I often get this “Do you make websites? How much do you charge?” question.

 

Screen Shot 2014-07-16 at 9.20.18 PMHere’s my take on that question. I hope you find it helpful.

Website design and development is a service, not a product. There is no one-off price to give — building a website takes continued time and effort.

Detail is an integral part of web design and development — and this greatly affects pricing. You may want a feature on your website for users to upload an image. There are 50 questions I could ask you, and based on your answers, I can either build the feature in one hour or 100+ hours.

For example, I may ask you: What’s the size limit of the images you’re uploading? What file formats does it support? Do you need the ability to crop the image? The list goes on.

So, if I asked you all of these questions in order to figure out how long it would take to develop one feature, are you willing to answer 1,000+ questions for the potentially 100+ other features that your website will have? Also, are you willing to pay for the time it takes to go through this process, essentially making the quote no longer free? Or is it better to simply find a trusted team that works for a fair rate, and you set the budget and objectives, and they do the best possible approach to get there? Buy trust, not line items.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Vahan Avagyan

If you’re an enterprise client, click here. If you need a cool/cute website for your small business, click here.

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