How much is appropriate for a professional website?

MyBusinez.com · 03-02-2014 01:27PM #1

Hi All,

I am currently redoing my business plan for a new service. I need to do some market research and find out what price business owners/ entrepreneurs think is a reasonable cost for a website?

So I need some advice on how much you would be willing to pay for one or any of the below:

1. 5-10 page Website with content management system
2. 5-10 page Responsive website with content management system
3. Website with CMS and eCommerce system
4. eCommerce system with sales reports including VAT, product cost, product price, profit on each product, total vat this week/ month, total profit this week/ month, low product supply notifications, weekly supplier orders based on low product supplies.
5. Website analytics, website conversions analytics, website layout changes based on website conversions analytics.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank You.

Peterdalkey · 03-02-2014 01:49PM

Item 4. We pay €73 per month including hosting and support.

MyBusinez.com · 03-02-2014 02:03PM

Thanks Peter. That is an interesting price. Can I ask, do you get the same features? - such as VAT price on product, Product cost, product price, profit on product. All these figures in our system are calculated automatically and produced in a report which can be exported. Is this included?

Thanks for your help.

Peterdalkey · 03-02-2014 02:07PM

W use the "Enterprise Park" product for 2 eCommerce sites . Click http://www.bluepark.co.uk/ecommerce-software.html and you will see the full feaure list.

MyBusinez.com · 03-02-2014 02:11PM

Thanks for the help Peter.

Graham · 03-02-2014 02:24PM

Slightly O/T but where are you hosting you website that it takes 13 - 23 seconds for a page to load?

MyBusinez.com · 03-02-2014 02:31PM

Hi Graham,
Are you asking me? I just tested my website and it takes 1.8 seconds to load.

Peterdalkey · 03-02-2014 02:33PM

http://www.krmwebdesign.ie/ takes me about 20 sec to load homepage fully!

Graham · 03-02-2014 02:38PM

MyBusinez.com wrote: »

Hi Graham,
Are you asking me? I just tested my website and it takes 1.8 seconds to load.

Yup, you might clear your cache and give it another go. It was so slow I opened another browser window and went to a different site to make sure it wasn't a connection issue. Just to be absolutely sure I did a couple of tests at GTMetrix to rule out my ISP completely:

Homepage 23.17s 1.82MB 114 total requests. YSlow Grade 67%
Package-3-1 19.87s 1.16MB 87 total requests YSlow Grade 69%

You might want to give your hosting provider a nudge.

gctest50 · 03-02-2014 02:50PM

MyBusinez.com wrote: »

Hi Graham,
Are you asking me? I just tested my website and it takes 1.8 seconds to load.

Takes about 25sec - clear the cache on your browser

Use something like this :

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

then test again

MyBusinez.com · 03-02-2014 03:00PM

It is on an old Windows 2003 hosting server that is almost full. I am moving it to CentOS soon. I am moving all of my sites to a new CentOS 6 server.

Graham · 03-02-2014 03:02PM

Do it sooner, in the mean time go and sign up for a cloudflare account. The free package is great and it'll take you about 5 minutes to set it up.

You'll have the added bonus of being able to tell your customers that you're also deploying the latest in content delivery network technology.

MyBusinez.com · 03-02-2014 03:15PM

I just tested client sites, which are on the CentOS server, on Gtmetrix.com and they are coming up as 5.39secs and 2.63 secs respectively. I know there is an issue with the old server which is why all my new clients go on my new CentOS server.

But back to the topic. Anyone got any input regarding the original topic?

Graham · 03-02-2014 03:52PM

It's always tough trying to package something that is consistent only in its inconsistency.

Based on a tweaked template design rather than a clean-sheet website here's what I know people have paid (not to be mistaken for what I would pay) or what I know is being offered as a package in the market already.

1. 5-10 page Website with content management system
€150 - €700
2. 5-10 page Responsive website with content management system
€200 - €950
3. Website with CMS and eCommerce system
€300 - €7000
4. eCommerce system with sales reports including VAT, product cost, product price, profit on each product, total vat this week/ month, total profit this week/ month, low product supply notifications, weekly supplier orders based on low product supplies.
€300 - €7000 (are there many COTS solutions for package 3 that don't include what you have in package 4)
5. Website analytics, website conversions analytics, website layout changes based on website conversions analytics.
€100 - €xxxx depending if it's a one off exercise or ongoing.

