“A website without visitors is like a ship lost in the horizon.”- A web designer not just designs beautiful websites, they create them to sell. This is one of such business sectors that brings in creative satisfaction along with revenue. But despite the fact that your work is being praised by your clients, ultimately you need to get paid for your work. And, this brings in the pricing scenario. Pricing your web designing services may seem tricky.
Though pricing is an art, finding the right strategy can take time. Understanding what all you need to consider will help you earn a healthy profit. If you are a tenderfoot, you must learn the tricking of effective pricing strategies. Take a look at this article to learn how much to charge for website design and how to do it.
Before you finalise how much to charge for a website consider the following factors!
Factors that influence how you price your web designing services
There is practically no magic formula for correct pricing. Yet, you can definitely follow this guide to have an idea as to what you should consider while pricing for your web designing services.
Your skill level:
A wealth of experience not just influences your work performance but also helps in formulating your pricing strategy. Before learning how much to charge for website design, you must reckon your skill levels as well. The more certification and experience you have, the more your potential clients would be willing to pay. To justify your rates you must have a portfolio of quality web design work. But to start off with a ballpark price, it is recommended to research the rates of other website designers to have a clear idea.
Your niche:
Specific design niche boosts productivity and profitability. Specializing in a specific field allows you to price accordingly and helps your clients to have a clear idea about the investment they are making. Moreover, it is also essential to figure out which niches can help you make a good income and which ones will not. Exceptionally high rates may land you in trouble. Therefore, in your initial days, it would be safe to keep your a bit low so that you can gradually increase your rates after you built up some experience. Nevertheless, do thorough research, as at the end of the day you don’t deserve to be underpaid after all the hard work you put in.
Type of websites you work on:
The type of website you design can influence your pricing the way your preferred niche does. The type of work you do will vary the rates you charge. For example, personal websites involve fewer complexities, and hence, prices are down. Whereas building an eCommerce platform or designing a business website involves including various features and thus these are typical of a larger budget.
Scope of work:
Scope of work and the size of the project play a vital role in pricing. Simply updating a website will cost less than creating a website from scratch. In some cases, clients may come up with suggestions that eventually increase the work. If you implement hourly rates this won’t be a problem.
Features to be included in the website:
The more you add features the more it gets complicated and hence requires more time. For example, creating a business website or eCommerce platform for clients may require adding a payment gateway, product pages and many other features. Therefore, it will add to the complexity and will spike up the cost. So, while your price for your service counts the number of additional features you add.
Current market rates:
To learn how much to charge for website design it is important to know what are the current market rates. Set your prices for what you work for and hence, make sure you have done thorough research.
Weigh in the values you have put in:
The amount of value you are giving will be considered while you charge for your services. You are building a website for your clients to help them achieve their business goals which gains much more priority than just creating a beautiful website. Therefore, charge as per the value you add to your clients’ business. You can even upsell your services in content marketing, user research and other services for better customer reach.
How much do web designers charge for their projects?
There are fairly various methods that web designers employ to charge for their web designing projects. If you are a freelancer and unaware of how or how much to charge for website design, then check out this article.
Hourly rate
If you are wise enough while quoting your price for a web designing project, then you can earn more than in-house web designers. Charging on an hourly basis is common among professionals where they charge around $75 per hour. This amount varies depending on several factors. Let’s quickly check out the factors:
Project Length
If the project is lengthy and seems like it would be consuming a longer period then the hourly rate should be lesser.
Project Difficulty
Project difficulty depends on whether you need outside help from a programmer or graphic designer, then it should cost more. Whereas, if it is similar to your past project and would require less effort you can charge less for this.
Page Count
The more pages you require to design the project means more work that needs more compensation.
A new or old client
It completely depends on you how you get more clients. But some of the professionals do charge less for new clients to get more projects.
Pet Project
A project from a well-known source that could be either friends or family, may demand less charge than other unknown sources.
Commitment level
Only a few hours of work in some projects should be charged less than the one that involves a full-time commitment.
Being a freelancer you cannot expect long-term commitment from your clients. Hence, quote your prices for your project wisely that would compensate for all the perks an in-house employee gets.
Flat rate
Flat rates are often preferred by the clients but generally not liked by many web designing professionals. The estimate may vary and you are not sure how long the project would take to complete. In this case, it is recommendable that you arrange a price list for web designing depending upon the clients’ requirements and budget.
The average cost for designing a website may sum up to $6800 which includes expenditure on setup, design, and building, content creating, client training, maintenance, etc. Moreover, keep yourself updated with the changing rates every year to keep up with the market rate.
Monthly Rate
The method of pricing is basically charging your clients a flare rate on a recurring basis. If you have the required skills then you can provide extra services like website maintenance, SEO, copywriting, and many more. This way you can earn fairly good enough.
FAQs
According to various surveys, the hourly rate for web designing in the United States is around $36. This rate works out for the in-house web designers as well. But various studies have shown that freelancers earn more per hour due to their overhead expenses. As freelancers’ income is skill-based, they charge around $30 – $80.
Website designing involves a multitude of services. The charges vary as per the services to be offered. A freelancer charges $500 to over $5,000 per website. The rates depend upon the complexity of the project and the experience level of the web designer. Moreover, including development work and yearly maintenance may also incur more charges on the client.
The charges offered by a web designer on specific projects depend upon various parameters. A well-to-do web designing company may charge more based on its establishment. But in the case of freelancers, the charge should be a decent one that would earn him/her living besides keeping the business afloat. Going below a certain hourly rate would not be wise, as that would build the client’s expectation to get the work done at lower rates.
Bottom line!
Web designing may sound simple and unique, but it involves a lot of skill and hard work. Being a freelancer you must have proper knowledge about the pricing techniques. Check out our article on how to create a web design invoice to learn the invoicing techniques for a web design project.
