These days, web design pricing tends to be all over the map. You can find a lot of web designers who claim to be willing to design a website for $200, a lot who wouldn’t touch a project for less than $10,000 and even more who fall somewhere in between. So what’s the right price? You’re going to hate this answer, but there isn’t one right price. It’s sort of like buying a home; it depends on a lot of different variables.

Price is what you pay, value is what you get.

You could save tons of money by going with a dirt-cheap web designer, but if your website does a poor job of converting your visitors into customers, what did you really save? On the other hand, if you blow your entire marketing budget on the perfect website and then can’t afford to market it, did you really make a wise investment?

You need a website that presents a professional image and gives your visitors that warm fuzzy feeling deep in their gut that lets them know they can trust you. But more importantly, you need a website that converts your visitors into customers. It’s all about results.

To determine whether the price/value ratio is on the mark, you’ll have to know what your website needs to be capable of. Functionality impacts price. For example, our website design prices currently start at $1,225. That’s for a completely custom designed, multi-page website website, coded with valid HTML and CSS that works properly in all major browsers. Specialized functionality, like a content management system, which gives you the ability to easily  change your own website content, moves your investment up into the $2,200 range. The more bells and whistles you add, the more your website will cost.

Some people may be thinking that’s a lot of money, which is both right and wrong at the same time. If you just want to set up a blog as a hobby, a couple thousand dollars is probably a lot of money to spend, but if you want to set up a custom website for your company, investing a couple thousand dollars is virtually nothing. Think about it like this. You’re selling a product or service, and if you’re website allows you to increase your sales by even just 5%, how quickly will your investment pay for itself? More importantly, what will it mean to your bottom line after that?

What is the scope of your project

In addition to the functionality of your website, the scope of your project can have a significant impact on the price. More work obviously means more fees, so you’ll need to factor in certain details ahead of time, such as:

• How many pages will be included?
• Will you be providing content or will they write it for you?
• Who will input your content (copy and/or products)
• Is web hosting included?
• Is a domain name included?
• Will you be providing images/photos?

When do you need it?

You might be surprised at how many people wait until the last minute to start their web design project. If you want to save some money, don’t be that guy! When a firm has to rearrange their existing projects, work extended hours, through weekends or holidays to meet your deadline, there will be additional fees.

Experience counts

OJ Simpson can tell you how important it is to hire the right lawyer, and the same principal applies to web designers. An experienced web design firm will almost always charge more, but will produce much better results. We’re not just talking about appearance though. In this case, we’re talking about your bottom line. An experienced firm knows what it takes to get your new website up and running quickly, how to drive traffic to it and how to convert your visitors into customers.

Experienced web design firms will often utilize standardized processes, like our web design process, and checklists, like our web design checklist to make sure each client receives consistent quality, their specific needs are met and that no details are missed. If you’re considering several firms, look at the systems they’ve put in place, some of the websites they’ve designed, read their testimonials and even contact some of their clients. If they seem to have solid systems, you like the style of their work, and their clients are successful and happy with their service, it may be worth the additional cost to hire a more experienced firm.

The bottom line?

Price should never be your sole determining factor, in fact, it should be the last and least significant factor in your decision. You should choose a web design firm with sufficient experience to execute your project, but you also need to make sure you can afford to market your new website once it’s up and running. The “build it and they will come” days are far behind us.

No matter how well you maintain your website, eventually, you’re going to have broken links. You might have moved a page, put a typo in a link or maybe someone else linked to a page on your website that no longer (or never did) exist. The end result is a visitor or search engine arriving at a page that doesn’t exist.

Finding broken links within your website is simple and painless; you can either use W3C’s online link checker tool, or a more robust tool, like Xenu’s Link Sleuth, which is free and runs from your desktop. Finding broken links from other websites is equally simple, but takes a bit more work to fix them. First, you’ll have to dig through your server logs to find any 404 errors, then see which sites are linking to those non-existent pages and contact the site owners to have them corrected. If you can’t get in touch with the site owner, or he isn’t willing to correct the link, you’ll need to set up a 301 redirect to automatically send visitors and search engines to the correct page.

