My daughter is starting out as a makeup artist and we’re looking to set up a web site for her. Nothing fancy required like e-commerce but she does want good quality non-generic design and maybe a simple logo. How much would something like this cost? Also are there one stop shops for this or do we need a separate graphic designer and web site designer?

Generally, you get what you pay for… to an extent. There are web designers who charge peanuts and deliver great sites. There are also designers that charge waaay too much for what they do.

Look for some good web freelancers in your area (think county, not town) that have done the kind of work that your daughter requires and scrutinise their portfolio. You shouldn’t need a separate designer/developer for this.

I would say that despite what others might suggest, if you want the best image projected for her business then you need to pay for something rather than trying to take on a templated design.

It’s hard to say what kind of budget you should be looking at without knowing a bit more of the scope of the site. If you want an impartial eye, then feel free to email me with the designer’s proposal and I will give you my thoughts on skillset and costings. I design sites for a living. I’m not taking on any freelance at the moment, so I’m certainly not trying to drum up work.

Email in profile. 🙂

I would say that despite what others might suggest, if you want the best image projected for her business then you need to pay for something rather than trying to take on a templated design

That’s what we thought. Templates always seem to look a bit generic

Thanks for the offer of advice

Look at the work which Iwona does at Iwobar.net
She’s both an artist & a web designer, and has created logos.
She’s partly freelance, and will not be expensive.

I would say that despite what others might suggest, if you want the best image projected for her business then you need to pay for something rather than trying to take on a templated design

That’s what we thought. Templates always seem to look a bit generic

If you want something that’s actually custom built not just a tweaked template, you’re going to be talking about serious amounts of cash though.

How serious?

I can charge you from 875 for a day to several million quid, how serious do you want to be 🙂

Flipdiddy’s advice is accurate. Cost-wise, personally I can’t say because I do this stuff at in the blue-chip consultancy world and the sums of money tend to have a lot of zeroes on them even though the work isn’t that much different. Probably a few thousand for a couple of pages.

just had this site re done. I did supply the pages and art work. cost £750 before discount
http://www.haynescustomharvesting.com

We are well happy with it, and the great thing with this over the old site, I can now go in and do updates as and when I need to without contacting the website builder.

Template type DIY approach would be the best bet. That or get her to flutter her eyelashes at some teen geeks.

A CMS (Content management system) like jd-boy mentions, is pretty much required these days. Don’t go for anything that doesn’t at least have some basic CMS implementation as it won’t serve you well. You’ll have to go back to the designer for basic changes and either pay for this every time you update or wait ages for them to do anything.

Based upon the limited info you’ve mentioned, don’t be surprised if you have quotes for a basic site from a reasonable work from home freelancer in the £1000-£1500+ range. It will be a worthy investment if it’s done right. For this money it should start to take you out of the adapted template builds, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t pay more though.

A good agency will probably start at 10-15k for a custom site, but we’re talking proper b2b rates. Not really applicable in your case, but gives you an idea of scale.

Flipiddy is about right.

Work out what you are expecting a website to achieve. It might be less than you think and you should only commit whatever you can reasonably expect it to return.

Rachel

Work out what you are expecting a website to achieve. It might be less than you think and you should only commit whatever you can reasonably expect it to return.

This 🙂

Yeah, it’s a weird feeling explaining this to potential clients – almost like trying to talk them out of giving me money!!

🙂

Rachel

A student from the local college is redoing our work site for free as a part of his course.
Might be worth contacting your local college and asking the question!

You need very little web skills to build a site on WordPress.com, just add a custom URL for £10, then upload a logo or header and choose from one of the many themes. A custom header or logo is all you need to pay for in terms of design. Invest in the logo now with a decent designer. Look at dribble.com to find som styles u like. The designer u choose may well be able to add the branding to a theme. Avoid agencies, find a good freelancer.

Put your content into one page. Keep it minimal. Include creds, testimonials etc, link across to LinkedIn for a cv. One page will keep the costs down and it’s all you need. Stay focused with the content. Good photography is critical. If you have a budget invest in good photos as examples and the logo. Keep your overheads low, and keep the site,initial and simple. You don’t want to have to pay big fees when you want to update the site.

Good luck!

Good advice from Rachel and Flipiddy

There are a few good, well supported OpenSource Content Management systems – WordPress & Joomla to name but 2. If you have someone develop a site for you in either of these you should be free to take the site and move it should you ever wish to as they come under the GNU GPL license – they both have loads of additional functionality that can be added and they have large community support forums. You will be amazed at what you can do, or have done for a modest budget.

Just get a nice looking WordPress theme and possibly one that does good image scaling so you can look at pics on a decent size monitor (this is assuming the work she’s after is with photography/film/fashion) most people in the business I know use a template site as you are really just after a clean gallery site and minimal type.

We are a small agency – our prices start at around £5k

Don’t entirely agree that agency costs are £10k+ though – I know most agencies around us (some employing 60+ staff) start at around the same (sometimes less) as us. We are in Harrogate.

By the way – we *never* use templates – everything is entirely bespoke.

You never use a template? But what about when it’s entirely the appropriate thing to do?

Rachel

Johndoh – you’re right. But I’m just going on what the companies I’ve worked for have been charging out in the south east regarding bespoke b2b sites for SME. Clients are happy, so we must be doing something right. Everyone’s mileage will vary, after all, we’re just plucking figures here, aren’t we?

😀

If she has a portfolio this is quite a nice free service http://www.dunked.com

Rachel – If it is appropriate to use a template then it isn’t the job or client we want.

A website isn’t about making a pretty page, it’s about designing functionality, usability and experience about a specific requirement and that changes with every single project we undertake.

