Office Furniture Partnership

It's a neat technology but seriously, it never did really catch on and it's been around forever. Part of the problem is it requires a browser plug-in download and the average net-monkey would rather back out of the website than wait for a plug-in download... unless they're on a high-speed connection, which most people are still on Dial-up so an extensive flash animation does take a while to get.

As far as charging for web design, there's a couple ways to go about it. I mostly use a retainer (deposit) method kinda like a lawyer, where I offer the client so many hours worth of work on their site for a specified fee up front... say 10 hours worth of work, whether it's design, layout, configuring server settings or uploading files, with a $500 retainer.

The retainer guarantees I'll get paid for the work, because I've already been paid for it, and the customer gets a whole hell of alot of a website for that money. Periodic invoices are sent to the customers to show them how much "budget" is left on their retainer, and when the retainer has been used up, all work ceases until the next retainer check arrives. The work-stop really lights a fire under 'em to send another check, especially if they're in a big updating streak. =)

Another method is more valuable to companies that have a larger steady cashflow and possibly less content to post online, which is to charge a flat rate per page with a certain number of graphics per page, then include seperate design/layout fees for the site's navigation. Common page fees range from $200 per page with text only/no graphics, up to $2,000 per page all nicely laid out. Usually part of this deal is to include maintenance fees for one year since there is typically less content on a site like this.

Small businesses seem to like the retainer method regardless that the layout may not be as slick as it could be and the graphics might be a bit on the light side. They can get alot of site for the money (pretty good deal of content) and they like that they arent paying for maintenance fees when they don't need the maintenance (actually they are paying for the maintenance but it comes from their retainer so it's less visible to them.)

Today's web technology is great.. thanks to Dreamweaver Templates or use of PHP or ASP Dynamic content creation (where the webserver generates the pages on the fly based upon data queried from a database) you can build a pretty large site in very little time.
I use Dreamweaver templates in my work and once the templates are setup for a site, creating the actual pages takes just a few minutes each.

My site at www.stickerpimp.com is an example of my template use. I have over 200 pages of content on my site My site looks pretty plain jane at first but when you get into it you'll see brightly colored graphic products that I sell and that's what I want my visitors to focus on. I also like very clean looking, quick-loading pages, my main pages should all load in under 5 seconds on a 56K modem.

The templates give the site a very consistent look, and should I need to change the navigation on the left or the logo at the top of each page, I only have to change it once and the other 200 pages on the site are automatically updated with the latest changes.

A redesign of site run cheaper than building from scratch. A site like the one I mocked up, as a redesign, will run them 3-4k.

Most small business web sites, with about 7-10 pages run a minumum of 2500. For that price, we'll write some basic copy, maybe take some digital photos, and make the site look basic, although kind of following a generic template that we've already established.

If they want something completely different, lets say, with mouseout menus, etc. we'll charge a lot more.

I try not and get caught up on a per-page pricing basis. Rather, I look at the whole thing and give a number. The biggest site we did so far was a 40 page site, which we charged $12k for. We developed the copy, and built the site. In all honesty, once the copy was developed, building a 40 page site with minimal graphics per page went fairly quickly. I've probably spent more time on small business sites (this was a corparate client).

As Mike stated, once you develop the navigation template, its easy to apply it to new pages, or make changes down the road (if they want a new button, etc). Dreamweaver's template function is a life saver and time saver.

As for how I'll build the furniture site, the navigation will be templated and sliced up, and perhaps I'll slice the opening page in the main body section of the template. After that, I'll use html text for the rest. I don't usually slice up main body pages throughout the sites because its tedious to make copy changes later. Plus, it sucks for search engines.

Marketing web sites is a whole other set of pricing, that we have as an add-on to the web site building. Search engine work, etc starts at about $1000.