The unfortunate part of not being web-literate is not understanding the charges that can be on the invoice from your web designer. “Am I paying too much?” or “am I getting a great deal” is one of the most common questions our company is asked when we meet with a client. Most of the time, a client will have spoken to a fellow business owner about the cost of their website and the designer’s reliability, because web design is a word of mouth orientated service field. A factor that regularily causes conflict itself is when their fellow business owner gets charged less than what the client did. But why? The most common answer is that the client wanted more pages, design work, animated slideshows, shopping carts or a full spectrum array of services that their friend didn’t want.
So even though it ranges from designer to designer, primarily based on education and experience, we can give you an estimated range on how much service fees should cost. Also remember that there are other factors that could throw the estimations off, including location, monthly website support and the size of the project/website.
1) Hosting
This should not be more than $7-10 a month for a small business owner with one website. If your hosting includes a content management system, you need to ask if you can pay for the CMS in a lump sum amount. I have seen web designers attach a CMS charge to the monthly hosting fees (and the fee goes on for as long as you have hosting). Really, that charge is for profit, because unless you had your website payment deferred, designers have already gotten the full amount from the design.
2) Domain Names
This is a by company price. GoDaddy, 1 & 1, etc. will all charge a different amount for you to reserve your domain using their services. I’ve seen domain names range from $1 to $25 (non-premium domains), so you really have to purchase it based on the features and specials they offer with buying a domain. The most common length of a domain purchase is 1 year, so you want to always make sure you either have your domain on auto-renewal or you receive notices when it is going to expire. Otherwise, when the domain expires, it will be put on auction or someone can buy it and charge you $100′s or even $1,000′s to get it back.
Summary:
My biggest recommendation for a small business owner is that if you think you’re paying too much for your website, you probably are. With the average cost of a domain and hosting, you should be paying $9 or so per month, of course that does not include the cost of website design.
Loading ...