our website stinks!

March 31, 2006 2:59 PM

Am I getting ripped off by my web designer? (and also, how much should a website (non-commerce) cost to design?)

I recently began working for a small textiles company. Before I was hired, the boss decided to hire a web design group to build a website for us so we could expand our business. Anyways, the boss gave this design group a whole bunch of money (i think way too much) and they came and took photographs of the place and designed an Okay looking site. Actually, the site looks pretty good... the problem is its functionality. It is so poorly designed in that aspect that we don't even bother promoting it. Plus, the design group is saying that it is going to cost over $1000 to add each additional page to the site.

To me this is absolutely asinine. These design people are so awful that I want the boss to cut bait and move on to greener pastures. I mean, I went to their website and it said "coming soon". Ha!

Anywho, can we take the work that these bad designers have done (work we have rightfully paid for) to another designer, to make improvements on the form and function?

Quite frankly, we need help and I could go on and on about what we need but I just would like to hear what you fine individuals have to say about my current situation.

Thanks in advance.

/ I mean, why can't we just have a really simple html site that we are able to add pictures to from our company computer...?
// oh wait, my boss is so old-school, we got dial-up!
///oy vey

posted by rare_g to computers & internet (24 comments total)

I think that people should pay a premium for good web-design work---even for a static website like your firm's---but IMHO, the majority of that investment should be paid on the front end---for the site architecture and general design.

Once the architecture and design is created, it should cost very little to add additional pages. $1000 for an additional page seems outrageous.
posted by jayder at 3:06 PM on March 31, 2006

$1000 a page is ridiculous.

I do a little web contracting. I charge $50 an hour and am happy to get it.

I try to work smart, too (using homemade programs to fill out templates, etc.) so I don't rip people off. There is absolutely no reason it should cost $1000 a page, no matter what sort of fancy server-side stuff they might be doing.

By far the most time-consuming part is fixing the html when people send me Word documents with complicated formatting, but that would never take more than an hour per page in the worst cases I have dealt with. Usually, adding a new page is a matter of minutes.

Hire someone else to fix it.
posted by sonofsamiam at 3:10 PM on March 31, 2006

Any chance that you can link to the website in question for us?

If the page was built correctly, then it should be made in a way where another person (content provider) plugs in the information. A professional model for web designers is split into 3 roles:

The web programmer should be responsible for building a program to bring your companies content to the web. This involves database building, and a lot of server and client side scripting. This sorta stuff does cost a lot of money as it takes a lot of time, especially if it must be worked from the ground up. Good ones with a lot of experience can get something up and running that will fit your needs faster, but come at more expensive rates. They may end up cheaper in the long run because the more experience you have the faster you can construct the things you need to build the page in code.

The graphic designer comes up with a flexible look and feel of the page. These range in price. More expensive will get you fancier stuff. Look at these guys portfolio and decide if you like it.

The content provider plugs your companies ever growing amount of information into the interface your web programmer built an it is squeezed out through the graphic designers templates.

Sounds to me like you hired a group that only has the last too. They knew some HTML and maybe a little CSS, but had no idea what a database was for or why you would use PHP. You need to find someone who can build a page and it can then be maintained by someone in your company.

A lot of companies just look for good computer technicians that can double as web masters as a full or part time position. They cost more then just computer technicians. But if they know some web programming and basic database design you will find that they can really extend the reach of your business both online and in your accounting and basic business logic.

It does sound like you are being ripped off. I would need to know more specifics, like the web page in question and how much was given to them for it. $1000 a page seems over priced....but i'm having a hard time because people don't think in terms of pages, they think in terms of page structures. Building individual pages from the ground up is both time consuming and a maintenance nightmare.

Good Luck!
posted by nickerbocker at 3:17 PM on March 31, 2006

Let's say they charge $200 per hour. That would mean they plan on spending 5 hours (average) on all new pages. If you need a unique look/layout for all new pages, then $1000 might sort of be reasonable. But I suspect that your new pages would fit into the existing templates right? And if they don't have some sort of template for interior pages, you got ripped off IMHO.

Or perhaps your new pages require substantial formatting. Like maybe they're for products which require one-off layout solutions. $1000 is not ridiculous in that case.

Also, when I did this for a living there was always a "pain in the ass" factor I'd include. So if I knew I was going to have to do revision after revision, I might charge $1000 per page. There are indeed people who need to do $1000 worth of nitpicking on every page.