The biggest problem you're going to have is separating yourself from the bedroom/pocket money offerings on one side and the site builders on the other. Every man and his dog is coming out of college/FAS with the 'skills' to string together a couple of header tags and cobble together a basic WordPress website. On the other hand, site builders like Wix/Weebly,Squarespace are enabling someone with little more than basic word processing skills to put together a reasonably respectable (if generic) looking website themselves.

To a degree your pricing will also be restricted by how you intend to market your services. If you're planning to utilise the small-ads/classifieds then I'd be looking at the bottom end of the price scales I've given.

03-02-2014 04:44PM

At last...something myself and Graham can agree on....I agree with his pricing as I have seen those variances in prices.

Bearing in mind a Business will supply you with all the text/images they want on their website.

1> In my experience a lot of the better websites being offered out there are tweaked templates (HTML or Wordpress Templates).
Also a lot of Reputable Web Design Companies use them.
A 5-10 page website with CMS would take me 2 days and is worth €600 (incl domain & 1 yr hosting)

2> Responsive Design is also built into those Templates so until Business people actually get savy to this then it is a personal choice as to if you charge extra for something that won't cost you more to implement.
A 5-10 page responsive website with CMS would take me 2 days and is worth €600 (incl domain & 1 yr hosting)

3> This is a difficult one because Shops will need you to
either train the Business to update their own products/prices
An eCommerce website with CMS would take me 1 week and is worth €1,000 (incl domain & 1 yr hosting)

or

charge for updating those yourself.

I never charge anyone for a job based on per hour....I base it on the job and aim to have it finished within my timeframe.

Graham · 03-02-2014 05:00PM

EIREHotspur wrote: »

At last...something myself and Graham can agree on.

It had to happen eventually, but twice in one day.....

EIREHotspur wrote: »

1> In my experience a lot of the better websites being offered out there are tweaked templates (HTML or Wordpress Templates).

Agreed, for an SME with a very limited budget, a template based site can yield results that a clean-sheet design couldn't get near for the price. The downside to this is clients can grow to expect custom creations for a similar budget.

professore · 03-02-2014 05:06PM

EIREHotspur wrote: »

2> Responsive Design is also built into those Templates so until Business people actually get savy to this then it is a personal choice as to if you charge extra for something that won't cost you more to implement.
A 5-10 page responsive website with CMS would take me 2 days and is worth €600 (incl domain & 1 yr hosting)

Most of the responsive stuff on templates is very poor - in WordPress for example many of them styles your site like a blog whether or not it is one or not. There is a huge difference in time between uploading a stock template and banging in a logo and a few images than taking a custom design and applying it to a custom template. Even more so when responsive design is taken into account.

Graham · 03-02-2014 05:12PM

professore wrote: »

Most of the responsive stuff on templates is very poor - in WordPress for example many of them styles your site like a blog whether or not it is one or not. There is a huge difference in time between uploading a stock template and banging in a logo and a few images than taking a custom design and applying it to a custom template. Even more so when responsive design is taken into account.

Many of the premium(i.e. not free) WordPress templates on the market are responsive out of the box, they only stop being responsive when someone embeds a 5000 pixel width logo at the top. Not many of them look like recognisable blogs either. Where are you looking for templates?

Naturally there's a huge difference between a custom site and a template derived one. For a credible custom site, add a 0 to the price bands I quoted earlier.

03-02-2014 05:17PM

professore wrote: »

Most of the responsive stuff on templates is very poor - in WordPress for example many of them styles your site like a blog whether or not it is one or not. There is a huge difference in time between uploading a stock template and banging in a logo and a few images than taking a custom design and applying it to a custom template. Even more so when responsive design is taken into account.

Damn...finally agreed with Graham and now have to disagree with you professore.
I used to hate everything Wordpress up until the past 6 months or so...and used to think the way you do....I thought Wordpress was straight laced uninspiring design....to the downright awfull.

