Justifying the Cost of a Great Website

How much do you think a website costs? A couple hundred bucks? A couple thousand? More?

You'd be right on all accounts, but the better question is how much a website should cost. The market for web designers and developers is growing and the costs for those people varies greatly all over the country. Like just about any industry, you'll always be able to find someone cheaper and someone more expensive. The reason for choosing pricier people is no doubt so you can find more talented people.

Your website is and will often be (depending on your industry) the first thing people see about your business. It might even be the last thing they see. And people make judgements about whether they like a website or not in far less time than they make judgements about people. 7.5 seconds is all the time you've got to impress a potential customer or client.

If you paid less than $400 for a website, you most certainly didn't pay enough unless you paid a design student who happens to be a child prodigy. That's unlikely and it's equally unlikely your website is up to snuff.

You probably won't know if it's a good site or not. It's not your job to, that's why you hired someone else. But, imagine paying someone to mow your lawn. If you care about your lawn, you'd hire a professional grass cutting service. They'd use great equipment and the cost would be a little higher than if you paid the neighbor's son down the street to use their 12 year old push mower. You'd no doubt be able to tell the difference between the two, but websites vex some people.

You know a good site when you see it because you use it all the time. Your favorite news site or Facebook or email service is probably a well-designed, well-thought site. Those sites have costs tens of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. There's a psychology and a science and an art behind great websites. Someone who just dabbles in making webpages on weekends because they thought it was "neat" is going to do more harm to your business than you can imagine. They'll put elements on a page with the logic of, "I need stuff to put on the page" vs. a professional who would ask, "I need to know why I should include this on the page."

The right cost for a website varies by a great degree. But, looking for students or interns or dabblers on Craigslist is not a cost-effective solution. You see these sites that infuriating to use because they're slow or they're confusing. Those sites probably cost a few hundred bucks. And don't think you pay a person by "giving them a great experience" or "this is going to be a great company and I'll give you stock". Unless you're Apple, your company isn't that different than all the other companies that approach a web designer or developer. Work with a professional developer, learn from them reasonably and compensate them fairly and you'll be on your way to a great website.