web design cost?

[cjmUK]

You could be shown a dozen URLs that people paid through the nose for but you wouldn't be able to see where the money goes. If it costs that much it's not because they have gold plated graphics and diamond-encrusted CSS, it's because there is something special under the bonnet (e-commerce, customer portal, secure back-end etc).

If you want a real world example, my company is about to issue an invitation to tender for 4 websites - all along a common theme, but with different livery for each company in the group (different skins), with a basic CMS back-end so that certain end-users can maintain the content.

Without even knowing the finer details, we are getting outline quotes in the £7k-£10k region for the base site and £1000 per variant. Just to be clear, that will buy us a blank CMS with a custom colour scheme. These companies all have their own CMS's which will take a few hours to install and configure. These figures don't include all the extras and don't include photography and some of the graphic design work we will require (mapping etc). They don't cover consultancy, training and support. They don't cover annual licence fees for the software.

If I'm such a smart developer, why don't we do it in-house? Why don't we hire some of you guys who charge £25 an hour to skin a copy of Drupal for us?

Because we want a tried and tested solution in a relatively short period of time. We will pay a lot of money if we think we can reduce risk and guarantee quality.

If you tendered for the contract, we'd want to see what you can do, but we'd also want to see that you have enough 'gravitas' [for want of a better word] to reassure us, and we'd laugh you out of the door if you said you were going to knock out some bespoke code @ £25/hr.

The bottom line is that we know that these companies are doing very little for a probably pot of £20k, but we will rest assured that they will deliver quality goods on time.

 

[cjmUK]

Seriously, what exactly were you smoking when you came up with those figures?

As I said earlier in the thread, I work with agencies (30+ people fulltime, then freelancers) who don't charge over £100 an hour. Thinking it's the norm to be charging that as an individual just isn't at all realistic.

I have specific experience of two nation disability umbrella organisations who were willing to pay £325 + VAT for a days web development work. I have work for 2 (private sector) organisations who paid £1000 and £1250 for a single days work for web developers (and these were 7 - 10 years ago). Once was a GIS specialist, the other was skilled in wavelet compression technology - each added a feature/capability to an existing website.

Furthermore, you carefully missed out my earlier posts:

I'm sorry but a 6-page website with form-to-email and a calendar should be off-the-shelf for £250-£500.

If you are doing custom work, then you can look at £500-£750 per day, but for a vanilla brochure site with no back-end work, no e-commerce... it should be off-the shelf. You re-skin it and add the customers own content and it should take less than a day.

You need to charge comparitively more for an off-the-shelf CMS (Joomla/Drupal etc) because a) they are harder to skin (in an original manner) and b) you are obviously losing follow-on work (updates etc).

If you can get more than that for these types of sites, you will be bucking the market trends - but good luck to you. Fair play if you can get the punters. But there are 000's of 'web developers' out there offering [standard] sites for peanuts; some are crap and some are cross-browser, validating, accessible sites - but the price is always the same.

Edit: If you manage to swing a longer-term gig, then obviously the client will expect you to reduce the rates accordingly.

If you really have worked with big web design agencies, are you really naive enough to believe that when they say it will be x hours at £y/hr that they really believe it will take x hours?? Of course not... you will get a product that took dozens of hours of work in total, but that was sold, re-skinned, sold, tweaked, sold again and again. You and a dozen other punters are paying for essentially the same site. That's how it becomes affordable.

 

[Mickey]

(and these were 7 - 10 years ago)

The market is very different these days, it gets harder and harder to charge big hourly/daily rates, you need to work on a project cost basis.

You also seem to have the same trouble as DJ_Jestar, you're taking a couple of reasonably high hourly/daily rates you once charged and saying that's what everyone should expect to be charging. If you really think the average freelance web designer/developer out there is charging those prices then you're dreaming.

I get the odd job at high rates too, can I/do I expect to charge them for every job? No, it's just not realistic. If I could get those sorts of rates for every project I work on, I'd be a millionaire by now.

 

[cjmUK]

The market is very different these days, it gets harder and harder to charge big hourly/daily rates, you need to work on a project cost basis.

