Time is Money Friend!

Have you ever heard the phrase "time is money"? Well it is a very true statement obviously, but how does it apply to services? Web design services, in particular.

Web Design Costs

When you are looking to have a website developed for your business, you have a specific idea in mind. You have ideas about the look, what it will showcase, what you want to say about your product and your company. You should also have a pretty good idea of how you want it to operate and what features it should have.

Generally, most small business owners simply want an attractive place to showcase their products or services, their facilities and their staff. They want a place to put their contact information, pictures, videos, location and maybe even the directions to their location. The "About Us" page is another must have.

Then you have to be able to log in and easily change things about your site by yourself. That requires a well made Content Management System (CMS), which acts like a simple word processor (like Microsoft Word). This allows you to edit the writing, picture and video content of your website, without harming the visual appearance or formatting of the website.

So What about the cost?!
By now you are probably already thinking that all of that stuff above is going to amount to some serious cash! However, that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, all of the essentials to an attractive and functional website for small business should cost, is about 3 to 4 hundred dollars depending on number of graphical revisions and quality.

Now that may sound pretty cheap and it is, but that is for the absolute minimum website design and implementation possible. More premium graphics and functionality will start at a higher cost, even at the base price.

The Different levels of Web Design

Believe it or not, there are a few different levels of professional web design. The starter level is that which uses widely available open source Content Management Systems along with custom graphics work to deliver a unique website for a rock bottom low price. The next level up is to use those same systems but with edited extension code, it saves time on mid level features. Then the highest level of web design, which is fully custom coded from the ground up systems and feature sets.

The three different levels also have their own price ranges that depend on graphical complexity and time spent on developing their unique features. Now, this may all seem pretty daunting to a novice, but it is how real developers come to price quotes for their customers. It is only complicated to the developer, the customer need only explain exactly what they desire and await a quote on the work!

The bottom line
So what does this all mean to me as a customer? It means that when you know what you want and can articulate that to developers, and when you find talented web developers, you will enjoy the most affordable quotes possible. The bottom line is that knowledge is power, you can use this knowledge to get better prices on all of your website needs!