Professional web design - what's involved?

[Dogg Thang]

For years, I've had a placeholder image instead of a website. I've had a basic blogger template that never quite looked how I want it to look. I've messed about in Dreamweaver and even created what I'd call a fairly decent website with it - though updating it was a pain in the hole.

But I'm kind of thinking maybe it's about time I got a professional web design company to put something together. Or at least I'm thinking about thinking that.

I'm having a hard time getting an idea of what's involved to see if it's worth thinking about thinking about it. I've checked out some local design sites (I'm in Ireland) and many look godawful and a couple look good but seem to have big clients so I imagine they are really expensive.

And, on that, I can't seem to get an idea of how much a website costs? Piece of string question perhaps but even getting ballparks seems tricky. People don't seem to put menus up.

I know there are a few here involved in that sort of thing so I thought you might be able to fill me in on the realities of it. Any idea how much a website costs? Like maybe six or so fixed pages and a blog system for the main page updates and plenty of graphics (supplied). And any idea how long something like that takes?

The other thing is, if I do go for it (not sure I'll even get to think about it as I imagine it's pretty pricey) what should I be looking out for in terms of good companies or bad companies?

Thanks in advance!


Edit: Oh, I found some prices here - http://www.pacificwebsites.com/websi...nt-charges.htm Not exactly the best example of great design...

Edit: And more price infor here - http://www.webtrade.ie/blog/website-...unked.862.html I figured it could work out pricey (web people gotta eat). Not sure I'll be able to think about thinking about this. Still, should do it some day...

[GluedOnBeard]

If you are after a design and six pages plus maybe a blog or similar it should not be too pricey. But companies will overcharge you.

I mean what is pricey to you? What would you expect to pay for something like that and have you got any examples of what you would want the site to look like? Already have a logo design etc.

If you go freelance or with a smaller more bespoke company you should pay less. I recently did something similar for someone and charged them about 400 for the whole job.

As for how long it takes for what you have described, to get a design down and things it should only really take a week.

[abigsmurf]

A reasonable freelance rate is about £20 an hour I believe.

A standard template blog site + your own graphics should take about 3 days. One day if they're using an off the shelf template for a popular blogging platform.

The more customisation you want the more time it'll take.

There are sites you can go to where you can post a coding job spec and people will bid for the contract. That'll probably be the absolute cheapest way of hiring someone. Just be real careful with those.

[Dogg Thang]

Thanks guys. In many ways Blogger does what I need. It has up to ten fixed pages and is now a good bit more flexible in terms of getting it to look like how I want it to. And no coding required except for replacing some of the image tags in the html code so I can create my own rather than using those with the templates. And I can just use web forwarding to send a domain address to the Blogger page.

That's my current plan. Up until recently, those boring ol' Blogger templates made me cry but it's much better now.

The reason I was thinking I might take the plunge and get a professional to put together a site is to really have something custom made. Where formatting worked better than Blogger templates, some items like graphics and links could be custom made (for example, in Dreamweaver I could make a list of links that was all joined as one image, each section changing as it rolled over, whereas in Blogger to create image links would put huge spaces in between them). I was also thinking that a custom made site might be able to have a slightly different system of archiving - so, for example, something that was written as an article rather than just a blog post could be archived in a different place.

Lastly, and probably most importantly, I'd be hoping someone would be able to advise on the balance of design and practicality or suggest other options. Seems to me that making a website or blog is one thing but there are people who just have a better sense of layout and what to do and what not to do.

And I'd want it all to work!

I guess I'd be nervous about those bidding sites - if I'm going to pay for it, I may as well not take a risk and make sure I get it done properly. The more I look, the more it seems very expensive but I guess it's exactly that expertise that is worth the money. There does seem to be a huge variation in the types of people doing it though - the good thing is that, with most of them, they show examples of their work so it's easy to get a good idea of just how good they are.

I should really find some sites I really like to get an idea. Tough to say one way or another with out that, I guess. Thanks for the info and advice, guys.