Also make sure that you get whatever codes/passwords are required if you want to take over the work on your site yourself or even move it elsewhere. It sounds obvious but I’ve seen people stuck with high rework charges before. I always ask for rework costs as part of the quote

What sort of business is it? I always feel the website should reflect the company. No point in have something flashy that would suit a multinational if she is offering budget, work from services.

I wonder if the OP has been scared off by the figures. Or has gone to check behind the sofa 😉

Rachel – If it is appropriate to use a template then it isn’t the job or client we want.

A website isn’t about making a pretty page, it’s about designing functionality, usability and experience about a specific requirement and that changes with every single project we undertake.

Do BMW reinvent the wheel every time they design a car? 😉

Just get a nice looking WordPress theme and possibly one that does good image scaling so you can look at pics on a decent size monitor (this is assuming the work she’s after is with photography/film/fashion) most people in the business I know use a template site as you are really just after a clean gallery site and minimal type.

+1

Nowt wrong with a customised WordPress theme IMO.

Cheers guys. So far we’ve had quotes ranging from a suspiciously cheap £200 to a suspiciously expensive £3000. Definitely seems to be a minefield.

She’s got her own photos so really I guess 2-3 pages including an about page, galleries and contact plus a logo will do her.

Content management is definitely necessary as she will be adding to her portfolio

Got to admit to still never having created a theme from scratch.

For me, using “base themes” that I extend (like Omega for Drupal), means I can spend more time on the other aspects of the site and less time worrying about the minutiae.

Maybe there is benefit in lots of different approaches??

Rachel

Do BMW reinvent the wheel every time they design a car?
No, and we don’t re-invent code, but BMW don’t regurgitate the same car whether the buyer wants a compact saloon or a large 4×4 – they design around the user requirements, much as we do.

Yes we learn, we reuse elements of code, we reuse techniques we know to work, but every project starts with a blank sheet of paper.

Pick up web-hosting with MySQL databases included and build a site in wordpress. Then get yourself a nice premium template from http://themeforest.net

Fairly simple to do and most themes can be easily customised and usually come with instructions in a pdf on how to tweak and customise it.

Thats what I did for my company site and saved a fair bit of money when I started out and I am still using it today: http://www.bachetechnical.com

Far from perfect but gets the job done 🙂

Interesting – the two posters that have done it themselves and saved a fortune.

Yes, you’ve spent less on your website but how do you know that investing in a decent website wouldn’t have increased your sales more as a result?

Cheers guys. So far we’ve had quotes ranging from a suspiciously cheap £200 to a suspiciously expensive £3000. Definitely seems to be a minefield.

She’s got her own photos so really I guess 2-3 pages including an about page, galleries and contact plus a logo will do her.

Content management is definitely necessary as she will be adding to her portfolio

You do not need an expensive website designed. while the geeks are arguing up there you could have been playing around with WordPress. By all means get a geek to set it up for you but once up and running you(she) will be able to update images as the work rolls in. I’m currently using a template site from livebooks that costs me a couple of hundered a year and I can update images in minutes and choose colours, transitions etc. I picked it because it scales large images as most of my clients are viewing on 24in+ monitors. I’m going over to a blog based site in the future so tablets/computer look the same. Minimal type and the ability to add and move images around is all you need.

To be fair, eugeo81’s site *is* pretty good!!

Simple, to the point, including appropriate information and background.

Well done!!

Rachel

My site has generated a lot of work, although to be fair my line of work is pretty specialised. The hard part was learning how to get myself to top spot on google for my certain search words. Luckily I have a few friends in SEO/web-design who gave me pointers.. Its a fine art the SEO thing and takes a lot of time and effort not actually just building a site that you like but one that is actually SEO friendly.

I think I fancied the challenge too, although I did feel like I had jumped in the deep end at first! 🙂

For what you say you want I’d expect to pay anywhere between £500 and £5k depending on many factors. Somewhere in the middle is probably average. It is a huge minefield and whilst quality is important, as already noted money doesn’t necessarily get you it.

The big agencies you can probably trust the most. They will have the most structured means of delivering the work and at least a decent level of consistency in their quality. The bigger ones will have staff from all backgrounds, offering a wealth of knowledge and experience in various aspects of the process. But you will pay the most here.

Smaller agencies can really be hit and miss, but some will quote you cheap prices to get your work in what is a pretty competitive market.

Freelancers, again, hit and miss, even more so than small agencies, but having little to no overheads can offer by far the best prices and some of them are actually really, really good.

Whatever you do, check their previous work. And not just the stuff they choose to show you and wow you with. Don’t take their word. Research.

To be fair, eugeo81’s site *is* pretty good!!
Simple, to the point, including appropriate information and background.
Well done!!
Rachel

Really? Looks dry and quite unreadable to me. Visually cold and no real direction to appropriate content.

may be is actually two words as well, not maybe. While technical patent drawings may be your thing I would expect you to proof read your site if you cared about your work. Just sayin’

To the OP. If you daughter is starting out in business then you really need to think carefully about what and how much you spend your money on. If the web site is primarily a place of reference rather than a sales channel I would question whether you want to spend some of the amounts being put forward in this thread. Think about how you create work and if/how a web site supports this.

Many long term successful small businesses start with no money available for websites/premises/tooling etc.. The people starting these businesses find ways to do business using what they have.

Also nothing wrong with a well designed WordPress site.

OP – picking up on Jumbles point, is there an opportunity to barter for a website if you’re at the start up stage. We have just done this for our new site, we traded services with our sister company, worked a treat.

We got a friendly web developer to help us adapt a WordPress theme to our requirements, with a company logo that a friendly designer did us.

Two or three days work for the developer, half a day for the designer.

£700 or £800 total.

The result looked a lot more expensive, I thought.