This is so important because if a visitors arrives at a non-existent page, they will usually just leave and visit one of your competitors instead. If a search engine finds several non-existent pages on your website, they may lower your ranking, which means less traffic.

Far too often, a website redesign starts off focused on appearance instead of measurable goals. If appearance is your first priority, you’re on the fast-track to failure, so before you jump into the fun stuff, grab a pad and a pen and spend some time figuring out the answers to these 4 questions:

1. What are your goals? Before you change a single line of code, before you even start thinking about what your new website will look like, you need to know exactly what you want it to accomplish. Do you want your new website to present a particular image? Do you want it to generate more leads/sales or do a better job of converting the traffic you’re already getting? Figure this out and you’ll get a lot more from your new website, plus, the entire process will move more smoothly and quickly.
2. What is and isn’t working? You need to know how your current website impacts your goals. This means spending some time analyzing your website traffic, leads and sales. You’ll probably notice that a small handful of sources drive most of your traffic, leads and sales, but a little more digging will often turn up some low-hanging fruit that you’re missing out on. Maybe you’ll realize that 70% of your revenue comes from one or two products, which would be an indication that you should focus on developing more similar products. Or perhaps you have a #1 ranking for a particular keyword but don’t rank at all for a few other variations that may drive reasonable traffic with lower competition. The more you dig, the more opportunities you’ll find.
3. What are you up against? Potential customers will be looking at your competitors, so you need to as well. The idea isn’t to copy, or even emulate them. The idea is to make sure that your website covers the same bases they do while filling in the gaps they’ve missed. For example, if all of your competitors offer online ordering, you damn sure better offer it too, but also offer what they don’t. Perhaps you sell a complex product that people often call you about before ordering online. You could launch a blog or forum that lets your visitors learn more about it. This helps present you as an industry leader and will often help to shorten your sales process too.
4. Where are you now? Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither was Apple, Starbucks or any other large, successful company. Take a cold and emotionless look at where you stand today; traffic, exposure, brand recognition, budget, etc. If you’re running a small mom-and-pop store with little website traffic, spending thousands of dollars to add the newest web 2.0 social-media this and that to your website is a really bad idea. You need to invest for the future, but rather than adding features, focus on driving traffic and building a brand. Before you add any special functionality, you should determine how it’s going to help you reach your goals.

As if you didn’t already have enough technical terms to deal with, now everyone is talking about CSS and you may find yourself wondering what it is, why it matters, and more importantly, what it can do for you.

CSS, otherwise known as Cascading Style Sheets, is simply a way to tell a web browser how to display the elements on an HTML page. It offers more precise control and is supported by all browsers today.

Ideally, your CSS should be contained in a separate file, which is then linked to within the and head tags of each web page, as such:

<link rel='stylesheet' href='/style.css' type='text/css' media='all' />

The first, and most significant advantage in using CSS this way is that it puts all of your formatting into a single file. This means that rather than editing each individual page, you only have to change one file, which can save you a lot of time and effort when you make changes. For example, instead of using cumbersome tables to control your layout, you can use CSS to position and style elements, and the best part is that if you’ve set it up properly from the beginning, you can change your entire design by just modifying your CSS file. A great example of this is CSS Zen Garden. In each example, the HTML remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external CSS file; it allows complete control over the appearance of an HTML document. The learning curve can be steep, but once you have a solid understanding, you can create more compelling designs in far less time than ever before.

CSS can help improve your search engine optimization (though just slightly) by reducing the ratio of code to text, which makes your content more relevant in the eyes of the search engines, resulting in more traffic. Less code also means a faster load loading page; another factor in how a web page ranks, but also a factor in your page view numbers because people will usually spend more time on a faster website.

By now, it’s probably obvious that you need a solid understanding of CSS. To get started, you can find tutorials on every aspect of CSS at W3Schools.com and for more advanced learning and interaction with experts on the subject, you’ll want to bookmark CSS Tricks, by Chris Coyier. That information along with a few books and healthy dose of trial and error will take you a long way to becoming a CSS pro!

