One of the questions we receive most often as a web design company is “How much does a website cost?” Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to give a good answer or even a ballpark budget without more details. With little to no information, our answer would be “Anywhere from $1,000 to $100,000″ Since this answer is not helpful at all, this article is going to break down website components into smaller pieces to get a better idea of what goes into designing and implementing a site.

The website itself and questions that influence your web design budget.

Clients sometimes do not differentiate between the website and the services associated with website design: branding, illustration, SEO, social media, etc.  Some components are decided as part of the website design, some of them are optional and are considered additional services.

How many web pages, how much creative web design and what functionality is required?

A good starting point for determining how much your website will cost is the number of pages you want it to have. Here at Matmon, before we start anything we help you fill out a client questionnaire. This questionnaire helps us determine how many pages, calls to actions and functionality your website needs in order to determine how complex each page will be.

Price: The fewer pages you want and less amount of creativity needed the cheaper your project will be. For a 3-5 page website, budget around $1,000-3,000 and sites that require branding will fall between $5,000 – $10,000.

What platform, a WordPress CMS or Simple HTML site?

Do you want to be able to update your website on your own, or do you want a website that will just be an online presence that you will very seldom make changes to? If you’re interested in the former, we advise you to go with a website built on the WordPress platform. The back-end of WordPress is easy to access – you only need a computer, web browser and Internet access. It is simple for clients to make their own updates and be independent with updating their websites.

If you need a small website to serve as a simple online brochure, using a traditional HTML coded site and accessing it via FTP may be the solution for you.

We have more options available but a robust WordPress CMS or a simple HTML site are the most common solutions for Matmon customers.

Budget more for a WordPress site development and ongoing system updates as it usually takes longer to properly customize and support than a traditional site. However, you can do most of your updates on your own with a WordPress site, whereas you will more than likely need our support to update a traditional HTML site.

Which features?

A website can either be plain with pages, pictures, text, maps or videos (these items are considered content rather than features). A feature is something in addition to content, such as a blog, forms, custom web applications, or eCommerce. This also is something that will be covered in our questionnaire, so that you get features that are just right for you and your users.

The more features, the higher the price. It takes a pretty firm grasp of your eCommerce needs to establish a budget.

How customized will you website be?

At Matmon, we don’t do template websites. You can be sure your website will be unique. Some websites require more customization than others. Certain drop-down menus, information that pops up when you pass your mouse on an item, text effects, showing alternate images, etc. Are all features that look effortless but may require extra time and should be planed before your website proposal is signed.

The more customization, the more expensive the site will become. For every price range given, aim for the highest price range if you want your website to do more tricks.

Services external to the website

Search Engine Optimization

Getting your website optimized by search engines happens during and after the website’s development but is not a mandatory component. For this reason, this is considered a service and not part of the website design

It varies according to your site, but count around $500-$1500 for one-time SEO project.

Hosting your site

Where your website will be hosted is important. If you spend a lot of money on a website, you want to make sure it will be up at all times and secure. Matmon hosts its websites in our secure data center facility.

Prices can range drastically for web hosting as well: $25 for a simple HTML site, $75-$250 for most WordPress Sites and $1000 – $2000 monthly for sites that need their own specialized servers

Branding

If you’re a business that is just starting out, we can create logos, business cards, brochures and more. This is not part of the website design process either and should be done before the creative process starts.

Price: depends on what needs to be created.

Measuring your site’s efficiency

Once you have your new website, a good thing to do is to monitor its performance. Matmon can track visits, clicks, who comes to your site, how many times, how long they stay, what keyword(s) they used to search and much more. This is especially important if you are trying to recruit new customers through your website.

Price:  In the $75 range for a monthly report.

How often will you post updates?

Once your website is delivered, you can choose to update and maintain it on your own, or we can do that for you. We offer hourly fees or monthly packages so that you can choose what is best for you. Obviously if Matmon posts your updates, the most often you need your site to be worked on, the more it is going to cost.

Please keep in mind that these numbers are just a range and your site could be below or above these numbers. Additionally, giving an estimate for print media, advertising, social media and other services varies greatly according to the work you want done.