You also seem to have the same trouble as DJ_Jestar, you're taking a couple of reasonably high hourly/daily rates you once charged and saying that's what everyone should expect to be charging. If you really think the average freelance web designer/developer out there is charging those prices then you're dreaming.

I get the odd job at high rates too, can I/do I expect to charge them for every job? No, it's just not realistic. If I could get those sorts of rates on every project I work on, I'd be a millionaire by now.

FFS! Did you actually read any of my post?

Independent developers are the bottom-feeders in this business, so they can afford to charge less; in fact, they often can't afford not to.

But if we take your 30-man agency... imagine what hourly rate they need to charge just to break even.

Developer cost: £15/hr (average)
EE NI: £2/hr
Pension (6%): £1/hr
Management factor (20%): £5+/hr
Support staff (admin/payroll etc): £3/hr
Expenses (office space, equipment, heating and lighting, etc): £10/hr (a guess)

So we are at £30-£40 per hour before we even get started. Assume that we can keep all of these guys at 80% billable time (which would be the sign of a successful company), we need to add another £10/hr. So we're now at £40-£50 per hour. Factor in profit... say 20%... and then Capital Gains Tax.... and suddenly that £75/hr figure is starting to look really quite modest.

[These figures are clearly just guesstimates]

If you are after custom work, this is what you have to pay for a software house. However, as I have already outlined, what typically happens is that the company will try to re-use old work again and again. 100 hrs to develop a product/template and 10 hrs to re-skin it for each new customer.

Whereas of course your independent developer who only wants a £15/hr take-home can charge quite a lot less, assuming a similar utilisation rate.

Out of interest, what rate do you charge and roughly what level of utilisation do you manage?

 

[Dj_Jestar]

The software house I am working at currently charge clients between £750 and £1,600 per day, per head, depending on the seniority and role of said head. We operate 7 hour working days. Bottom wrung developer (e.g. an Intern or initiate) for £750. Scrum Master claims the top spot.

 

[Dj_Jestar]

Oh, and it wasn't just a few jobs that were £100+ph for me. It was the majority of jobs, and they were over a span of 2 years. I had at least 15 hours per week (averaged out) work. I said the majority on the market were simple setups, not the majority of what I did

 

[Shoseki]

Bottom line is, I'm a techie, a programmer, I might know my way inside and out of CSS and Photoshop but it doesn't make me a great designer by a long shot. The work I did was always for business to business websites. I mostly do Business Systems Development at the moment in J2EE.

And I am on v poor money for the experience I have, but hey, I have self esteem issues... and every time I get a good job I **** it up somehow...

 

[Mickey]

FFS! Did you actually read any of my post?

Yes, this whole thread is about what to charge as an independent person doing web design/development work. If you're talking about what your company charges, or what you'd expect to pay a company then you need to be more clear.

I only mentioned the 30-man agency as a comparison, to show that it's unlikely that you can charge those rates as an individual when the same client could go to a medium sized agency for the same price.

Out of interest, what rate do you charge and roughly what level of utilisation do you manage?

Depends on a lot of factors, I try not to take on hourly/daily rate work anyway. Fixed price projects endup being far more profitable.

I have pretty much 100% utilisation, I'll generally work between 50 and 80 hour weeks, split between doing client work and working on a few of my own projects and couple of companies I'm involved in. I could easily do 80 hours on client work though.

 

[Mickey]

Oh, and it wasn't just a few jobs that were £100+ph for me. It was the majority of jobs, and they were over a span of 2 years. I had at least 15 hours per week (averaged out) work. I said the majority on the market were simple setups, not the majority of what I did

So you keep saying, still doesn't make me believe it

 

[unwashed potato!]

have to say well done to the op for starting this thread, most action this area has had in far too long, 70 replies!

 

[cjmUK]

Depends on a lot of factors, I try not to take on hourly/daily rate work anyway. Fixed price projects endup being far more profitable.

