Most web designers tend to shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to web design pricing. Most of the times this comes down to naivety and not understanding the value of running a business. They approach the services they provide they would as if they were an employee, charging and hourly rate for their time only without considering cost, overhead and quality the way a service based business would.

Web designers approach projects without realizing that they should have internal breakdowns for their projects that ultimately translate into rates that they bill their customers for itemized services. It also doesn't occur to them that, revision request over the phone and client meetings are time they are not working or marketing their services and that their clients need to pay for that time as well.

 

 

Somewhere between $2k-$10k, including:

$100 Stock images for project plus inventory.

$150 For Theme/Template and Potential Plugin Licenses

Estimated Billable Hours plus 5 additional hours for client calls and meetings

5 Additional Hours for client revisions that included in the scope of work agreement.

 

Interested in knowing exactly how much should a website cost? We've developed a handy web design pricing calculator to help out.

 

Most clients still live in the archaic world of billable hours. Billable hours are the worse transparency system for a business transaction in existence as it punishes productivity and higher skilled labor. There is no incentive to work faster when you are paid an hourly rate.

 

On the plus side, with web design you are billing for estimated billable hours and if you are doing it right you are presenting an overall scope of work and task list that reasonable justifies that estimation of time, if you happen to complete the work sooner, those task are still done and those hours are still justified according to the scope of work within the bill, so you don't have to be worried about being challenged on the time, as long as all the agreed upon work is completed.

 

This is similar to other contractor based work professions such as home contractors and auto mechanics.

 

If you are setting up a content management system or ecommerce platform like WordPress or Magento then you should bill for that separately as a technical and installation fee, rather than including it in the web design cost as it is a separate but dependent task. While these task tend not take long they can have technical issues depending on the web server or platform that take more time than you may anticipate and there can be complications.

With that in mind it is fairly standard and reasonable to charge as much as $150 just to do the initial install provided the web hosting provider does not offer a one click install with no problems attached to doing so.

 

You always want to be upfront with clients about recurring fees and breakout several different services they can pay for depending on what burdens they want to relieve themselves of. If you used a content management system like WordPress to develop their website, then you can charge fees for things like core updates, plugin updates and database backup and optimization as well as security checks and checking the contact forms.

 

This would be a completely separate service than if they wanted to have modifications done to the theme or have you update any of the content or graphics for them. These can either be a la carte flat rate fees, or they can be recurring fees with a maximum amount of billable hours attached to them. Individual services fees can vary but basic maintenance amounting to 1-3 hours of design or development should probably be billed for between $125-$250 per month.