The biggest thing today in Website Design is Content Management and WordPress is the biggest thing in Content Management. I often hear the question, “How much does a web site cost.” NAI Multimedia, a top quality design studio in Austin has a great answer on their website.
Many clients are unaware of the amount of time involved in designing a professional, search engine friendly website. From initial consultation to content and search engine optimization often runs 30 – 40 hours fairly easily. When coding for PHP, ASP or CMS or when adding additional scripts or multimedia applications it could grow exponentially from there.
Novice designers generally saturate the Austin Web Design market with flat fees of $400 to $500 for an entire website. While this may initially look appealing, it is good to remember that you get what you pay for.
A lack of understanding when it comes to layout, originality and product design leaves you with a template with your logo on it. None of your specific needs were addressed and your “designer” is nowhere to be found to update or fix problems for you once the site is done. I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times.
On the opposite end of the design spectrum is the downtown design firms. You usually get quality but the minimum some Austin TX design firms and studios want from you is $3000 to $5000, and that is just to get things started. A completed business site can easily reach $15,000 in no time.
As you think about your new business website, consider your business operational goals and related processes, then think about using WordPress to serve as the foundation of your site. A DIY business person, with a bit of luck and a desire to express some artistic flair, might save that $15,000.
I do very unconventional strategic web design, either as a business intranet used for work-flow process management purposes or as a turnkey business that I sell. I also do eCommerce websites integrated with QuickBooks. You can see some of my work in the Web Design section on the right.
Most of my strategic web design work remains undisclosed either as courtesy to or by contract to my clients, who own the intellectual property rights to their business processes and control the competitive edge derived from my consulting work with them.
The first place I start with a client involves consolidating and transferring owners domain names to a single domain registrar. Seems that some owners have domain names across several domain registrars as well as several hosting accounts. I consolidate them, document them, then plan for the future.