PSD to WordPress, PSD to HTML, PSD to Drupal

I need a site, how much will it cost?

Over the past 10 years of my life I’ve heard this question probably hundreds of times and my reaction has changed cardinally over the years.
At the moment I believe it’s pretty much the same as “I need renovations. What is the price?”

Both phrases are absolutely abstract, without any explanations or specifications. Unfortunately, for the years of work in this area, I faced this problem – client doesn’t know often what he wants. His friends or family advised to get a site in order to secure his status. So all he can say is “I need a website”.

We can’t turn the client down therefore we figure out all the potential resources that are required to create this site and we just say “No problem, please give us a day for investigation”. When he’s back we give him an estimate for his abstract quote request: “The web-site development would cost you 4 man-months”.

After these words client usually changes his countenance – he tries to understand what’s going on here and to calm down.

But why does it cost THAT much?

Then you explain him that 500-600 man-hours is not the highest price for the abstract project. It’s a common situation, isn’t it?

Let me try to discourse about the time resourses needed to develop the web-site. First of all I’m a developer and only then a manager. I can’t call myself a designer although I have my vision how things should be arranged on the site. But I never argue with designers – that’s not my business. Therefore I will descant only on the program part of the internet resource.

Briefly, the sites can be divided into several categories from the developers point of view:

1. Static.
   I mean the site that has a batch of informative pages that can be edited by editing the corresponding html file. When do I advise you to proceed with a static site? First of all, if we are on the visit-card website, its content is rarely edited and client is able to do it at his side (or he can hire us for some updates). What are the advantages?

   • First and foremost is the price.
   • Speed of development: it’s take only 1-3 days to code 3-4 pages of your site.
   • Such site doesn’t require a development part – all this site needs is markup (converting design into html files)

2. Static site with the editable elements.
   If client is afraid to break anything on the site while editing or just wants to speed up the process and would prefer a simple solution, we offer an interactive editor that allows him to edit strictly defined blocks in an interactive mode without leaving the site. (In this case costs will increase on every page. For example the software component can take about an hour per page.)

3. Simple dynamic Web site.
   It can be any simple enough site, but it has an admin panel where client can add, change and delete content.
   In these cases, we almost always recommend WordPress platform. The platform is user-friendly, very popular, rather standardized and other developers will be able to support this site as it doesn’t need and explanations.

   Alternatively, a Drupal platform can also be offered. At the moment it is much more powerful, but it’s more difficult for understanding if client is not so good at programming.

   Also a small custom CMS can be proposed. If you decide on it, don’t forget about the risk to loose the support in some time by loosing business ties with the initial developer who knows how to work with that platform.

4. Custom website with lots of different sections related to each other.
   Most likely WordPress platform won’t be enough. Probably we’ll offer Drupal.

   Flexible enough platform for an experienced developer, it allows to integrate and develop almost everything.

   The disadvantage – its admin interface is not user-friendly enough, but we are talking about a professional website.

   The development usually takes 1-4 weeks.

5. Shop site
   Site or its part is a shop. Depending on the shop complexity and flexibility we usually offer such platforms as Magento, UberCart (Drupal module), Cubecart and others.

   It’s really risky and expensive for the customer to develop his own shop site without usage of any platform.

   The development takes around 1-3 weeks if the requirements to the store can be fulfilled by the means of the choosen platform.

6. Forum, Portal
   As in the shop case, it is recommended to use as a ready-to-use platform as a foundation.
   The program part takes approximately 1-3 weeks if the requirements can be fulfilled by the means of the choosen platform.

7. Custom task that doesn’t pertain to any of the above categories
   Solution and concept is strictly individual. Any advice can be given after investigation only.

Markup (HTML/CSS): depending on the complexity of the design the markup of the home page will take 6-12 hours. Usually inner pages take 50%-70% of the time required for the home page slicing.

Design: depending on the complexity of the client’s request, the number of proposed options, the number of iterations of the concept development – it can take from 8 to 80 hours.

Here is the estimate price scale. Still you’ll ask “What is the answer for my initial question?”.
To come up with the final quote, you should provide more details for investigation. But you can get the approximate quote after you find out to which of the categories above your website belongs and the number of pages required. It will help you to understand the price situation.

Certainly my opinion is not ultimate truth although I am quite experienced in this area. You can dispute it or disagree with me. You know, truth is always somewhere in the middle

This entry was posted on Monday, January 17th, 2011 at 4:05 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.