Francis, Dossett, and several other Web pros all say they have encountered small-business owners who are shocked to learn that professional Web-site building usually costs more than $1,000. They attribute the sticker shock to two factors: first, there is a proliferation of Web-design freelancers and moonlighters who offer their services at bargain prices on job exchanges like eLance.com; second, some huge companies have run ad campaigns claiming they can build a legit Web presence for a low starting cost. Both Dell and IBM, for example, have run offers to build functional small-business sites for less than $500.
Not enough attention is paid to what you actually get for those offers, the Web pros claim. At Dell, it was one year of hosting, a domain name, and three Web pages. At IBM, it was the same thing but with only six months of hosting. In short, both offers were an affordable way to publish a pamphlet in cyberspace. But neither included the technology needed for conducting online credit-card transactions or for building a database of site visitors.
Tim Donahue, CEO of WebProsNow.com, an online project exchange for Web shops, cautions that costly as it can be to build a site, you must avoid the mind-set that once you launch it, you're done. Keeping a site current -- making sure the links are live and the content is fresh -- isn't cheap. Sometimes it requires one dedicated employee, the proverbial Webmaster. Other times it might even require replacing the shop that built your site with another that better suits your needs.
Laura O'Keefe, co-owner of start-up manufacturer California Solutions, in Los Angeles, learned that lesson firsthand. She paid WebMetro, a $5-million Internet consultancy in Pasadena, Calif., more than $5,000 to produce a site for her company at www.Petaromatics.com. Not long ago, WebMetro proudly listed the site in its online portfolio. But O'Keefe is no longer one of WebMetro's clients. She regrets the expenditure, since her company, she says, has already outgrown the site. When WebMetro developed the site, in November 1999, California Solutions sold only one product. Today it sells 38. But because she forced WebMetro to work within certain technical and budgetary constraints, adding products and features to the site hasn't been simple. She admits that she made rigid demands on WebMetro and that she could have better communicated her goals. Still, she's turning to another, less expensive Web shop to rebuild her site into one that can easily grow as her company expands. Her story epitomizes a moral of Web-site building that more small-business owners learn every day: Getting it right the first time is important. But it's only the beginning.
Ilan Mochari is a staff writer at Inc.
Charting a Course of Web-Site Costs
Boiling down the cost of building a Web site is like boiling down the cost of commissioning a portrait: prices vary widely, depending on who's doing the painting and who's doing the paying. Still, here's our best effort to sum things up:
| Site type |
Cost |
What you get |
Make sure to ask ... |
| Basic |
$500 to
$30,000 |
5 to 20 pages and a
contact form |
Will this look original? |
| Intermediate |
$2,000 to
$100,000 |
E-commerce |
Will this support a
rash of orders? |
| Complex |
$20,000 to
$3,000,000 |
Interacts with your
software systems |
Will this investment
ever pay off? |
How to Find an Ace Web Designer
Web-site pricing may be a knotty issue, but choosing a quality designer shouldn't be. Most designers display portfolios of their work on their own Web sites. But how can you inspect a portfolio for quality if you know nothing about the art or science of producing Web sites? Here's how several experienced Web designers answered that question:
Compare the designer's work with highly polished sites. "Go to Apple.com, IBM.com, CNET.com, or EddieBauer.com," suggests industry veteran Tim Donahue, who sees the best and worst of Web work each day as CEO of WebProsNow.com, a job board for Web shops. "Ask yourself, 'Does the shop's portfolio look as professional or navigate as easily?' "
Determine whether the shop can create a unique look for you. Inspect the layouts in the designer's portfolio. Do they look similar, or has the shop shown variety?
Contact the businesses whose Web sites are part of the shop's portfolio. Ask them how satisfied they are with their sites. Ask them whether the shop provided high-quality, consistent support once it finished building the site.
Assess whether the sites in the portfolio have been updated. Dead links and slowly loading images are a bad sign. They show that either the shop or the client has neglected the site. They also show that the shop hasn't thought twice about including a defective site in its portfolio.
Scrutinize the shop's client list. Check to see whether the shop has worked for a business or two you've actually heard of. Also examine whether any of the clients' sites have features you'd want (or detest) on yours.
Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.