Some say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but if you’re like me, you probably find it downright irritating when someone copies your website. When your television, car, or purse is stolen, you can call the police and/or insurance companies to help you recover your property and get compensation. If your website’s content is stolen, who can you turn to?

For most people, the first reaction is to fire off a scathing email, loaded with all sorts of threats and insults. If that’s what you’re considering, wait until you cool off first. Chances are that they may not have known they were doing anything wrong, or an employee or freelancer did it without their knowledge. By putting them on the defensive, you’ll make it more difficult to come to a quick and satisfactory resolution. A better approach is to contact them in a friendly tone, letting them know that their website contains content that was taken from your website without permission and that you would like them to remove it. In most cases, they will quickly remove the content in question.

But what if they don’t? Fortunately, you still have several options before you have to file suit in court. The first and most effective is simply filing a DMCA complaint with their web host and the major search engines. It’s important to ensure your complaint is structured according to their requirements and contains just the facts. Leave emotions out. Upon receiving your complaint, the web host will usually suspend the website while they investigate the matter. They will then require that the site owner removes all illegally copied content before their website will become active again.

If a DMCA complaint does not resolve the issue, you may file a law suit in court, but this can quickly become expensive and time consuming, so you’ll need to carefully weigh your options to decide if it’s really worthwhile.

Before we get started, this article is in no way meant to marginalize the many talented and knowledgeable IT professionals out there. It is simply meant to highlight the differences between them and a website designer. No doubt, I’m certain we’ll get a lot of heat from the IT community, but that’s the nature of the beast. That being said…

Many companies have an in-house IT department, and even some of the smallest companies at least have a local IT firm on speed dial. To most people, it may seem logical to ask an IT firm or in-house IT department to design their website, after all, it’s related to computers and they certainly know their way around those, right? More often than not, your average IT guru can rush in to save the day when you accidental delete an important file, get a computer virus or run into some other confounding  technology-related issue, but when it comes to website design, they usually don’t have the unique skill set it takes to produce results online.

They don’t speak the language

First and foremost, IT people are not marketers. They don’t know what motivates someone to make a buying decision. They tend to focus on features instead of benefits, and their writing is often dry and overly analytical with little emotion or excitement. When you look at most websites designed by IT people, it comes across more like a spec sheet than a friendly, yet convincing presentation. It’s that convincing presentation that converts your visitors into buyers, and that’s what your website is supposed to do.

Right-brain vs. left-brain thinking

Everyone has their strengths, and for most IT people, it’s logical, left-brain thinking rather than creativity. It may not seem like a big deal, but creativity is critical because there are billions of websites out there and people are busier than ever, so you have just a few seconds to make a memorable impact. As much as we try to deny it, looks do matter and if your website presents a poor image, visitors will quickly move on to one of your competitors.

The University Of Wisconsin summarizes the visual nature of our society by saying:

Ours is a visual culture. Our workplaces are visually saturated environments and our dominant pastimes (films, television, video games, and the Internet) are visual media. Moreover, we communicate visually when we are trying to cross over cultural boundaries; think, for example, of the graphics devised for international signage. Knowledge is often communicated visually: scientists chart brain activity, economists graph fiscal trends, geographers map territory and detectives photograph evidence. The growth of the web as an information distribution system has made an understanding of visual design factors indispensable in every field of study. The visual also our access to the past. The earliest recorded communications are pictorial and artifacts are central to the reconstruction of history.

They work in the trenches

Few people truly appreciate the work that IT professionals do because much of it is behind the scenes, making sure workstations, servers and networks are running smoothly and efficiently. Without them, most companies would come to a grinding halt. While critical to the success of a company, this often thankless job means they are rarely involved in the big-picture vision and plans. It’s tough to design a website, the face of any modern company, without clearly understanding the goals and objectives of that company.

They know just enough to be dangerous

I’ve watched enough Grey’s Anatomy reruns to know that while I technically could remove a kidney, it wouldn’t be a good idea because there is a lot more to it than simply cutting someone open and plucking out an organ. IT professionals face the same dilemma when designing a website, though the results won’t be quite as dramatic as my playing doctor. Sure, they technically can design a website, but aside from the design and copywriting issues we’ve already covered, what about cross-browser compatibility, which often drives even experienced web designers insane? Or semantically correct and W3C valid HTML and CSS? Don’t forget SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which is an entirely separate and complex specialization on its own. Your website won’t do any good if it display incorrectly, loads too slowly or can’t be found by the search engines.

