What is up With Web Designers

Is it too cheap or expensive?

It looks quite cheap if you ask me.. I'd charge more :)
 
I think he means that it's too cheap and no one can make ends meet off R350 per website.
 
I suppose it depends if they are using a premade templates and putting text in it? Or are they designing a site from scratch?
 
Well to be fair it's fairly easy for them to re-use templates on the web - how many unique sites do you come across that you haven't seen before? With content management systems and open source implementations out there that are fairly straightforward to implement there really are quite a few choices when you decide to go online - especially when it's been made into a fairly generic offering for any company that wants to have an online presence.

With some of the tools it's a matter of fill in the fields here and voila - a new website. Sure you may not have an e-commerce enabled site and you may be missing some more dynamic features but for a bulk of the companies they just want to be online but they don't really think it's that important to have something that stands out.

As a quick example I googled "top sa sites"...this is what I came up with (from http://www.satopsites.com/):
http://www.satopsites.com/
http://www.cars.co.za/
http://www.southafrica.to/
http://www.southafrica.to/transport/Airlines/South-Africa-within/cheap-flights-to-Port-Elizabeth/flights-to-Port-Elizabeth.php5
http://www.moviesite.co.za/

Hardly anything to write home about in my opinion - but then I guess you get what you pay for!
 
byron_spy said:
Can you someone please explain to me how a web development company can ask R350 for a 5 page website

These people are killing the trade for all of us
Click to expand...

My clients usually go to these guys, get "burnt" then come back to me :)
 
SYNERGY said:
My clients usually go to these guys, get "burnt" then come back to me :)
Click to expand...

unfortunately there are a number of template sites that work brilliantly for small websites, but ultimately you get what you pay for. there will always be those who target the low end market, but the customers they attract are also usually the least loyal, and at that level your competition is usually cut throat, because there are always going to be those who are willing to do a lot of work for little cash. Na, its best to not try to compete with them. Allow them to devour each other and just focus on providing a really good product and the right customers will come.
 
byron_spy said:
Can you someone please explain to me how a [-]web development company[/-] kid can ask R350 for a 5 page [-]website [/-]POS
Click to expand...

fixed.

Yeah, if a company wants to get burned by going the cheap route, then let them.

they'll be back :whistle:
 
Yeah, I'm pretty sure those buggers are not sitting at work for a deployment as I am currently, but then again, it's not a R350 website :D
 
chances are they use the R350 website package as a "loss leader" and then charge more / extra for other services like search SEO, search engine listing, directory listing, regular content updates (if the client doesn't want it), etc, etc. And they make money cause they probably get many orders a day, whereas you get many orders a month?

Just cause you charge more, or would rather pay more for better quality, doesn't mean there isn't a market who needs this kind of product.
 
I wouldn't waste my time for R350. I think it's a SoftDux-Rudi says, rope them in and milk them on extras.
 
byron_spy said:
Being on the topic what would you guys say is a fair price for a 5 Page Website, with some customized graphics
Click to expand...

R350 + R150 for the graphics ;)


Being a bit more serious though. How long is a piece of string?
- who does the graphics?
- what type of website?
- what type of content?
- who maintains (if needed) it?



I could build a CMS based site with 20 pages in about 4 hours, pertaining the client gives me the content (spell checked and everything). Or the same 20 pages site could take a month or 2 to develop, depending on what actually needs to go on those 20 pages and how much involved the client actually is.




Back to the topic though, I do think though these people make their money, and chances are they make a lot of profit, and deliver good website. For many of their clients this will be R350 well spend. Many of the clients will be happy with it, and their websites will do rather well. I can think of a particular website we did as a charity case for someone, which is doing amazingly well. We didn't put much effort into the website since it was free and the client didn't have any extraordinary needs either. She's happy with Joomla and a semi-custom template. But, the content on the site is what sells it. She updates it once a week, I believe, and her business (a NGO after-school center) had picked up greatly because of the website. We only listed it on a few major search engines and encourages her to blog regularly. nothing more, but it performs well.
 