For a complete estimate of your web design project, please complete this survey and one of our representative will contact you with your quote.

Best WordPress Sites being used by Ten Companies

At Matmon, we are big advocates of WordPress Sites. The open-source content management system has made its way from a simple blogging platform to a powerful CMS capable of handling the most unique tasks. Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t get behind its humble beginnings as a blogging tool and don’t see it as a great way to build a website. We have been using WordPress for our clients – and even ourselves – for over a year, (look at our portfolio to see our websites) and they all love it.

Here are a few reasons why we love WordPress:

• It’s user-friendly: there is almost no learning-curve for WordPress, anybody can learn how to use it in less than an hour
• You can easily update your website: WordPress is great for clients that often post new pictures or change content, no knowledge or HTML or CSS.
• It allows for accountability: since all users can have their own login, it is easy to keep track of who makes modifications
• There are plenty of plugins: there are plugins for everything, allowing for great flexibility
• It’s completely customizable: you can create a unique website just like you would with HTML
• It’s free!

To prove that no task is too large for WordPress, here are 10 large companies that chose to use WordPress to power their websites and blogs:

1. Ebay

   
   The online auction giant uses WordPress to power its blog, Ebay Ink. We love the casual look and feel of the site, and its great use of color.

2. CNN

   

   CNN uses WordPress to manage the site for Anderson Cooper’s show: Anderson Cooper 360°. The site is updated several times a day with articles, videos, user polls and Cooper’s Twitter feed. It acts as a behind-the-scene look at the show.

3. Mashable

   

   Mashable is the largest independent news source dedicated to covering digital culture, social media and technology. Mashable has 19 millions page views a day and receives more than 20 millions unique visitors per month, and lets its visitor interact with different social plugins. Users can follow topics, such as Twitter, iPhone, iOS5 or Small Business. Posts are tagged and organized using WordPress’s organic features, and some added plugins.

4. University of Arkansas at Little Rock

   

   The University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s website is dynamic and modern, thanks to WordPress. The entire site uses WordPress, but the best part resides in the homepage. The main picture, posts, events and navigation are all easily managed through the use of different WordPress features. Every department has access to manage their own page, allowing for rapid and convenient updates.

5. TechCrunch

   

   TechCrunch is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. The website receives more than 13 million page views a day.

6. IconDock

   

   IconDeck offers stock icon that designers can quickly buy and download. The site utilizes WordPress and the WP e-Commerce plugin to power the downloading of free icons and ensure the easy purchasing of paid icons. IconDoc’s website is beautiful and sleek, and we love the icon drop zone that allows users to easily drag and drop the icons they want to buy.

7. Spotify

   

   Spotify is an emerging leader of the music streaming industry. Spotify chose WordPress to power their website, which is a showcase of their products and offering. We love how the company showcases Spotify’s features (as seen here) with an easy, flowing navigation.

8. UPS

   

   UPS uses WordPress for the UPS Racing Team website. This site features behind the scenes video, photo galleries, blog posts, twitter updates, games, and promotions for the UPS Racing team and their fans. WordPress allows UPS to integrate social media throughout its content, and the custom administration module allows editors to update promotional content on most pages.

9. Mozilla Labs

   

   Mozilla – the famous company that gives us Firefox – created Mozilla Labs which is a virtual lab where people come together to create, experiment, and play with new Web innovations and technologies. WordPress allows Mozilla Labs to easily display their current projects through simple and intuitive navigation.

10. Dymo

    

    Dymo’s Industrial site is a great showcase of WordPress’s functionalities: it uses location based store finder, custom post types, events, and makes a great use of WordPress’s taxonomy feature. The result is an attractive, professional and usable website.

Building a new website can be expensive so making sure it was worth the investment is important. You want your website to bring value. Value can mean different things according to who you are, what your business is and what you want to accomplish. Therefore, the first step is to determine what value you want your website to bring to users.

What goals do you want your website to achieve?

