web design agency quotes - ridiculous or standard?

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boddicker

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May 22, 2010
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mods: this most definitely qualifies as a newbie post. that said, i figured people that post here might have more experience with high quality web design agencies so i'm posting here. :rasta:


i'm in the process of seeking a web design firm to create a site for a dietary supplement my company will be selling. the problem i have run into is most designer's portfolios look like they were designed in 1999. if they have any decent work, it's usually their design company's site.

it's a one product site. as much selling as possible will be on the mainpage. other than that, we'll need a checkout process, our shopping cart coordinated with our fulfillment company, and a blog. and minor pages like a contact page and return policy. we basically want the site to look as professional as possible - not outdated - and get people to the order page.

i noticed a lot of people with unremarkable portfolios are on elance and similar sites. so i went to sortfolio and started browsing and found some good stuff.

i've noticed that a lot of the people that actually do have good portfolios are quoting me in the 8-20k range. they're also quoting me time periods that are much longer (3 months) as opposed to the cheaper guys who are quoting me 60 hours.

am i getting gigged here? the agency we want is quoting us 13-15k - saying that anybody quoting below that is not going to deliver a quality product. basically wanting to know how out of line 10k+ is for a single product site.
 


the type of design we're after for our mainpage would be something similarly slick/easy to read like highrisedb dot com or other 37signals sites.


obviously our favorite agency is leaving some wiggle room in there for bargaining...
 
Most of the formal web agency companies out there thrive on the less internet savvy audience. Those are the clients that will be paying top dollar. Same thing goes with SEO, the best clients are those that have none to little knowledge of the internet, since it's easier to bike them on any charge.

I suggest trying to find a designer from WickedFire, there are quite a few, or try to find a small team of designers on freelance sites that will have reasonable rates.

If you just need a single product site with good quality, you shouldn't be paying more than $4,000 at most.
 
for 13k I can get a nice design and probably own the person who did the design for a few years.
 
johnysc430 said:
for 13k I can get a nice design and probably own the person who did the design for a few years.
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This.

On odesk there are decent quality designers that have shit low hourly wages, with $13,000; you'll have them as your servant for years.
 
mGrunin said:
Most of the formal web agency companies out there thrive on the less internet savvy audience. Those are the clients that will be paying top dollar. Same thing goes with SEO, the best clients are those that have none to little knowledge of the internet, since it's easier to bike them on any charge.

I suggest trying to find a designer from WickedFire, there are quite a few, or try to find a small team of designers on freelance sites that will have reasonable rates.
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Agreed.

I own an agency and focus on offline sales for that very reason. I wouldn't call it over charging as I'd call it charging for expertise. As a matter of fact, I closed a guy today who didn't even know how to check his email, he had to call an employee.
 
Thanks for saving me $9k then folks! I definitely know that sites can be designed cheaper. To be honest, I just got really sick of looking at the most generic portfolios of all time...on places just like odesk. Do these guys put every lame site they've ever designed into their portfolio? Anyone want to link to someone with an actually good portfolio on elance or the like? I'll start looking.

Do you guys make anything out of the discrepancies in the time these guys quoted me? For example, some of the better designers said two to three months for the entire design process. People with less impressive portfolios said 60 hours. Is this a ploy to make it seem like I'm getting more time for the money? The guys we liked most said anybody bidding less than 8k is just not going to deliver us the goods. Another standard ploy I presume?
 
let me help - i've spent the last few months going through this.


IMO you have a few issues:

1) landing page design. I paid ~$1500 for a single page designed however this was quite expensive due to requirements of nearly zero images (that weren't 'floating' if you will and easily changeable) and was a ton of complicated css in order to be modular to re-use for subsequent products.

2) integration with a CRM - I ended up going with ultracart which is a great economical solution and they offer great support - however the interface in terms of GUI/layout as well as documentation is absolute shit. That said - starting at $59/month month to month versus other CRMs that are looking for $1-3k/month with 6 month+ contracts I figured I'd get off my ass and do a little programming.

That said- for someone familiar with whatever CRM/cart solution you're using this should be under $1k. Bottom line is 95% of the code gets re-used.


If you're just tossing out a quote to get everything done I'd budget $3k. These ridiculous agency quotes of $9k and shit are just farming that out to overseas anyway.
 
i think that 4-6k is reasonable for what you're looking for. just be very careful hiring from odesk-type sites...they almost always overpromise and underdeliver. i know there's a guy in the buy/sell section that does pretty good landing pages, i think his username is "manay"
 
Hi, this is my first post so welcome self to wicked fire! This question has been tossed around in my head all the time so I decided to dig in. Nice to meet everyone.

