This is often written about by other web designers and I’m not breaking any new ground here but often potential clients looking for our services have no idea the time involved in creating a well-designed website. These same people are often shocked, if not dismayed, when they contact design companies, freelance or otherwise, when it comes to getting a website designed and get a quote back that is far off from the $200 they had in mind. So with this thought, I decided I wanted to write an entry breaking down what is involved and then do some multiplication to get our hourly rate for those with the $200 website mindset.

Information Gathering

If a website is to be designed well, time should be spent on gathering information from the client. This can take a few minutes if the client is extremely prepared to hours if you need to guide them through the process. So let’s just estimate that client discovery takes 4 hours.

Design

Designers work differently, I for one like to create a wireframe first that outlines the navigation. The basic structure of the site. When doing this I generally create 3 versions to give the client a choice. I often estimate 24 hours for this which includes the initial design time and revisions.

Then we have the concept designs where the actual design comes in play. We’ll estimate another 24 hours for this with 3 concepts and revisions. We’re up to 48 hours of billable work and we haven’t even begun coding the site yet.

Coding/Development

Once everything has been approved and signed off on, we head into the development phase. This takes me about 12 hours for both the CSS and XHTML coding for a 10 page site. Now we’re up to 60 hours of work.

Site Testing

We could skip this step but why would we want to? It’s probably the most important step of the process. This takes about 3 hours so now we’re up to 63 hours.

63 Hours Divided by $200 Equals Slave Labor

According to my calculator, that works out to $3.17 an hour—it’s not even minimum wage. I suspect that people tip more than that when eating out and less time is spent on that venture. Of course that doesn’t include the 4 hours we spent on client discovery because I don’t charge for that. So how would a potential client react if I came into their business and I asked them to provide their service for that rate? I’d more than likely be laughed out of their office or store.

It is often evident that a potential client hasn’t put a lot of thought into not only the actual process that goes into designing a site but expenses we have running a company. Obviously a freelancer has less expense than a company but we’re not devoid of expenses. I personally have rent, a car payment, car insurance, utilities, oh, and lets not forget, food. I don’t have health insurance, life insurance or any other benefit that comes with working for a company so if I get sick or injured, that comes out of my pocket. I’m also responsible for my own taxes, which is another expense to hire an accountant. All of these things go into pricing a project as well.

Hopefully potential clients reading this post will realize the amount of time and effort that goes into designing a website and rethink their mindset when it comes to a realistic budget. If any web designers are reading this that offer their services for $3.17 an hour, you’re breaking the law by not paying yourselves minimum wage.