[RockingRobert]

How much would be a good estimate for a website to be designed?

The website is a type of social media website, rather like twitter, but quite different at the same time.

I'm not sure if that would help you..

So, Someone told me £400-£500, which I was quite surprised at. I thought it only cost under £100 O.O

How much would you charge to design a website like twitter? (A range is fine)

[Lev]

Then Facebook, probably should cost about £200.

[MarkJenner]

I'm sure some people just pick a number out of the air!

£400-£500 for a twitter replica?! Shockingly under priced.

[lewis12]

I'll take the best bits from twitter and facebook, build the best social network ever AND i'll only charge you £350! Deal?

[lewis12]

- Internet went abit daft -

This post has been edited by lewis12: 06 December 2011 - 09:03 PM

[oakleaves]

My quote:-

£1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.69p

50% deposit, remaining 50% upon completion and sign-off.

If interested send PM here

[roothost]

So, you want a website similar to twitter? And you expected to pay under £100? And you find £400-£500 expensive? Have you any idea how much twitter is worth? No? Here;

Quote

Twitter’s revenue was $45 million last year and this year is said to be barely over $100 million, according to the Wall Street Journal

Read more: http://articles.busi...r#ixzz1fnkAVPiN

So nobody is going to develop a site similar to site that is worth millions - for £100!!

Without being too harsh I don't think you have a clue the work involved in creating professional websites and just how much money a decent designer and/or developer would charge.

I know most people on here won't even consider pricing a job under £500/£600, and that would be for a very basic static site. You want a CMS with that? Add a few hundred pounds extra at least! Most sites I create now cost in the region of £1000 - and I am still undervaluing myself somewhat (current site is proof of that!).

£100 pound would probably get you 3, 4 hours max from a good designer.

[porkchops]

OP:

In all seriousness I think you don't have realistic expectations regarding budget. A project like twitter (or any social media site, for that matter) requires a substantial amount of design time followed by an even more substantial amount of development time. Naturally, the calibre of your designer/devloper will affect price, but assuming a project like this probably takes 100-150 hours of work (and that might even be a gross underestimate--- I don't do development work) at a rather typical hourly rate for an agency of $150/hr you're looking at $15,000-25,000ish for a scalable product that won't fall apart as it get hits by heavy traffic.

Again, those figures are all speculative and could swing to a much higher price point. I know agencies that take on projects of that style for $50-250k minimum. These are typically VC funded ventures, too.

And, you may be able to find someone to put it together for far less but the quality and reliability of the product you'd receive would certainly be suspect.

Those are USD, but I'm sure that even without the conversion to GBP the point should be illustrated.

If you are serious about a project like this you will need to come up with some capital... so find an investor or get a bank loan, both of which will require you to make a business plan and all that jazz. Unless you have the development chops to do it yourself it isn't going to be a little side project that you can do without a budget.

[Ste Hughes]

Why do you think a website is only worth £100? Just curious.

[opensesame]

When you say designed do you mean just the design?
Because if your talking about design and build your have to visit the bank.

If you are talking about just the design then work it out - £25 an hour, 8 hours is £200, 2-3 days designing gives you a grand total of £400 - £600 for just the design.

[RockingRobert]

I've never had a website designed, or even thought about it before, so obviously I don't have much idea of the cost.
Thanks for everyone's posts, I didn't expect it would cost that much. I was just expecting this to be a little website that I own. The thing I would worry about is paying all of that money, only for the website to be a flop and not get anywhere.

The guy who said about twitter being worth £100 million or something, Yeah, twitter might be worth that, and no one would consider designing it for £100, but the website they would be designing wouldn't be worth £100 million.

Ok, so maybe I need to think about this more. How would I be able to tell if my website would appeal to people and not become a flop?

[Gaelen]

RockingRobert, on 08 December 2011 - 04:04 PM, said:

I've never had a website designed, or even thought about it before, so obviously I don't have much idea of the cost.
Thanks for everyone's posts, I didn't expect it would cost that much. I was just expecting this to be a little website that I own. The thing I would worry about is paying all of that money, only for the website to be a flop and not get anywhere.

The guy who said about twitter being worth £100 million or something, Yeah, twitter might be worth that, and no one would consider designing it for £100, but the website they would be designing wouldn't be worth £100 million.

Ok, so maybe I need to think about this more. How would I be able to tell if my website would appeal to people and not become a flop?

That's a risk you take starting a business. Until you have an idea of what goes into creating a site like that and making it function properly you ill never understand how much it costs.

facebook employs at very least a few hundred web specialists currently, twitter is about the same. it takes a LOT Of work to design, program, and keep it functional.

I fully suggest you do a fair amount of research before you seriously consider taking this on.

[MikeChipshop]

RockingRobert, on 08 December 2011 - 04:04 PM, said:

Ok, so maybe I need to think about this more. How would I be able to tell if my website would appeal to people and not become a flop?

You need to invest in a large scale public research project. Which, in itself, is not cheap.

@Open Sesame: 8 hours @ £25? There's no way a large scale project would be that simple. I'm pretty sure everyone will agree with me on that.
Work with any design agency and they'll spend more time than that researching the subject, creating a though process that reflects the sights needs and goals and after that's done there's the wire framing etc etc. Even once the actual process of creating the site digitally is under way you've got countless edits and UX research and testing before final sign off.
It's not simply a case of throwing together a pretty page. This is the reason why those types of designers are stuck doing £200 jobs rather than large scale corporate sites.

A company i freelance for occasionally just took on a large bulk of work from the BBC and the research budget and time frame is already ten times that of what you mentioned.

Of course a smaller scale site will be cheaper but only if it was set-up to fail I'm afraid.

To answer the OP's original question, yep it can be hard if you're not in the industry to know what things cost. Hell half the people in the industry come on here asking what they should charge. The best advice i can give you is to break it down in to easily manageable chunks.

• Research (Yourself or research company)
  
• Plan (yourself but also helps to have a developer and or designer involved)
  
• Wireframe (designer)
  
• UX testing (Designer/Developer/You)
  
• Designs (Designer)
  
• Development (developer)
  
• Testing (you and select group of testers)
  
• Amendements (everyone)
  
• Launch

That's the recipe for success.

Of course if you wanted to risk it and throw something together and pray then you could prob pick up a combined developer/designer for around £1000 but don'[t expect the site to be secure or scale to meet demand.

Good luck however you proceed.

[porkchops]

MikeChipshop, on 08 December 2011 - 05:23 PM, said:

...[knowledge nuggets]...

This guy is wise and spot on.

[oakleaves]

But how does he get the time to write such long posts?!

[RobbieD90]

oakleaves, on 08 December 2011 - 06:05 PM, said:

But how does he get the time to write such long posts?!

Especially in such bad weather. I haven't been able to concentrate all day with the rain and wind bashing the window - literally - all day.

[MikeChipshop]

I have no electricity thus everything gets a lot more attention.