We suggest you have three main goals. Goals usually fall in two categories; they bring revenue or they engage your customer. Examples of goals that bring revenue are to increase online sales, recruit new customers, or drive customer to your store. Examples of goal that engage the customers are to get users to register for a free trial, to display your catalog of product or to get customers to read your blog.

How do you measure your results?

Use a tool such as Google Analytics, Yahoo Web Analytics or Bing Webmaster tool. Google Analytics is probably the most commonly used of all of them.

1. Is the number of qualified visitors increasing?

   Qualified visitors are visitors that are not yet customers but have the potential to be. Visitors that use direct traffic (type in the address) are not the most valuable customers, as they already know about your site. Qualified visitors come from two ways: unpaid searches, or referring sites.
   Unpaid searches: Traffic from unpaid searches results from users doing research on a search engine and clicking on your site. You can monitor which keywords visitors use to reach your site and group them by product or services.
   Referring sites: Traffic from referring sites result from visitors of other sites clicking on a link going to your site. Logically, referring sites link to your content because it is valuable. Hence, the page that is the most linked to probably has the most valuable content. Use this to know what visitors are interested in on your site.

   If the numbers or visits in both of these categories are increasing, your website is creating value and achieving your user goals.

2. Are visitors returning?

   Visitors return to your page because they get value out of it. You can track what percentage of visits are new visits or returning visits. Ideally, you want a mix of both, showing that users come back to your site but that you also get new visitors. Track which pages returning visitors consult, it will tell you which pages are the most valuable to them. Make sure they are pages that will fulfill your engagement goals; review your content if it isn’t the case.

3. Do visitors get value out of your site?

   Engagement goals are measured by the value visitors get out of your site. If they are interested in buying your products, then visiting your online store will bring them value. But most of them will probably just want to learn more about your products, services, or pricing.

   Sales: Track how many customers place an order by setting up a goal on Google Analytics. The goal would be achieved when users reach the order confirmation page. Now using what you did in step 1, check how visitors achieving your goals came to your site and analyze what type of customers are most valuable for you. It may be that visitors looking to buy “porcelain sink” tend to place more orders than visitors looking for “bathroom sink”. Advise your advertising and content strategy according to your goal tracking.

   Engagement: Set a goal on Analytics for visitors to stay on your blog for at least one minute, or to read at least two pages. These two goals would prove that visitors find your site interesting enough to read its content and look for more information. Once again, cross-reference the users completing a goal with the keywords and sites they used to reach your page; update your content accordingly.

   The opposite of how long visitors stayed on your page is the bounce rate: how many visitors leave the site as soon as they load it because they can’t find what they’re looking for. This will tell you what type of customers you could create value for, or what type of customers not to target.

Google Analytics offers custom reporting options so that you can really measure what is right for your website. Being able to master your analytics is important in order to effectively manage your website and advertising strategy.

Customers need to know how much their website will cost. Unfortunately no two projects are the same, and assessing how much work is going to be involved for projects in the digital space can be difficult. This is especially true when a ballpark estimate is needed before project details are flushed out.

This article on Folyo’s blog should help you get an idea of how much you can expect to pay for various design services offered by interactive agencies and advertising agencies. The article however only talks about the designing part, creating the layout, and making it user friendly and pretty. These prices do not involve the coding part which is just as important as the design part.

If you are looking for an estimate for your interactive project, take our survey and we will send you a ballpark budget estimate for your interactive project.

We reposted the whole article here, but you can head on to Folyo’s blog to read the article and comments.

“How much does a website cost?” and other pricing questions

via “How much does a website cost?” and other pricing questions | Folyo Blog.

If there’s one thing nobody seems to want to talk about, it’s pricing. Most designers don’t publish their rates, and good luck getting a company to tell you how much they paid for their site.

The results of this situation is that it can be pretty hard to know how much to spent on design. Spend too much, and you’ll be accused of wasting money like those $300,000 logos you read about. Spent too little, and you risk ending up with a crappy “designed by my 14 year old nephew” website.

So I asked 40 of Folyo’s designers to answer a couple questions about their pricing strategies, and I hope the results will help you get a better picture of design prices.