But if you just need to include new text and such, $1000 is not reasonable. Existing templates should be able to make quick work of that stuff.
posted by y6y6y6 at 3:22 PM on March 31, 2006

Look into a Content Management System, so you can update the pages on your own. It's silly that they haven't offered you that as an option.
posted by Alt F4 at 3:25 PM on March 31, 2006

I'm a freelance web developer, and I used to work for a web development firm.

Charging on a "per page" basis at all is completely absurd. "Pages" aren't what costs money - labor is. The labor in creating new pages, so long as format and design are mostly identical and it's only text content that varies, is almost no work at all. The only hard part is if adding a page requires that you add a clickable link/button on every single page of the site that allows you to get to that page. Any good web developer, however, has an "include" that standardizes the interface so you only have to change it in one place. You should not have to pay for this "designer"'s inability to do work efficiently.

If you're looking for greener pastures, feel free to drop me a line. My pastures are um.. as green as ask mefi! yea!
posted by twiggy at 3:32 PM on March 31, 2006

How much will a three bedroom house cost me?

It depends... but things you should be looking for in your new design work include:

user-centered design:

what are your users/customers really trying to do on the site?

accessibility:

Apart from the fact that Google is your biggest blind user, accessibilty is easy to build in from the start of the coding, and makes your site easier for everyone else, too

good code rocks!:

Ask any incoming person this: "If you were an HTML tag, which would you be and why?" Make sure that you person can answer it well. If they use a WYSIWYG editor, you're not getting your money's worth, and your site will show it. (C.f. below re: templates).

Also, realize that templates are teh sux. You're going to be paying good money for this, and you should respect that. Pay for a custom solution that really reflects the awesome company you are. A cookie-cutter, blah web site tells your customers that you're going to be delivering cookie-cutter, blah results. Templates are also far more likely to cause cross-browser issues and sites that won't be as future-proof.

Also: CMSes (content management systems) cost extra. Unless they're using open source programs, they're not free to the design company -- and even if they are using open source, take time to customize and implement. Unless you're going to be changing the whole site content quite frequently, it's really not needed. If you want a regularly updated news or press release section, it should be easy enough for the team to skin a blog.

Where are you located? Web design around here I usually see for between $60 - $100 an hour. Create a detailed request for a proposal. You'll get ballparks, and I'd trust the ballpark-but-hourly over the ballpark-but-flatfee. This will also protect them. Twiggy's right on with her "per page" comment. I don't think they know what they're doing.

I'm a web designer, please feel free to e-mail me with any questions.
posted by mimi at 4:01 PM on March 31, 2006

Without more information, I'd have to say you are definitely getting ripped off. Unless each new page is going to includea complete redesign and development, this is craziness.

You own the website, you can do whatever you want with it. There work was done work-for-hire.
posted by visual mechanic at 4:03 PM on March 31, 2006

I'd say to bring in a new programmer and start over. If it already looks good, then you don't have to hire a graphic designer, you only need a backend developer with a strong emphasis on user-centered design to restructure your site's organization and create a CMS or template system for you to plug in content. They should be able to do the HTML/CSS as well as any minor graphics work, but the emphasis should be on creating a good backend.
posted by lychee at 4:15 PM on March 31, 2006

Is it $1000 for a specific page that does something interesting, like an order tracking page that would require a lot of programming? For some crazy flash-based interactive product demo? Is this page going to require totally new graphics and design from scratch? If those are the case then I could sort of see it.

If it's just a static page that fits into your current design, with some new text and pre-provided graphics, it's crazy.
posted by delmoi at 4:38 PM on March 31, 2006

It is so poorly designed in [functionality] that we don't even bother promoting it.

"Functionality" can mean a lot of different things, and from your description here it's hard to tell whether you mean the site navigation is confusing, or there's server-side CGI code that doesn't work right, or that the website doesn't do a good job of promoting your business, or something else.

What it sounds like, here, is that your boss hired the wrong guys for the job: they're look-and-feel designers, used to doing brochure websites that just have to look good but don't have to actually do anything. (The fact that they're billing "per page" rather than per hour is a major clue.) Your company, I gather, needed more than that.

