Comments on: $5,000 Websites? Not From An Ad Agency.

By: Bryan Coe

Bryan Coe — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:01:14 +0000

My company works mostly on the SEO, social media side of things, and one of the frustrating things is when a companies think they can design a site on the cheap (i.e. someone’s kid using Frontpage), then they come to us and want us to drive traffic to the site. The problem is, we could drive tons of traffic to the site, but if the site doesn’t look professional are people really going to trust the company? Are they going to trust entering the payment info and actually buy something from the site? Doubtful… Unfortunately, many people drastically under-estimate the cost of good design.

By: Greg London

Greg London — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:55:09 +0000

Yes, I agree that good, unique content is what can bring the value of your site up as well as a unique theme or service that your website offers. Good post.

By: Chris Olberding

Chris Olberding — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:57:34 +0000

I’m glad I read through your post – yeah a straighforward but nice brochure site can be done for $5k (not including things like copywriting and photography). But with a project that includes the high-level list of requirements you read off you’re looking at 3-8x that even for a small agency like our with very low overhead. But it is what it is, I talk to people with $500 budgets for a brochure site and big companies with 20k budgets for 100k development projects, how it goes. Sad thing is is that very often these potential clients will go with the cheapest firm, often outsourcing development projects, and then come back to us down a chunk of change and a lot of time and frustration.

By: Marc Rapp

Marc Rapp — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:16:49 +0000

Good points.

Interface design and user-experience, is branding.
And like all branding, we must determine the needs of our visitors and be able to adjust the site and UI when needed.
That doesn’t happen with a template.

By: evoklarry

evoklarry — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:44:37 +0000

We approve all, well, most comments good or bad, and I hear ya that you, as a client have to determine “value”, and dividing up the needed elements. We should have stressed more about clients requesting custom databases or non off-the-shelf CMS. Next time, leave your company’s url in your post and we’ll keep the link-back active for SEO.

By: Terrence J.

Terrence J. — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:42:19 +0000

Hmmm-not sure that this is really a sound argument, at least not one that carries much weight. Simply dividing up the hours and quoting an hourly rate doesn’t prove much. As a client, I try and determine what elements are worth paying for from scratch (i.e. custom-built) and which are more economical to pull off the shelf.