A couple disclaimers

• All prices are for design only, i.e. they don’t include any sort of coding (no HTML, no CSS, no Javascript, no PHP, etc.).
• The sample size was very small (40 designers). Keep this in mind while viewing the results.
• Folyo only selects experienced and skilled designers. So yes, you can probably find cheaper prices elsewhere (but not better designers!).
• Folyo is an international site, and this plays a big role in pricing. A designer in Bangalore will not charge the same as a similarly skilled designer living in San Francisco. That does not mean you should always with the cheaper designer, since other factors (time difference, cultural differences, etc.) will also come into play.

How much do you charge for a logo?

The logo is often a startup’s first contact with a designer. You need something that will look good for next month’s big presentation, and you need it fast. But how much will it cost you?

Although survey results show you can get a logo done for less than $500, I would be careful with such a bargain. A logo will often represent your company for many years to come, and will set the tone for your whole communication.

Plus, despite what many people think, a logo is not the same thing as a brand. Paying a higher price often means that the designer will not only come up with a logo, but think about what it means and how it can be used in different contexts (online, print, video, etc.) and provide different versions (color, black & white, etc.).

So altogether, I would say $1000 is a good starting price point for most logos.

How much do you charge for a homepage?

The homepage (or landing page) is usually the next step. It’s a more time-consuming job, so the prices are starting to creep up. Depending on the complexity, you’ll pay anything from $500 for a simple teaser to $2000 for a full-featured landing page introducing your product (think Basecamp’s homepage).

How much do you charge for a website?

This is the classic question every designer dreads. Asking this is like asking an architect how much a house would cost, or a surgeon how much an operation would cost. It all depends on the specifics, so providing a straight answer isn’t easy.

Still, assuming that a basic site usually has a homepage, a basic content template, and 1 or 2 additional layouts (pricing page, features page, etc.), we can get an idea of the costs involved.

Count at least 30 hours of work. The homepage alone will usually eat up 15 hours (and that’s for fast workers), and each additional layout can take 3-5 hours to design. So a basic site will easily reach into the $3000-$5000 range.

How much do you charge for a mobile app?

A mobile app is usually simpler than a normal site, but simpler does not mean easier. In fact, the simplification process itself can be the hardest part of the project: which feature do you keep, and which one do you cut? And how will you keep the UI clear and uncluttered?

Mobile apps also frequently have higher aesthetic expectations than websites. Although there’s nothing wrong with the default OS controls, it’s now expected that every app will have its own style and every little visual details counts.

These factors mean that even with less pages or less contents, mobile apps are not cheaper to design than websites, and $2000 is probably a good place to start.

How much do you charge for a web app?

Web apps are in a pricing range of their own, with a lot of designers charging $5000 or more. The reason is that there is no such thing as a “small” web app.

For example, the mere fact of supporting user accounts will mean having to design sign up, sign in, and “I forgot my password” screens as well as all the different error states associated with them.

What’s more, unlike a static site, a web app must be constantly evolving and pivoting to meet user’s needs. So requirements are hard to pin down, and designers must often plan for unexpected new features being introduced mid-way.

And lastly, designing a web app requires a very specific profile, a hybrid UX/visual designer who can both make something look good and make it work great.

All of this explains why this is the most expensive category, and why a $10000 design budget for a web-app is nothing out of the ordinary.

These survey results are by no means exhaustive, and keep in mind that every project is different. Still, I hope this article will provide you with some general ballpark figures that will help the next time you have to price a design project.

Most small businesses should have a website. Fortunately, small businesses don’t need a 100 page website and can instead have a concise yet useful online presence. So what are the must-have features that your website should have? Read on.

