Average Price of UK website designed?

My belief is that you got this the wrong way round.

A virtual domain, a term perhaps not used much in the trade, is e.g.

and this is what you DO want, for a business especially, whereas a el-cheapo domain is the one with the ISP name in it e.g.

The point I was making re this is simply that there is no point in paying extra to an ISP who is willing to host

(who historically always charged extra for their web hosting) when you can get the same end result with a www redirection service (which you pay for, say £10/year) and a website knocked up in some free webspace e.g. at Freeserve, or within your own ISP's webspace.

Yep, I registered a .de domain for my business with some outfit who then charged me £250 to move it to another nameserver, and £200 for other "costs"...

Actually the difference between a nice looking site, and a crappy looking site, is whether the designer has some VISUAL skills. His computer skills don't come into it.

Many/most corporate websites today are frankly crap. They are bloated (designed to work usefully only on ADSL connections), they can't be navigated, the pages can't be printed or bookmarked, and many simply contain no information on the company's products or services. But most of those sites were designed by professional web design firms, typically for a 5-figure sum. Most of them could have been done just as effectively in plain HTML, in 1/10 of the size.

If it's a one-man-band, I'd go for 25/hr or 35/hr if he's good. If it's a decent company, 75-150.

Personally, a mechanic (but that's because I work for a web design agency).

Cheers,

Andy

The difference between a nice looking site and one that is listed well in the search engines is TECHNICAL skills.

The amount of sites we've seen that have been done by Print Designers, look very nice but it's just one big image sliced up, all the text is in an image.

That's down to the individual agency. I'd agree a lot of sites are like that, but with the emergence of CSS2 based layouts and non-frame based sites it's getting better.

Often though that's down to the company not supplying the information than the agency.

Cheers,

Andy

I'd have to partly disagree. Setting up a home page yourself is a good starting point for _some_ businesses. It gives you an idea of how hard/difficult it is an what you'd want from a professional designer (and whether you need a professional site). It _does_ depend on the business. If you are selling yourselves to corporate clients it is a different matter from, say, selling a home produced product*.

I've seen dozens of professional sites that are nearly unusable** and dozens of amateur sites that give me all the info I need and are easy to navigate (e.g., a single apge with contact details). Sometimes it is best to start small.

Thom

• In fact a really good web site might be a disaster as it might overwhelm you with orders that you can't fill.

** especially to users with slow internet connections or non-standard browsers.

I have no quibble with business owners learning a bit about web design and even knocking up a page or two if they like doing that kind of thing. It's the equivalent of sketching out the design for a new leaflet.

However, I would always recommend a competent web designer is called in to review pages produced in this way and make improvements to bring the pages up to a professional standard.

I am actually doing exactly this for two clients at the moment and the differences are going to be substantial - for not much effort or cost.

So, that would be about 6-8 hours work for the example of a £200 site.

A website in a day, in other words, or more realistically half a day on design and coding, plus half a day dealing with the client and all the other bits and pieces.

Not much time for producing a 6-8 page quality website from scratch, is it?

I'd completely agree which is why I wouldn't even consider doing any website for that little! Given that there will be changes and niggles, it would become VERY unprofitable VERY quickly.

Cheers,

Andy

Internet explorer is a non standard browser.

I think there is a continuum, but you can put up simple content and contact details in a couple of hours (minutes if you've done it before). For someone starting up a small business that might be sufficient to start with. It depends on the product and who you're selling to, but some businesses won't need much more than that until they grow larger.

For example, lets say someone is doing private maths tutoring for GCSEs or A levels. Most of their business comes from referrals. A home-made site might be sufficient to make increase local visibility. A professional site might be an unnecessary expense (and as I noted, might bring them more business than they can handle).

Thom

That seems scandelous. Surely they should have told you about this, both from a moral point of view and legal? I have seen those incredibly cheap looking registration offers, or free name offers. How can you exactly tell if you actually own it, and how much it would cost to actually move it? Why do actually have to get them to move it? Why can't you just move it yourself if you own it?

Just that, my basic package ;) More info is available on my website, feel free to e-mail me for more information.

Yes, I know it is your "basic package" but I asked what consists your basic package?

So for 30 are you offering to design a six page website including domain registration and incuding a years hosting? Thats what I mean what exactly does it include Basic package can mean various things

Actually this may sound strange what I'm about to say. But building on the points that you have made. What do you think of pure HTML coding for a website, from the "ease of use" point of view, more compatability with different operating systems, less bugs, and less download time?

It was brought to my attention that some all singing and all dancing websites with various technical wonders, may look impressive, but they take too long to load, and while technologically may be more compex, from a marketing and design point of view, they are worse, due to the time factor .

Interesting questions

I would guess a plumber, plumbers are apparantly earning 70K per year. Thats not bad..I would not know what a self employed website designer is earning. Any estimates what a self employed website designer is earning?

Read the small print

We call it "cost effective"

I am a 'one man band' and charge £50 an hour. My clients are happy with that. I usually seem to get clients with a site that is not working. Some of this work has been done by agencies and charges range from £4000 to £25000. Within this price range some of these sites have not generated any business or enquiries. I'll do an analysis and a fix or re-do. If it is right the investment and return is substantial and quick. Yes you can do a site for £200 - £500. From my experience its a waste of money. Even most of the sites that cost £2000 are a waste of money. You can only pay what you can afford. Most of my clients realise very quickly that the effort in budgets and resources have to be realistic to make it work. I have a client that liked a site I had done with an ecommerce presence. (A small hotel with online booking etc) it cost about £3500 but is reluctant to spend a similar figure as an agency spent £4000 and she has not had one hit or enquiry (and the site is on a virtual server). The hotel in a year and a half has had a return of £80000 through online bookings alone. But to persuade the client initially to spend the money was a struggle. Without an online presence this income would have been lost. Now this client is happy to spend more and more on the site. I would recommend getting the site up and running and determine your market. See what your audience wants, how they use it, log the traffic. Then you can spend more on photograph, graphics, animatics etc. Get your registration right. Find a site you like and that would work for you and contact the designers and ask for a price.

One page containing a number of graphic images fitted together to form one picture, all the text is included therein.

THe search engines love them. (NOT)