Web Design Fees

Straight Talk About Your Investment In Your Online Presence
We're very involved in our industry and spend part of every work day following search marketing news and networking with our industry colleagues. The years we've spent amongst our peers and working one-on-one with small business owners have helped us to gain a bird's eye view of the lay of the land when it comes to rates for web design and SEO/SEM services. Let's break this down into three different groups:

Cheap and Risky
Hoping to do business on the web without making a genuine investment in your website and its promotion almost guarantees disappointment. Phony offers of 'instant success', 'instant rankings' or 'instant' anything play on people's dreams and create a false picture of what it really takes to succeed on the web. It's going to take a great idea, tremendous effort, skills and money. The best analogy we can make is that if you're having a brick-and-mortar business built from the ground up, hiring a cheap construction company may lead to disaster. Disaster happens on the web when hopeful business owners buy into offers that are simply too good to be true.

Cheap websites include template sites where you buy into a big company's monthly plan for $20, $50, $100 a month on the assurances that you can build a professional website, all on your own, even if you've never built one before. Sure, the template will let you build something, but without spending the time to educate yourself about usable design, search engines and search marketing, the result is not going to be professional. It can serve you as a great learning tool, but there's a reason some 75% of the redesign work we get comes from small business owners who went the template/monthly fee route and found they weren't ranking anywhere or seeing any profit.

Cheap websites might be built by a friend, a relative or a student. Hobbyist websites of this kind can be great if you're just starting out and really don't have any serious investment to make in your web presence, but they tend to outlive their purpose when the owner realizes they are missing the opportunity to present their business in a professional manner or that they aren't being found by search engines for the right searches.

The risk factor comes into play in a couple of ways. The simplest one is that any time lost representing yourself in an unprofessional way means lost money. The more complicated risk involves what can happen to your business when you hire someone who doesn't know really what they are doing. At best, your site may spend months or years buried pages and pages deep in the search engines because it has been poorly constructed. At worst, unskilled or unprincipled website designers may get your company's website penalized or banned by search engines. Remember, your website is the home of your online reputation. Something as important as this deserves to be in safe, skilled hands.

Good Investment, Good Return
If those something-for-nothing offers you've run across have given you false hopes that you can succeed on the web without a real investment, you'll doubtless be heaving a small sigh when a legitimate, professional web design firm quotes you a price for your project. You may say to yourself, "well, now I know it's going to cost me something to make my business goals a reality." But somehow, you probably already knew that.

Maybe your quote will be for $2000, maybe it will be two, three or four times that much, depending upon the complexity of your needs. Your budget has to be a deciding factor, and talking to trusted web design firms will help you gain a realistic view of what your budget will need to be to get what you want. Any good firm will be happy to provide you with a quote, once they understand the scope of your project, and within this segment of good investment/good return companies there is some leeway when it comes to a final price. Some firms won't take on projects valued at less that a set dollar amount. Others are more flexible, depending upon the availability on their books. Finding the right match for your project should be a combination between budget and absolute trust that the firm you hire will do a professional job for you.

Making a real investment in your web presence is your best plan for seeing a good return on your efforts. A qualified web design company will save you headaches, save you from common pitfalls associated with unskilled workers and will offer your company the qualified services you need.

Big Time and Totally Unaffordable
We have colleagues who only work with big companies. One of our industry's best-known SEM firms charges $10,000 just to consult with them, once! The truth of the matter is, this particular firm is worth it because of their incredible skills, but they aren't the right choice for the small business owners who become our clients.

If you're a small business owner, we know you don't have that kind of money to invest at this point. Maybe one day, you'll be at the point where you can hire one of those $10,000/hr consultants, just to see what they can teach you, but for now, this category of service providers and your budget probably aren't a match made in heaven.

Where Does Solas Web Design Fit Into All Of This?
We're definitely in category #2. We'll be expecting a realistic investment from you in our skills and services, but we won't break the bank. Our rates tend to be somewhat lower than many of our colleagues' in this category because we are so committed to serving the small business owner. If you're just starting out, working with us may require that you save up for a couple of months before we get going, but your business is definitely worth that kind of realistic commitment.

Why Clients Tell Us We're Offering Tremendous Value
The unseen value of a qualified web design and SEO firm is the pitfalls and hassles avoided by the client because they've hired professionals. The visible value shines in the word-of-mouth referrals and exuberant testimonials only worthy firms win. Here are a few example of how our clients feel about working with us: