Without getting too detailed, me and my partner have an idea for a website, with the search function being the main part of the site and the ability to filter your search depending on many different options (hence the need for a database). There will be a core set of content (reviews) and also user reviews.

 

We want someone to design and build a site which basically provides us with a template to add new reviews ourselves.

 

How much should a site like this cost to build ignoring any extras like branding (which we will do ourselves), or flash elements etc? After approaching several agencies we have been given a wide range of quotes and feel a few are vastly overpriced.

It really depends on what exactly you want to do. because you have been very brief on what you want. i can only presume it will do something like rightmove.

 

Mainly a search driven site which you can adjust to suit your needs and to get a better search. These things cost BIG money and are in consistent development to stay on top of the competition and to improve the experience for users.

 

From a good company which will be using completely custom system could easily run costs over £10,000.

 

 

If you can give us some more information on what your aiming to do, and what sort of price range you have been given, along with a detailed list as to what that price includes. That last part is crucial in this size of a project, or any project.

^ what he said, except the Rightmove bit!

 

 

@alexandra - can you give us a few more details? I get the reviews bit - but do you do the reviews or your visitors?

 

What things are being reviewed?

Any other requirements - news posting, forum, media gallery?

Ok so let's pretend we are talking about laptops. Our job is to search out all the reviews there are on the Internet for each individual laptop, thereby aggregating them all onto one site. For instance we would have Stuff's and Cnet's reviews of the Apple iMac 27 inch along side many other reviewers. Users narrow down their search to the laptop that suits them and the reviews they find will be specific.

 

The other feature is that there is a 'user review' section, where if you own a laptop you can comment. On both types of reviews people would have the option to do a sort of 'thumbs up' 'thumbs down' on whether the review was helpful.

 

On the main site we may have a few bits and pieces, possibly a news posting type thing and the content would be uploaded ourselves.

 

Does this make more sense? Thanks guys!

that's a slightly different proposition.

 

You could use Yahoo Pipes to custom build a JSON feed for all those review sites (unless you wanted to be able to edit the feed composition from the site admin). Attaching user ratings to reviews from the feed might be a bit tricky, you would have to implement an AJAX based CRUD routine to add the URL of the review to a database, plus the user ratings. The user review aspect is less problematic, since that would involve a standard user/database setup. It's certainly feasible, but it wouldn't be cheap, or easy. Essentially, this is a bespoke application which would be hard to implement using an off the shelf CMS.

 

For this level of application, you really need to engage a company/freelancer with a full brief - so that they can break down all the tasks and provide an accurate estimate. It's a long ways off from a Wordpress installation/custom theme.

 

Since it's mostly custom code, I think gas545 is on the money.

As sunwukung said your going to have to use feed's to get the data from cnet etc.. this may mean you will have to have an agreement from them to get the feed. If you want to make this work, it's going to be a very big project and will need on going work not just an intial start up.

 

Best of luck, but i think it's best you get the guys down who have quoted you, and get the prices broken down.. anything under £5,000 is definatly not worth it.

thanks for your input!

 

we wouldn't actually be using feeds to get the data off the other sites, just typing out a quote from the review and then having a link to read the full review on cnet.com for example. the main functionality is the search, so you could filter by your age, budget, specs etc. I'm just a bit shocked at how expensive it is! With one agency we were up at £15k+ which i think is a bit absurd, but then another has come back with less than half that so it seems pretty variable.

we wouldn't actually be using feeds to get the data off the other sites, just typing out a quote from the review and then having a link to read the full review on cnet.com for example. the main functionality is the search, so you could filter by your age, budget, specs etc. I'm just a bit shocked at how expensive it is! With one agency we were up at £15k+ which i think is a bit absurd, but then another has come back with less than half that so it seems pretty variable.

Quite often what seem "simple" on the surface require a lot of complex stuff behind the scenes - tip of the iceberg!

 

As you've now said that you'll be adding the initial data manually that puts things in a slightly different perspective. The logical solution would be to use a good quality Content Management System to base the site on, then adapt the CMS to fit your needs.

 

If your specs are something straighforward like this:

 

Ability to post, sectionalise and categorise your review items

Ability for visitors to add their own comments to your review items

Ability for visitors to rate reviews

Ability for you to manage other generic site content such as news/blog, links, advertising and so on

 

...then with a suitable design, integrate your branding, and site build that's probably going to bring the price down to sub £2500. In fact, if the "design" time is kept to a minimum and if you don't want anything more than I've listed above then you should be able to find a good web designer who will charge around the £1500 mark.

 

 

Incidently - agencies have very high overheads, hence the high costs. All those salaries to pay, expensive office space, the bosses BMW

Edited November 6, 200916 yr by BlueDreamer

With one agency we were up at £15k+ which i think is a bit absurd, but then another has come back with less than half that so it seems pretty variable.

 

People are shocked by how much these jobs cost, but don't understand how much skilled work is required to do the job, or the amount of labour. Having said that, I think that 15k is a bit high - yet without a detailed list of requirements, it's very hard to break the cost down. As gaz545 mentioned, get them to give you a breakdown of the work.

 

You have to balance the price against what the site is worth to you and your business. It's important to get a reasonable estimate - but if you kit your place of business out with tatty decor, unresponsive staff and bad product - you won't save money by cutting corners.

 

As far as manually adding data - isn't that going to be a bit of a pain? While it might cost money to get a feed hooked up - think of the man hours an automated feed reader would save you - another factor to think of when considering cost.