Even $4,000 in my opinion is high. I've been freelancing off and on for over 5 years now and most of the time my average bid for a site you're describing is $1,500 to $3,000 usually with about a 1 month time frame. Creating a quality website takes more time than most will admit. 60 hours is probably reasonable for a "quick developer" but do you really want someone who's going to rush through your project just to take the money and run? If they're thorough yeah, but a week and a half? Most of those guys are terrible at what they do hence the 1999 look and feel of all of their "portfolio" which is most likely ripped off and unverifiable anyways.

Most of those guys (I used to be one, don't freelance much anymore) realized you're rarely going to compete with a larger company (on elance, odesk, etc) for those 20-100k projects. In reality some of those same companies use a different company/profile name to resell that project back to their competitors and just manage it. It's like bidding 50k on a project and then bidding on a "similar" project for 25k. They're all over the place. </tangent>

I'd recommend you either find a professional designer with a proven track record or use a website where MULTIPLE designers produce samples (LOTS) for you for like $100-300: Logo Design, Web Design, Design Contests | 99designs.com

With your design finished you could get a hold of a developer on craigslist most likely and pay him $500-$1000 to convert it to something like WordPress and throw shopified/WordPress cart on it and do some customizations.

Don't get ripped off from those companies man. The difference between a website that costs $10,000 and a website that costs $1,000 is who you buy it from. Focus on getting results and proof and if you're getting quoted above $4,000 for something that isn't awesome, try someone else.

Cheers.
 
Sonny Forelli said:
let me help - i've spent the last few months going through this.


IMO you have a few issues:

1) landing page design. I paid ~$1500 for a single page designed however this was quite expensive due to requirements of nearly zero images (that weren't 'floating' if you will and easily changeable) and was a ton of complicated css in order to be modular to re-use for subsequent products.

2) integration with a CRM - I ended up going with ultracart which is a great economical solution and they offer great support - however the interface in terms of GUI/layout as well as documentation is absolute shit. That said - starting at $59/month month to month versus other CRMs that are looking for $1-3k/month with 6 month+ contracts I figured I'd get off my ass and do a little programming.

That said- for someone familiar with whatever CRM/cart solution you're using this should be under $1k. Bottom line is 95% of the code gets re-used.


If you're just tossing out a quote to get everything done I'd budget $3k. These ridiculous agency quotes of $9k and shit are just farming that out to overseas anyway.
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I was thinking of using UltraCart but I wouldn't be setting it up myself. Ya, I'll definitely be staying away from the 10-20k guys after...or the 3-20k guys. Kind of makes me want to lowball them and see if they'll still be down to do it.
 
seiux said:
i think that 4-6k is reasonable for what you're looking for. just be very careful hiring from odesk-type sites...they almost always overpromise and underdeliver. i know there's a guy in the buy/sell section that does pretty good landing pages, i think his username is "manay"
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That's the feeling I get from those sites. I'd feel better about it if it was something that we've spent much less time on and didn't care about it. But I really want this site to look as nice as possible.


Affiliati - Sortfolio is what I used to find all of those expensive designers. Granted, some quoted me much less than 8k.
 
boddicker said:
Do you guys make anything out of the discrepancies in the time these guys quoted me? For example, some of the better designers said two to three months for the entire design process. People with less impressive portfolios said 60 hours.
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The shorter times are probably outsourcing; it's easy to quote 60 hrs if you're not the one doing the work. They'll deliver something, but probably won't be able to tell you in great detail how it works.

The longer times sound like they are going through the whole SDLC process, they'll probably show you a series of prototypes along the way, charts, diagrams, etc.
 
Try product2web and apogeeinvent if you want to make it easy on yourself and have them do everything from design, coding, and ecommerce.

If you don't like their designs or prices, use 99designs, elance, and ultracart to start. More work, but you will save some cash. There is no need to spend 13k+.
 
99 designs will get you a ridiculously good lander for 4k guaranteed. like a sick wealth of landers.
 
in the world of real web design that price range is very fair. Real web agencies have:

Experience planners (wireframes/usability)
Designers (UI design)
Copywriters (site copy and brand messaging)
Account managers
Project managers
QA departments (to test for bugs and cross test against all browsers)

If you only want to pay a few grand than you will have to go freelance and you will have to play the part of Writer/ QA tester/ Project manager/Copywriter unless you pay other people extra for that.
 
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