However I have seen some Wordpress Templates that are just brilliant.

Venturing into old territory that me and Graham went back on forth on a while ago but A lot of Business people don't have a clue about what they want designwise....they might show you websites they like or tell you to stick to their brand colour scheme but they are coming to you for the expertise and just want it to look well.

Templates have a lot of flexability and you can change logos, backgrounds, banner design, widgets....there is a lot of work to adjust.
I spend a lot of time on a template if I choose to use one.

Peterdalkey · 03-02-2014 08:15PM

Having been down the road of custom build website, I would never go there again. From old frames sites in the mid 1990s to my first eCommerce site, the experiences have been pretty poor value for money from a site owner perspective.
I now use really well developed and featured proven template hosted solutions and then spend my money on graphic design on visual customisation, for eCommerce applications. I use the same web graphics guy to knock out the other info/brochure type sites. Add on a few bob on making sure they are nicely SEOd and Adwords optimised. Bobs yer uncle.. we do the rest of the updates, blogs,news etc in-house .

03-02-2014 08:43PM

Peterdalkey wrote: »

Having been down the road of custom build website, I would never go there again. From old frames sites in the mid 1990s to my first eCommerce site, the experiences have been pretty poor value for money from a site owner perspective.
I now use really well developed and featured proven template hosted solutions and then spend my money on graphic design on visual customisation, for eCommerce applications. I use the same web graphics guy to knock out the other info/brochure type sites. Add on a few bob on making sure they are nicely SEOd and Adwords optimised. Bobs yer uncle.. we do the rest of the updates, blogs,news etc in-house .

If only most Business owners in Ireland were as clued in as you Peter.

I have seen quotes from companies that would frighten you....the really sad thing about Web Design isn't only the bad design out there at extraordinary prices...it is the fact that Irish Business doesn't take their websites seriously enough.

Only newspaper/media/large organizations update their websites anywhere near as many times as it should be.

People pay a lot for the brief exchange:
"Have ye got a website"....."Oh yeah we do".

Peterdalkey · 03-02-2014 08:50PM

I genuinely feel for the good guys out there doing a really decent job in the web building space , only for their potential customers rate them on price, with no value attributed to design, quality or functionality. The big question is would I go into a business where most of the target market/customers are w*nk*rs?

If I was 30 years younger, I would get into their markets as a proper online competitor!

03-02-2014 09:00PM

Peterdalkey wrote: »

I genuinely feel for the good guys out there doing a really decent job in the web building space , only for their potential customers rate them on price, with no value attributed to design, quality or functionality. The big question is would I go into a business where most of the target market/customers are w*nk*rs?

If I was 30 years younger, I would get into their markets as a proper online competitor!

I know what your sayin...it is kind of like the argument with support your local shop v get things 30% cheaper in Dunnes or Tescos.

I don't blame the likes of yourself going with templates and then paying a guy to adapt it and add custom design elements to it...that really is the way to go and maybe in 20 years time every generation will have caught up to the Tech age with regards to Business.

The Cloud App Builder Service Websites are the big thing at the moment.

ifah · 03-02-2014 10:45PM

Just wondering where you guys put website security and pen testing ?

Do ye consider it as part of the deliverable or leave it to the client to sort out themselves after ?

As for the consumers (Peter et al.) - any thoughts ? Does it fit into your budget / online plans ?

Peterdalkey · 04-02-2014 07:08AM

We have two types of sites, eComms and info/brochure. The beauty of using hosted CMS for eComms is that the service provider does all that stuff and reminds us to keep our certs up to date!
The brochureware sites are probably too boring to attract that kind of attention. we have backup copies, so would just fix em if they got hacked. they are not mission critical.
Short answer, never really think about it !

Graham · 04-02-2014 07:33AM

Peterdalkey wrote: »

I genuinely feel for the good guys out there doing a really decent job in the web building space , only for their potential customers rate them on price, with no value attributed to design, quality or functionality.

+1 I think at the SME end of the market, web developers are being squeezed from all sides. Between the drag & drop site building services and the back-bedroom/hobby/student 'web designers' it's an incredibly tough market.