So, basically, things went wrong. "$1000 per page" for additions to a completed design is a lot, of course, but I'm betting it's what you might call a "Go away and leave us alone" quote: things went south between you and them, they don't want to work with you anymore, so they're quoting an outrageous price in the hopes that you will, well, go away and work with someone else. (Or, possibly, y6y6y6 is right, and you guys really are costing them enough in changes and tweaks and corrections that they really do need $1000 worth of labor to do one page. I've certainly been in situations like that, and it's why I always bill by the hour.)

How much should a website (non-commerce) cost to design?

There is no answer to this question; it depends on what functionality you need, how it will be maintained, how complex the layout and design will be, how standards-compliant the underlying code needs to be, what other systems it needs to be able to pass data to, how much of the functionality needs to be built from scratch and how much can be recycled from other projects, a hundred other factors.

One very important factor, note -- possibly the most important factor -- is how well you know what you need going in. You're not going to like hearing this part, but:

It's easy to build a site for a client who knows they need (for example) a database-driven site with X, Y, and Z content types in it, has their content already written and organized, can clearly describe the functionality they need, etc. It's very very difficult (read: expensive) to build a site for someone who just knows they need a website to expand their business, and would like to be able to upload photos to it from the office dialup connection, and sure, you can come take photos of our office, and oh, we changed our mind, now we need to add some more pages... changes are expensive. Educating the client is expensive. Misunderstandings and miscommunication are expensive. I have a pretty strong feeling that a lot of those expenses were involved last time around, and will be next time as well.

But, yeah; it's your site, as long as you've paid for the work already delivered, there's no reason on earth you can't switch to someone else.
posted by ook at 4:55 PM on March 31, 2006 [1 favorite]

But, yeah; it's your site, as long as you've paid for the work already delivered, there's no reason on earth you can't switch to someone else.
Actually, this depends on the contract and jurisdiction. The content/IP creators may still own the copyright.
posted by acoutu at 5:02 PM on March 31, 2006

The content/IP creators may still own the copyright.

They might, but only if they're complete ripoff artists; I've never seen a web design contract that wasn't specified as work for hire.
posted by ook at 6:11 PM on March 31, 2006

"Templates are also far more likely to cause cross-browser issues and sites that won't be as future-proof."

Mimi, you must mean something different by the word "template."

To me templates - ie basic markup skeletons into which content is placed on a more or less automated basis - are precisely what enhance maintainability and future-proofing. If you have a problem or wish to make a site-wide change, you change the template and regenerate the site and poof! every page is fixed/upgraded/whatever. Maintaining a site of completely hand-cut pages is a pain in the arse and guarantees niggling inconsistencies.

Are you thinking of templates as in "here's my book of pre-cut designs, pick one and we'll customise it"?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 6:15 PM on March 31, 2006

whoa.... thanks for the most excellent responses.

$1000 a page is crazy-
Each new page is just an image of a new design... so a template would be quite sufficient. actually, what we need is more of a gallery than individual pages. We just want people to see the new patterns we are creating and to be able to update them regularly. Nothing complicated.

Bottom line is we just want a sharp looking, straightforward website that is easy to manage on our own.

thanks again for the responses... i will check back and write more about the specifics later....if you're all still here.

for know i am headed out for dinner with my gal.
posted by rare_g at 7:28 PM on March 31, 2006

Yeah, $1000 per page is crazy. The most I've ever seen from a shop that charged per page was $500. I'd also like to echo the bit about getting a CMS. The problem of creating whose pages all have the same basic layout but just change some content in one or a few places has been solved a terrifyingly large number of times. There's no reason that adding a page to a typical website (if you know what you want to put on it already) should take someone who knows what they're doing more than 10 minutes. And that includes time for experimenting with image placement, etc.
posted by gsteff at 11:32 PM on March 31, 2006

Er, The problem of creating a website whose pages all have the same basic layout but just change some content in one or a few places has been solved a terrifyingly large number of times.

One of these days, I'll start using preview.
posted by gsteff at 11:34 PM on March 31, 2006

I'll tell you one thing - web designers often think that they're worth their weight in gold, but they're really a dime a dozen.

Take that $1000, put an ad on Craigslist or in your local college paper and see if a local student is willing to take on the task. You'd be surprised. A few years back, I did the exact same thing for a website and was absolutely innundated with replies. I ended up finding a local designer that did web design as a fun side hobby and I was very happy with the results.