1. A contact page with clear information. If you do not have a large budget, chances are you do not have a fancy eCommerce store or in-depth product catalog. So why do you have a website? To be found and contacted. This is why it’s crucial to have a contact page that is easy to find and not hidden somewhere in the footer of your page. Once on the contact page, you need to have at minimum:
2. • Your company name and address. That one is pretty obvious
   • A map. With a GoogleMap, users do not need to know your street name; they can see right away where you are located.
   • Your phone number. Again, this shouldn’t need an explanation.
   • An email address. Email is a great way to get an answer to a question. If you are just wondering about a product or service and it is not an emergency, sending an email is faster and less bothersome than a phone call.
   • Your opening hours. If your customer has to wonder if you’ll be open, he won’t even try to go and see you.

   This is the minimum required; some nice to have features are a contact form, a link to your social media sites, an appointment form and more.

3. An explanation of who you are and what you do. There is nothing more annoying than landing on a website after a search, and having no idea what the site is about. Make it easy for visitors by writing a little snippet on your homepage about what your company does, and what product and services you offer. Direct visitors to an “About” page for more in-depth information.
4. A good domain name. You can refer to our blog post to know how to choose a good domain name. It makes it easier for visitors to find your site, and then to remember your website’s address so they can find you again.
5. An attractive home page. Our attention span is getting ridiculously short, especially when browsing websites. It means that you have to capture your audience’s attention right away and you that you cannot give them any reason to dislike your site. Make sure your homepage looks pretty, has important information (see #2), plenty of white space, graphics, and text that can be easily scanned. You can read this post for more details on how to build great landing pages.
6. A call to action. No matter how large your website is, you need to have a clear call to action. For small businesses, we advice to link it to your services (“learn more”), your product (“see our products”), or your Contact Us page (“let’s go”, “come by and see us”…). For larger websites, they can link to an eCommerce site, a Get a Quote page or any other page your want your customers to see. It all depends of what goals you want to accomplish.
7. Good content. We’ve already talked about why good content is important and how to get it. It keeps your users interested and makes them come back to your page, and it entices search engines to rank you higher making it easier for visitors to find you.
8. A reliable host. If you pay a large amount of money for a site, you probably want it to keep running. Take the time to choose the right hosting company that will keep your website up and that will protect your from security threats.
9. A website you know how to use. Finally, what good is having a website if you do not know how to use it? We advice our clients to go with a content management system such as WordPress, because it is easy to manage and update. WordPress lets you post blog articles, update your website with pictures or new content and much more. Knowing how to use your site will save you money by not having to ask help for updates and it will help you get good and fresh content.

Having a pretty website is important, but what makes users want to stick around and read your site is content. Good, rich, valuable content.

Why is writing quality content so important?

You want users to engage with your site. If visitors like reading your blog posts, are interested in the industry news you publish or come to your site for product information; more than likely they will take action. They might click on an ad, buy your product or look up your store address.

Another reason you want good content is to rank higher on search engines result pages. Since early 2011, Google’s new algorithm called Panda has aimed to make the web a better place for content. Panda hates duplicate or irrelevant content, redundant articles, too many ads, old websites and automated content. If you are guilty of any of these, Google will be ranking your site lower, making it harder for visitors to find you.

How do you write good content?

• Original: Your content has to be unique. You cannot reproduce content without being flagged by Google. It may seem obvious, but a lot of content on the web is duplicated. For example, if you have an online store, you likely copied the product description directly from the original catalog. It may seem logical but this will get you ranked lower in search engines. Instead, try to bring value by crafting descriptions your users want to read. Make sure you source anything that you have not written.
• Unique: The original content rule is valid from one site to another (do not steal content from another site), but also don’t copy content within your own website. Do not write your “About Us” on both the About Us page and the Contact Us, even if you content is original, it will not be unique. You also should not have several pages describing the same service; if it is the same it needs to be on one unique page.
• Recent: Both customers and search engines like sites that are frequently updated. Share your company news, update your product list, post customers testimonials or write a blog. Visitors will like to have something new to read and to be kept informed and search engines will like to see you are still producing original content.
• Lengthy: This one is more important to search engines than to us humans. Panda likes a lot of original content; one hundred words won’t cut it. Ideally, any page should have more than 300 words of original content.

Websites that have not been following these rules have seen their ranking drop dramatically, as well as their visits. It may seem like a lot of trouble, but your site will only be better and your users will thank you for it.