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You get what you pay for, plain and simple. People who offer service like that do not give a good product, and cannot make any client happy, unless they're demands are awefully low.
 
i connect to internet through a proxy server

and its sooooooooooo sloooooooooow.
it does not even open all the pages i request through this server.
is there anyone out there who can help me out. i tried downloading skype....well you can imagine my dismay when i cudnt.
help!!!
8, n please dont be nasty.
 
You're complaining about R350?

Take your PC in to be fixed by some level1 techie and it'll cost you more. Go see the doc to give you a flu perscription and it'll cost more. etc.

People don't realise. You don't pay someone for the time they spend doing something or the physical effort they put into it. If that were the case, then coal miners would be the richest SOB's on earth. You pay someone for their knowledge and efficiency and for the amount of time and comfort it saves you from doing it yourself.

Think about it...if you had to spend 3 days trying to figure out how to do the page correctly, could you not have made R350 in the same amount of time doing what you normally do instead? I'm sure you can.

So...paying them R350 does not only reflect the quality of the work performed, it indicates that you would potentially make more money doing what you do than wasting that time to do what you asked them to do yourself.

The R350 does not just cover the work done, %'s of it goes towards tax as well as cost to company for keeping the person employed and having the utilities at hand to perform their duty.
 
For a 5 page custom designed website I'd charge around R1500. But I don't do this professionally.

It takes me about 10 hours to make a design, about 40 hours to turn it into HTML. I have my own CMS that I use (which is basically a very versatile blog, the code of which I'm familiar with). It's about 55 hours of work, tops.
 
My company offers two types of websites, We have a DDN dev and he makes websites for around R500 each (for cheap and nasty), then we have a php dev (for customized perfection) and he makes websites for around R45 000 each. The php dev is busier than the cheepie dude.
 
R350 for a website....they discovered what I discovered. Most South African businesses see a website as a billboard. It doesn't have to do anything, its just so that people who use this internet thing can see me on the internet. I found this out from the majority of South African businesses by developing a business venture, but it turned out to be a social experiment...and that is the results of that experiment. SA businesses are scared of the internet, they are more concerned with the competition that their customers. R350/website will make them good money I think. Don't confuse this with the SA business that sees a website as a second business premises.
 
SoftDux-Rudi said:
How long is a piece of string?
Click to expand...

Infinite.
but back on topic,


I've made a kickass website in 24 hours straight, for free nogal! :eek:
(was for my cuzzy though - but it can be done, lol)

But the effort that goes into it, I would say
1) template = R350
2) for straight graphics and html code + Unique design = R2000 at least.
3) Fancy Smanchy coding / interactive website: R3000 an up.....all the way to "way up".


it's true, you pay for the knowledge and effort. "you get what you pay for" is true 90% of the time, if people haven't learned that by now, let them waste their money.



It's like a logo - sure, it's just a small image, right?
-Cheap gfx designer: R250
-More qualified designer: R1250
If you go the cheap route, You save R1000 by paying a designer R250 instead of R1250. but do you really save? really?

if your logo looks like a dinky toy clip-art template jpg, vs the custom built Vector EPS, you are going to run into problems, costing you LOTS more in the long run.
- You stuff will print ugly, especially on large scale banners/etc
- You will lose customers as they think your company looks unprofessional - how much do you think you could lose there? it could add up to quite a lot...... all those lost customers, for the years and years you used that logo, just to save R1000.
- Every other design you then do, for advertising, will revolve around that dumb logo, dragging the whole thing down.
- You website will look crap, your flyers, your emails, everything. every customer is going get that idea at the back of their head that this might be a "fly-by-night" operation.



so yeah, save a few bucks on website design & coding, or logo design.............but you only have yourself to blame when your business loses R20,000 per month because of a crap Website and/or logo.

and to companies that don't even have a website? good luck.
 
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