Web designer question

[Jack o Lantern]

Hello,

I'm new to this, but I have a question I wanted to ask web designers opinion. I have a side business idea that I believe should make some decent money, but I need a web designer for it. Technically it would be me working in sales for small businesses in my area to create a site for them. I would do all the calling, visiting, meeting, etc. then have the we designer take over. I have dilly dallied with WordPress and it seems fairly easy to create an informational website, which is what I want to push for. I am thinking of pricing the site at $5-600 for a simple informational site (home, about us, product/menu, contact us). I just don't know how long (hours) an informational site would take. Say for a restaurant, a simple site where it would be Home, about us, Menu (PDF), contact us. How long would it take someone to do this? The reason I'm asking is cause I don't even know if a web designer would be up for a simple job like that for $3-400 per job.

Any insight, any information would real helpful from experienced designers. Anyone that can help, just want to say thank you ahead of time!

 

[ronaldroe]

You could probably find someone with intermediate experience who'd work with you for that price. Time-wise, if they're reasonably capable with Wordpress already, and they're creating custom themes from scratch, you're looking at a good 40+ hours and that doesn't include content or things like custom plugins or widgets. That's a basic site. If they're just customizing existing themes, as some unfortunately do, quite a bit less.

 

[chrishirst]

Informational site == Blank Theme, change the header image, maybe some colours and "Bob's your what's name".

 

[Jack o Lantern]

Thank you for your input!

Yes, I would think something off Themeforest or an existing theme with changes made according to the content given by the business, slight customization (if necessary). I know a blank custom site would take a long time. I'm trying to wrap my head around how simple I can make it for the designer yet offer a nice site that a business owner will be proud of having. Do you think that it would take more than 10-15hrs if they used an existing theme?

 

[chrishirst]

Why would you want to start trying to "reverse engineer" a purchased theme, which WILL have lots of obfuscated or "minimised" code to STOP you reverse engineering it, when You could take a 'blank' theme, "blank" in this case means "plain but fully working" and spend ONE TENTH of the time and effort adding a few images and some CSS to it, than it would take to 'hack' at a commercial theme to change it.

 

[Jack o Lantern]

Good question! Unfortunately, as I stated, I'm not really too knowledgeable about web design. I would work more on the marketing side. The main reason I'm asking my questions is because I'm trying to find a balance between marketing a low priced website yet pay a designer enough that he would be content with the pay. If a designer is getting $3-400 per project and it they can do it in enough time that they would make $20-30/hr, I think both I and the designer would be content. I just don't know long it would take to create a simple site, even if it is a blank theme.
Any guidance/idea?

 

[chrishirst]

Can't answer that. The definition of "a simple site" changes very quickly when clients get a 'first draft' to look at or play with, the 'simple site' suddenly becomes endowed with a 'photo gallery', a 'discussion forum', an ooh! ooh! We need a 'blog' as well. And can you move that bit to there, and make that bit wider, ... ... etc. etc.

they can do it in enough time that they would make $20-30/hr

Not your concern. If a developer gives a fixed price it is because he or she KNOWS it WILL start off as a sprint, but will in all likely hood turn into a double marathon (up hill for two thirds of the route).

 

[krymson]

Good question! Unfortunately, as I stated, I'm not really too knowledgeable about web design. I would work more on the marketing side. The main reason I'm asking my questions is because I'm trying to find a balance between marketing a low priced website yet pay a designer enough that he would be content with the pay. If a designer is getting $3-400 per project and it they can do it in enough time that they would make $20-30/hr, I think both I and the designer would be content. I just don't know long it would take to create a simple site, even if it is a blank theme.
Any guidance/idea?

The real problem here that you're not seeing is the "real simple" part. What business owners might think is "real simple" is actually complex and time consuming.

If there's ANYTHING I want you to take away from this, NOTHING IS EVER SIMPLE.

I know anything that what is "simple" for me takes at least 30 hours from start to finish. And that's only to make sure I cover the minute details. Sure I could whip something up and finish something in a few hours but I can't guarantee that it's going to be solid and flawless.

Another thing you're not thinking about is business owners like to be VERY picky and constantly change things during the build process. That adds time.

Using templates is unfortunately a practice that a lot of people do to save time and money. Some templates are pretty cool. But to customize them is a pain because many commercial themes are minified and encoded so they can't be altered. Then you run into the problem of sites looking like one another. There's no individuality. You're not looking out for the clients brand, you're just taking something that's not representative of their brand and throwing their logo on it. Where I'm from we call that bastardizing the brand.

Also if the client wants to expand upon the site in the future, you and your web designer are not going to be familiar with the code in order to make those changes.

About pay on a web designers aspect, I don't charge anything less than $50 an hour for my time so if you're going to offer me $300-$400 you're only going to get 6-8 hours of my time. $50 /hour is the minimum i can charge to still come out on top for my time, resources, experience, and still make a little bit of profit. This is why web designers charge so much for websites. It's not easy, it's not simple, there's a zillion variables from project to project. Trust me, I've tried the whole $500 website thing, I ended up spending 2-3 week pushing out a site because the client was not happy till it was the way they wanted it. That was spending 75+ hours on the sites... Think about that $500 75 hours, that's $6.67 per hour... not profitable at all.

My suggestion is, do some research. Team up with a intermediately experienced web designer. For the web design part, think about this, as a company you're going to make $50 (Y) /per hour for web design services, you're going to offer the web designer up to $30 /per hour so the company is making up to $20 /per hour profit off of it. Create a project for the web designer that would be your typical scenario to build. See how long it takes them to build the site to specification. There's your starting price (X) to charge clients. The good thing about this, is as the web designer get more proficient, they'll be able to turn around sites quicker and you start making more profit.

Make it VERY clear to the client that you're going to create a website with this information it's going to have these pages with this kind of content (think cookie cutter plan but with a custom design for brand individuality) for $X. Anything extra will be billed at $Y rate. That's the only way it will work out for you.

 

[Jack o Lantern]

This is great! The information you provided is extremely helpful! Just wanted to say thank you for all the help!

 

[Edge]

Most of the themes on themeforest are by designers for designers - not customers. I had one theme which required pasting html into the widgets - well if we're going to get a client to do that, why not just give them a code editor and bob et ton oncle.

 

[Robin Thicke]

Time its take to create a website depends on the type of your website you want and its completely based on your client project based.

 

[SallyMark]

Yes, I would think something off Themeforest or an existing theme with changes made according to the content given by the business, slight customization (if necessary). I know a blank custom site would take a long time. I'm trying to wrap my head around how simple I can make it for the designer yet offer a nice site that a business owner will be proud of having.

 

[Mentorshouse]

great tips has been shared through this post thanks for such useful information and keep posting such type of information.

 

[Ajmal]

Ofcourse there are many who likely to do the job on which u offer.for a wordpress website as u said for basic things it need only a maximum of 30 hours and it depends actually based on the requirements of clients.it may vary a little.