So, yeah. Ditch these turkeys. Put the word out, and you might get lucky. Let the person add the site to their portfolio too.
posted by drstein at 11:36 PM on March 31, 2006

i_am_joes_spleen: yes, that's what I mean by templates. It sounds like you are using Dreamweaver?
posted by mimi at 3:44 AM on April 1, 2006

I'll tell you one thing - web designers often think that they're worth their weight in gold, but they're really a dime a dozen.

Seems like that's the attitude that got the poster's company in this position in the first place. Back when we were a smaller shop, web development was estimated at about a page a day. Given web dev work was charged at $75/hour, that's not too far from $1,000. If you consider all the other work (mentioned above) that should go into it (user interface, information desgin, visual design) the cost wouldn't be out of the question. For a good design shop.
posted by yerfatma at 5:00 AM on April 1, 2006

The short and simple answer is no, $1,000/additional page is not at all reasonable.

If an existing template exists, and navigation only needs to be updated on a few other pages (assuming they're not using an include or some such), then it will take at most an hour or three to paste, format, spot-check, upload, test, retest, link, get a sandwich, eat said sandwich, and remember to tip the sandwich boy next time.

If they're doing a great deal of custom graphics for each new page, then there is some argument for it, but if they're delivering to you something that's non-intuitive and horrible to use, then you need to fire them and bring on someone who can resurrect what you have, perhaps with a few usability tweaks, and make things work for you. And without even looking at the site, I can tell you it'd (likely) cost you less than $1,000 to rework it into a more usable design, at my company's rate of $75/hour, unless they've completely obfuscated and otherwise done things to the code base and template/layout, or if you have 20+ static pages that need updating.

Adding an open source gallery tool coded to look pretty and work with your existing design would be ridiculously affordable as well.

In short: seriously, stop your boss from giving these people any more money.
posted by disillusioned at 7:20 AM on April 1, 2006

Hey rare_g, drop me a line. Click on my username to get my e-mail address. I'd be happy to take over development of the site for you, and at a much more reasonable rate.
posted by banished at 11:27 AM on April 1, 2006

Sounds like you would benefit from hiring someone to theme out and setup a content management system for you. There are about a thousand to choose from, most of them open source and free. Check out CMS Matrix for comparisons and features. You may even be able to get away with some static pages and a custom installation/theme of a nice photo gallery system, like Gallery.

The bottom line is, there is no reason in this day and age to be paying some design house to develop individual static 'pages' for you. The entire concept of a 'page' has been sort of left behind in recent times by the concept of 'layouts' or 'views'. For example, take mefi. You have a 'homepage' layout, which consists of a header, sidebar and listing of links. You then have the 'posting view' which has the post itself and comments, as well as the comment posting form. There are several other layouts, like the user information area and archive searching. These are not really 'pages' since they always contain different information that is populated by the information in the database and formatted by the themeing/template system in the appropriate manner. So the traditional concept of 'pages' is sort of ridiculous in this context, since there are literally tens of thousands of unique 'pages'.

My point is, find someone who will help you find what technology and site structure is appropriate for the site you have and your organization's structure, and pay them to build you a system that allows you to make the day to day changes you require on your own. That may be a full-blown cms, or a few php includes and html files you can edit when you need to. If your web developer is not trying to build you a system that makes them unnecessary once they are done with the site, chances are they are ripping you off.
posted by crunchywelch at 12:06 PM on April 1, 2006

"Seems like that's the attitude that got the poster's company in this position in the first place. Back when we were a smaller shop, web development was estimated at about a page a day. Given web dev work was charged at $75/hour, that's not too far from $1,000. If you consider all the other work (mentioned above) that should go into it (user interface, information desgin, visual design) the cost wouldn't be out of the question. For a good design shop."

Right. And I'm saying that there are a hell of a lot of people that could do a better job for half the price. I've found that move 'web developers' are a rip off. Not every website needs a flashy Flash interface or oodles of javascript & DHTML everywhere. The OP said that he was with a small company, and expressed a desire for a fairly HTML only site. Why does an HTML only site now need a $75/hr web developer? It doesn't. There are just too many turkeys that try to convince you that you need Web 2.0 everywhere. And it's bullshit. Overpriced web designers are helping turn the web into an overly complicated hellhole of useless 'features.'
And who knows, maybe the shop they've had doing the page is busting it out using some stock Dreamweaver templates, and they are in fact getting fleeced. But without seeing the page he's referring to, we'll never know.

Oh well. My answer is that the OP is getting ripped off.
posted by drstein at 9:55 PM on April 2, 2006