I feel really sorry for the web designers/developers that have put the time/effort/money into learning their craft and/or earning their qualifications only to discover they're being asked to tweak someone else's template for a living while having their cost model compared to someone who's offering to do the job for beer money.

Peterdalkey · 04-02-2014 10:56AM

The traditional website builder model targeting SMEs is a bust, for all the reasons stated above plus massive oversupply versus demand. SEO is on the same road. Large company opportunities are completely different.

I have spent some pretty serious dough on website design, some good, some bad and some real crap, since my first site in 1997 and yet I totally believe it is the single greatest business tool after the computer itself! The website business model is very badly damaged by poor quality/ delivery/execution/design etc and rip offs experienced by buyers over the years, kinda Y2K consultant type of stuff!

All business models have a lifespan, and the web guys need a new model/offering overhaul. If it were me, I would become a customizer/designer/reseller of a variety of platforms including a variety of well structured shop-in-a-box hosted CMS packages. Sure there will be some solutions that need bespoke custom sites, but most do not. You can often buy better and cheaper rather than making it from scratch.

Offering these with decent graphic design along with proper SEO preparation and possibly Social Media integration and a customer staff training package will make you stand apart. As business people your job is to sell the correct solution and sometimes that means educating the customer to actually understand what they really need. In this area, selling them what they may think they need can lead to tears and guess what as the expert in the field, it is your fault!!

Graham · 04-02-2014 12:47PM

Peterdalkey wrote: »

If it were me, I would become a customizer/designer/reseller of a variety of platforms including a variety of well structured shop-in-a-box hosted CMS packages. Sure there will be some solutions that need bespoke custom sites, but most do not. You can often buy better and cheaper rather than making it from scratch.

Offering these with decent graphic design along with proper SEO preparation and possibly Social Media integration and a customer staff training package will make you stand apart.

This

I can't think of anyone that does this well, or at least clearly demonstrates that they do this well.

benny306 · 04-02-2014 01:53PM

If I was just starting up an e-commerce type site the first place I would look would be here:

http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress/ecommerce/woocommerce?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sort_by=sales_count&categories=wordpress%2Fecommerce%2Fwoocommerce

Peterdalkey · 04-02-2014 01:56PM

Graham

I had to beat up on my web design guy to get him to use our chosen patform, big time. He hates the design/artistic constraints but we love the reporting, ease of upload, , emai/newsletters, tracking, auto orders customer notifications and feedback, ERP integration etc etc... and what we like/want is all that matters at the end of the day!

We had to do the top level SEO niceties including education/training seperately with another specialist SEO/CPC guy. As we are boring industrial B2B, the social media side is an also ran for us.

Graham · 04-02-2014 02:23PM

benny306 wrote: »

If I was just starting up an e-commerce type site the first place I would look would be here:

http://themeforest.net/category/wordpress/ecommerce/woocommerce?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sort_by=sales_count&categories=wordpress%2Fecommerce%2Fwoocommerce

I really like WooCommerce, as a starter platform I think it's great. Themeforest in general is probably the best of a bad lot when it comes to theme marketplaces in general. My main advice would be stick to the basic simple themes, not necessarily basic simple designs now, just themes. If you're looking at a theme with 480 different widgets and 7 billion configuration options you may as well learn html and start from scratch.

Peterdalkey wrote: »

I had to beat up on my web design guy to get him to use our chosen patform, big time. He hates the design/artistic constraints but we love the reporting, ease of upload, , emai/newsletters, tracking, auto orders customer notifications and feedback, ERP integration etc etc... and what we like/want is all that matters at the end of the day!

That doesn't surprise me. Theres a different mindset required and a certain amount of professional pride to overcome if you're used to writing your own solutions from scratch. I'm convinced that's why there's such a gap in the marketplace.

Freelance developers tend to take an ad hoc approach to service/product delivery the web development agencies almost too formal. Oddly, the delivery of mobile Apps appears to have evolved much faster with much work being won based on the delivery of an almost pre-agreed set of standard app components which are customised to the required look and feel.

How much is appropriate for a professional website?

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