on this website, I cannot help you.

I on the onther hand can. ;)

[ranny3]

Hey

A friend and I own Lucid Graphics & Printing in Montreal (www.lucidgp.com)... a basic site will cost ~350$ (something like www.bumperfixpro.com)

We can also print you basic stuff to setup your small business, ie business cards 500 for 45$ full color, 1000 for 60$. Actually there isn't a minimum, you can print 250 if u want.

Anyway hope this isn't considered spam etc, just trying to help out. We are small and we tailor our business towards other small businesses.

thanks!

[DaFonz]

First off, I am no longer in the industry, but I've worked on sites ranging from small restaurant sites to large multinational corporations so here's my advice to you

You get exactly what you pay for. Sometimes you may get lucky and find an amazing deal, but if you pay $500, then expect to have $500 worth of work done. Without knowing more about your requirements, I would say the minimum cut off for quality work is $1000+ if you go with a professional. This does not take into consideration going with a student looking to build a portfolio or overseas work.

Watch out for overseas companies. As with everything, there are good ones and there are bad ones. I was looking to develop a custom module for a site i was working on (one person's work) and I got this stupid quote from an indian company that involved a project manager, a lead programmer and two additional programmers. Their portfolio also looked like ass. Suffice to say, they did not get the contract. Again, you'll find good and bad.


Have an idea of what content you will want on the site. The good developers will work with you to flesh it out, but it helps to have a goal in mind. Take care of your copy writing yourself, but get someone else to read it over. Typoes are *very* unprofessional. Also keep in mind that for web, you in general will want to keep it short and punchy. People have small attention spans.

So how do you find a good developer?

Look at their portfolio. If their sites look like this..
http://www.mysteriesofthemind.com/ScienceOfBeing.htm
http://www.robhand.com/availpub.htm

.. then you likely want to look elsewhere.

For examples of good websites look here
http://webstandardsawards.com/

Insist on semantically correct html (seperation of style from content). You don't need to know what it is, just need to know about these advantages to you:

- Your site is accessible in a wider range of devices (IE, PDAs) by simply changing a stylesheet
- Your site is accessible to more people (IE, blind people, people with poor eyesight, etc etc) thus you can reach a larger client base
- Your site is indexed by the search engines better because they can see the content clearly defined better... for example.. (replace the [] with brackets )

Bad - non semantic




Text




vs

Good - semantic



Text




- It is cheaper to maintain in the long run as there is less markup to go through
- Pages load faster. The stylesheet is cached and thus you have lower bandwidth costs (they are negligible, but nevertheless there)

Easy way to ask potential designers (one of many criteria) - do you use tables for layout? If they say yes, then walk away.

If you want to check yourself, go to a recent web site in the portfolio, view > source on a page that isn't likely to have tabular data (say.. a welcome page). If you see a bunch of td, tr, and table tags.. walk away

Ok, i think most everything else has been covered by others.

In case you are wondering - most of the sites that have been linked in this thread are using (poor) techniques from the 90s and are not even close to what a modern web site should look like both from an aesthetic and/or a coding point of view.

edit: as someone else mentoned, work out a budget for maintanence of your site as well as advertising

[Padriac Filch]

DaFonz - You made many good points but I don't think the statement about tables is the best advice.

Easy way to ask potential designers - do you use tables for layout? If they say yes, then walk away. If you want to check yourself, view > source on a page that isn't likely to have tabular data (say.. a welcome page). If you see a bunch of td, tr, and table tags.. walk away

With that logic (view->source->table tags (table,td,tr)) people would stop visiting RFD, NHL.com, Google.com, etc...

[GroceryBagHead]

DaFonz - You made many good points but I don't think the statement about tables is the best advice.
With that logic (view->source->table tags (table,td,tr)) people would stop visiting RFD, NHL.com, Google.com, etc...

That is not the logic DaFonz is proposing. Nobody will deny that there are a number of popular sites that still rely on tables for layout. The point is that no new sites should have that. So if your designer still uses tables for layouts he is merely a wannabe and really shouldn't do any webdesign/development professionally.

[siriuskao]

That is not the logic DaFonz is proposing. Nobody will deny that there are a number of popular sites that still rely on tables for layout. The point is that no new sites should have that. So if your designer still uses tables for layouts he is merely a wannabe and really shouldn't do any webdesign/development professionally.

True, but css table-less layout still requires some hack to be cross-browser compatible (IE). However IMO it is a good indicator for the buyer to use to evaluate the skill level of the designer.

[Padriac Filch]

I wasn't disagreeing with DaFonz about asking the developer questions prior to selection. I also agree that css table-less layouts have many advantages.

However, DaFonz also said that you could check for yourself by using View->Source and that if you saw tables tags... walk away. I was only suggesting that this should not be your only measuring tool for selecting your developer. As GroceryBagHead said, you could be looking at sites that have been around for some time or that have not been updated to take advantage of the css features.

[ Two cents thrown in :) ]

[DaFonz]

Sorry - meant it as a fast way to check out recent sites in the developers portfolio.. guess I should have mentioned that. Post updated

[masterhapposai]

tables should be used for tabular data

they are XHTML compliant afterall

a good example would be a library list of books. I'd recommend they use tables. Of course, your website may not have a long list of data.

So keep in mind, sites like NHL will have tables for player stats, but if you catch them using it layout of the website(I haven't checked, but that may be the case) then their designer is unprofessional/behind.

[ilya]

Excellent post by dafonz. As a webdesigner, I can vouch that he's right about what to ask of potential designers. I would add that a professional webdesigner must build websites that conform to web standards (as set out by W3C). If they don't know what you're talking about when you ask them about this, to quote dafonz, walk away.

[DaFonz]

Not just W3C, but even section 508 and WAI accessability standards. Section 508 is mandated in the states, but it's still a good idea to try to follow.

[fantom]

Not just W3C, but even section 508 and WAI accessability standards. Section 508 is mandated in the states, but it's still a good idea to try to follow.

Yep, DaFonz knows what he's talking about.

On the other hand, as much as I hate to admit it, you could also walk away with an ugly/simplistic/coded in 1998 technology website and a whole lot of profit from it... if you know a thing or two and have some knowledge of online marketing and promotions ;) Then again, not many people know how...

And you definitely get what you pay for... A good designer who understands value (value of his own time and other people's time) won't even bother with clients whose budget is low (in my case $500) even for the simplest 2-3 page website, because it is not worth the time spent in all the research, background investigation work and then design, programming and customization, plus the copywriting... or paying the employees to do that.

Plus there's no point in rushing it, slapping on something real fast and doing a half-assed job because then nobody wins - client is not satisfied, designer is not satisfied because client is not satisfied and such client cannot provide him a decent testimonial/referral/help his business grow, etc, etc.