the Cost of Web Site Design Services

We contracted with a freelance website designer after estimates from professional designers affiliated with our hosting service were too costly for us ($2500-$5500). We already owned our domain name, had a contract for with a hosting service, and had a corporate logo. We also provided most of the pictures to be used on our site although the pictures and logo had to be resized. Our site is purely informational, no e-commerce or shopping cart. The freelancer charged us $500 for a 5 page site consisting of a landing page; a product list page; a service list page; a photo gallery of our custom work; and an About Us page that lists business hours and is linked to Google Maps for directions to our shop. We passed on fancy programs such as Flash ($200 extra) and did not want to pay extra for search engine optimization.

We feel we got what we paid for, which is a very simple informational site. It took a few sessions for the designer to get the feel of the look we wanted but I think that is to be expected with any custom service. The designer also knew a lot more about site security than did. We didn't realize that just because a site looks good when accessed from AOL or Internet Explorer doesn't mean it looks great when accessed through Mozilla or other services! I suppose a professional designer would have known that and made sure the code was appropriate for all services. But we saved anywhere from $2000 - $5000 and we just have the site to be able to say yes, we are on the web, so it works for us for now.

One of the things we didn't like about the professional packages was that they wanted to purchase the domain name and select the hosting service for us. It is important to us, and our business reputation, to own and be able to control our name and hosting service. We also recommend going with a simple design at first and then learning how to maintain and update it yourself because most of the professional services charged for the simplest of updates.