It’s not their job

Maybe they enjoy web design, but I’m willing to bet they would rather focus on doing their own job; it is more than enough to keep up with on its own. Besides, if you’re asking them to do something that they really aren’t proficient at, it will take them longer, which will frustrate both you and them. And you don’t want an unhappy IT guy or girl in your office, they know every website you visit and they probably know all of your passwords too!

Something we’re asked about frequently are content management systems. Many people have no idea what a content management system is or what it can do for them, which is a shame since it can give them a powerful competative advantage.

In a nutshell, a content management system, or CMS, allows you to easily edit your website content though a web-based interface. Your content is usually stored in a database, and the structure of your website is controlled by a single set of files. The benefit to this it that:

• You can edit your content without knowing HTML or CSS
• You can edit your content without worrying about breaking your website
• Changing your content doesn’t have to cost you anything since you can do it yourself
• You can change your content on your schedule
• You or designated staff members can update your website frequently, which helps improve search traffic and visitor retention
• Design changes can be accomplished by editing a single set of files, unlike a static website where each page must be updated individually

Your website probably doesn’t need to be redesigned

A professionally designed website should stand the test of time. Depending on your industry, it’s usually advisable to redesign your website every few years to maintain an up to date image, but not more frequently than that. The only time you should make sweeping changes to the design of your website is when you feel that it doesn’t present the image that you want for your company. But remember, you will tire of it long before your visitors do.

You don’t have to pay every time you want to make a change

Even if all of the content on your website is perfect today, it will probably change at some point in the future. Almost every business owner has found themselves in this position at some point in time They’ve had to wait for an opening in their schedule and then pay a fee before the changes could be made. This can be frustrating and sometimes costly, but it can be avoided with a content management system which enables you to easily make changes on your own. This gives you complete control over your content, it doesn’t cost you anything to make changes and you can make them whenever you want.

Web hosting is cheap

I’ve talked to countless clients who were charged well over $100/month for web hosting – and we’re not talking about a dedicated server. These people were being charged 10 times what they should have been charged by a web designer who was simply looking to pad their own wallets. These days, you can find reputable and reliable hosting companies for under $10/month. This usually includes unlimited traffic, bandwidth and email accounts and will more than adequate for most companies.

Website design does not equal SEO

SEO (search engine optimization) is probably one of the most misunderstood aspects of marketing ever. In the simplest terms possible, SEO is a combination of quality content, clean code and inbound links. Without the proper application of all three, you won’t achieve significant ranking in even a moderately competitive niche. The optimized code can only take you so far without quality content and inbound links. Any designer who promises that their web design is all you need is trying to sell you a nice shiny bottle of snake oil.

You are not always right

The job of a web designer, aside from the obvious task of designing your website, is to provide their guidance and expertise. If they blindly agree with everything you want them to do, they really aren’t giving you the best service possible. Your designer should be able to make recommendations and explain their logic, but at the end of the day, the final decision is in your hands. I’ve worked with a few clients who insisted on doing things their own way even after we’ve advised them why a different approach would be more effective, but since they write the check, they get what they want. More often than not, however, they usually follow our recommendations when their idea didn’t work the way they had hoped.

When the Internet was just beginning to be used for business, we didn’t have anywhere near the flexibility that we take for granted today. I remember the early days of website design, when the <blink> tag first showed up. Everyone thought it was the coolest thing and wanted it added to their website just because it was possible. A few years later, it was Macromedia Flash (now Adobe Flash) and everyone was just dying to have an obnoxious Flash intro, again, just because they could.

Don’t misunderstand; there’s nothing wrong with being on the cutting edge of technology, especially if it gives you a competitive advantage, but it’s a bad idea to do something just for the sake of doing it. Anytime you have a design idea, do yourself a favor and ask yourself what purpose it serves. If there is no quantifiable answer, you’re probably better off passing on the idea.