Hi all,

Im planning a site for a business and am in need of a website, so am wondering what or where the best prices are for what i want?

What i want:

I need a website very much like www.on-linegallery.co.uk.

Basically Artists can become members ( costing £10 annually ) which allows them to have space to upload 20 images to display along with art information like size,medium and price etc, and a little bio of the artist on thier page.

I then need to be able to have customers come to the site and purchase the artwork displayed on the artists site ( they click a button and the selected artwork goes into thier basket ).

We then take 15% commission on all sales made from our site.

Payments will be credit / debit cards ONLY ( via Paypal )

Additional space to display more works will be available at extra cost to the artists.



If there is anything else you need to know about this plan, please just ask.

So where or what would the best prices be for this job?

Jake

Jake the price is going to depend on all the features you want and who you get to design and build the site. There isn't really a one size fits all answer.

I think what you need is available in several open source shopping carts. You can try OS Commerce or Zen Cart and I'm sure people behind me will mention a few more.

If you use an open source shopping cart then all you'll need is for someone to design a theme for the cart. You can probably find someone to do that for a few hundred dollars, though it still depends on the person's experience and what you want.

In the long run it might be better to go with a complete custom solution. You'd have to spend more money; a few thousand as a minimum, but again it depends on what you want and the experience of the person you hire.

If money is the major concern look into one of the carts I mentioned. I think both can handle all the functionality you're looking for and the functionality is going to be the main thing in driving up the price in your situation.

Thanks for your answer i have contacted Tech designs who have quoted me £2000-£3000 Sterling.

Would you say this is fairly priced for what i want or not?

yikes that is a bit steep. I would normally not consider charging more than 1/3 of that price max. If you are going to go with them I would suggest looking at their previous work and ensuring it is A-grade quality, because anything less and I don't think you would be paying fairly.

I had to look it up, but if the conversion rate I'm seeing is right then that price is between $4,000 and $6,000. Is that right?

If someone is giving you everything custom I'd say it could be a reasonable price. Depends on how good they are of course.

If they're only giving you the design and not the backend programming then it sounds high. Though, if they're that good it could still be a fair price. My guess is if the price is just for the design it's on the high side.

Much too high if for just a design IMO. If you are going with a company rather than a freelancer I'd expect to be charged $500-$1k for a very good design and $1-2k max for well written code - 2000£ is pushing that quite a lot, so it would really have to be something special for that kind of money.

being UK based I would say that the prices are reasonable and add, the top end price on the low side if they are starting from scratch.

A site I did for a similar idea (for a photographer) had well over a 1000 man hours put into it, fortunately for the client it was only the functionality and design he was buying

Agreed

I have charged similar prices before but only for bespoke designs where every letter of the code was hand written.

Money = Time

Ergo...

If I'm designing a new site I wil charge roughly 25€ per hour (converted into the client's local currency of-course) and then add time on if the client wants other things like images editing or I quote to show them how to do it as this is often much cheaper for the client.

In the UK Web Design industry, you barely get $1.20 for each pound, so don't just take the conversion rate into dollars.

Think for a moment: how much are you going to make from the site? How long do you intend to run it for? Is it worth it then?

Hello There -

As to to whether the price is fair, a lot depends on the following factors:

• Number of pages
• Custom Design process/pricing (often undervalued... you need a top graphic designer that understands useability factors)
• Copy writing (are you doing it, or is your provider doing it?)
• Custom programming, versus off the shelf scripts

In all, that prices is fair if... they offer great design (review their portfolio), and are writing SEO-savvy web content and perhaps doing some custom tweaking to you scripts.

- Scott

Yes i think its a bit high too especially if its just for the design. There are some very good <link drop removed > web design and web development firms that can do the job design and coding for less.

best advice is to go to scriptlance.com and post a project for designers. You woul be surprised how you can get much low price there. you need to register first.

Zero Sign up fee and 30 % Commision

or become a PRO Member ( 30 pounds/year )
and only 15 % commision fee ?

That would be better, for those poor guys ***stingy ! Also , your site is new, so giving free membership is a good idea ( u gain back by more commision )