Different people will read the line above in one of two ways.
Web developers will wonder how the cost is so low … what is getting left out? They know designing a website takes hours of thought and work, and even the smallest sites cost $1,000 or more. No $700 website can be anything more than a general template with a logo pasted in at the top.
On the other hand, people outside the web community are wondering why a website costs so much. “The gamer kid down the street took a web design class, I can get him to build my site for $100 and pizza.” But “the gamer kid” doesn’t know design, or how to interpret your needs, and what do you do when your site needs an update in 2 years and he’s off at MIT?
Enter the Framework
I do web design, and build most of my sites using WordPress and a template framework. Though WordPress is best known as a blogging platform (and you can build your own, completely free blog at WordPress.com), you can also upload the WordPress software (from WordPress.org — note the different suffix) to your own web host and use it to build a complete web site.
Using WordPress, especially with its many templates and plugins, can cut my code-writing time, so I can focus on design and structure. However, preparing content (text and images) for a site, then creating the pages and placing that content can still eat hours and drive up costs.
Sweat Equity
Pick Two. Only Two
Let’s take a side trip into the world of architecture — not information architecture, but designing and building real buildings. There’s a classic triangle metaphor, the Time, Money, Quality triangle. You can’t have a building that is high quality, built quickly, and at a low price — you can have any two, but not all three.
Want top quality, fast? You have to pay for it.
Want it built as quickly as possible? Then it will either be expensive or shoddy.
The same is true of web sites: you can hire a professional web designer to make a to quality website, and pay top dollar, or you can hire that gamer kid for pizza and who knows what quality you’ll get?
There’s an alternative to the system, if you are willing to pick up the hammer yourself. In building, this is called sweat equity. Sometimes, an owner-builder will do everything herself, but other times, she’ll hire people to do the design, or build what she can’t learn easily, and she handles the rest. I actually did this for an addition to my house. With my now ex-husband, I hired an architect to help me design the addition, and carpenters, plumbers, plasterers, an electrician and a wood floor guy to do what I lack the skill to do. I’m painting, doing trim carpentry, and installing the kitchen myself.
Websites can be owner-builder, too.
Back to the $700 Website
It’s possible for a website owner-builder to learn enough to build a nice website for free (well, just the cost of the domain name and hosting). If that’s what you want to do, great!
But not everyone wants to do all the building themselves. They may lack the design talent, or just aren’t good with computers. Or they are too busy running their primary business to invest the hours in learning WordPress just to build one site. Like me with my addition, you may want to hire someone to help design and build the shell, which you’ll fill by yourself (with text and images, not kitchen cabinets).
The $700 website is that shell. With input from you, I’ll set up a shell website based on your design needs. You’ll create pages within the shell, and fill them with your own content. WordPress is easy for even the slightly geeky to learn to use, but I’ll give you a bit of training too. [You do need to be slightly geeky for this to work. If the idea of creating a web page scares you, I can always do all the building work for you, for more money of course.]
I’m still in the early stages of planning the “Handyman Special” web design package. If you want a $700 website, let me know … the first few clients will probably get a lot more of my time as I’ll be working out the system as I create their shell sites.