Fixed price work is all but inevitable since businesses don't mind paying out lots of money, but they want to be able to budget - they need a stable price. Whether it is profitable for you depends on how well you negotiate and how much work you can get away with. I'm just starting to work on my on-the-side business so I'm making far less because I'm setting everything up for the first time (i.e. getting to grips with Drupal takes time; 50 hrs on first implementation, 10hrs on next and 5 thereafter).

I have pretty much 100% utilisation, I'll generally work between 50 and 80 hour weeks, split between doing client work and working on a few of my own projects and couple of companies I'm involved in. I could easily do 80 hours on client work though.

Are you getting paid for 80hrs? How many independents have to charge for 40 hrs when it's a 60 hr job; plenty, I'd say. But that doesn't mean the blue-chip brigade aren't happily paying £00s for a guy with your ability and experience to do the same type of work.

Bottom line is, I'm a techie, a programmer, I might know my way inside and out of CSS and Photoshop but it doesn't make me a great designer by a long shot. The work I did was always for business to business websites. I mostly do Business Systems Development at the moment in J2EE.

This pretty much sums up my day job. I'm not much of a 'designer' either. I tend to plagiarize ideas and inspiration fro the best of the web. The beauty is in my code (at least, I hope).

And I'm not badly paid at all in real terms, but not if you listen to the trade rags and the salary surveys; but then again, I live in a nice village outside a small town and have a 10min commute. I used to regularly get contract offers for GIS work in/around london at £50+/hr, but who wants to join the rat race??

 

[SteveS]

soo many opinions,, no idea what to charge.. lmao

 

[cjmUK]

Who is your customer? What do you think they can afford?

You will probably be best charging £xxx as a fixed price for the job, on the condition that deliverables and timescales are defined - that is, make sure you have a spec, work-out how long it will take, add a bit extra (or a lot extra), work out out what you want to charge per hour, cost the job, and adjust if you think the customer can afford less/more.

You can find hundreds of small agencies/independent developers who develop such a site for around £250 - £500, based on re-styled templates. If you are staring from scratch, you'll have to take a hit, because it is unlikely that the punter is going to want to pay double or treble for you to build your first template.

 

[SteveS]

hum,

its a simple site, but started from scratch, no templates. designed how he wants not me.. lol... i was thinking about the 500 mark, but seems cheap for the 17 or so hours spent

 

[cjmUK]

hum,

its a simple site, but started from scratch, no templates. designed how he wants not me.. lol... i was thinking about the 500 mark, but seems cheap for the 17 or so hours spent

£500 / 17 hrs = £30/hr. Not too bad, plus you can use what you have created in future projects and you have another site to add to your portfolio.

Do you think the client will pay more?

Really, the price should have been agreed beforehand - how come you have done 17hrs of development without agreeing a price?

 

[SteveS]

i know the process should be more formal. but its a friend of my sisters. so not really family or friends but still know the guy. it was kinda light hearted when he asked. i said i would have to know exactly what he wanted how many pages etc...

he sent me though a fwe sites he liked and i just started working when bored... i could quite happy email him and say im going to be doing the site at ££ per hour, hes a personal trainer and charges like £60 pa for his clients... so 30 to him probably would sound cheap.

 

[unwashed potato!]

perhaps if you tell us a little more about your experience, whats languages you know/will be using then we can help decide a price from that.

 

[MuGeN]

perhaps if you tell us a little more about your experience, whats languages you know/will be using then we can help decide a price from that.

+1 agreed...

Out of interest Mammalian, when you posted a link to your work on the last page, you posted a link to Sic's portfolio... was that just a joke?

 

[simisker]

[...] Out of interest Mammalian, when you posted a link to your work on the last page, you posted a link to Sic's portfolio... was that just a joke?

Sic is just a developer [if he'll excuse my use of the word 'just'!]; I'm guessing Mammalian is Sic's designer colleague. Or there were shenanigans afoot

 

[SteveS]

its just HTML/PHP with a dark/silver theme, main body in the center with rounded edges. he does want a calender on the site, so thats going to take some research/playing around with.

i work in IT support indust, not directly web design, just do it now and again as "freelance" work