quote for a website (UK)
 

Hi all,
Could you help me with a quote? A London-based organisation got a quote for a website.

A CMS-powered website (don't know which CMS) - 15 templates
95% (if not 100%) of the pages are static. Total of around 30-40 pages containing mostly text / some simple tables and pictures. The main page - a jquery gallery with some text.
Optimisation for mobile devices.

That's all I know.

They had a quote £10 000 + VAT

They asked me to advise them whether it's a reasonable cost.
Thank you

While my instant 'gut reaction' is that the quote is distinctly on the high side, a lot depends on how much work there is in the templates. The time to do those could easily consume half the budget...or nowhere near that amount (if they are simple). No way I can guess that without a whole load more context.

It would also be a more reasonable quote if there was a fee for the CMS included and maybe other stuff about setting up the server...but as some of the best CMSs are open source, it might also be a bad sign if whoever had done the quote automatically included a 'paid for' CMS in their quote.

http://www.weebly.com

It might well cost them nothing to have their web site. And they can do it themselves.

If they want an online store, figure about $30 USD a month.

The days of a website being done in the manner you described, let alone for the princely sum that you describe, are g-o-n-e.

Their front page certainly looks interesting...

Do you have experience with them, and would you recommend them?

Thank you all for the replies. I know it's hard to say without any more details.

I don't know...I'm not convinced about tools like weebly. Point and click methods just don't 'look' reliable - maybe it's just a slacker within me talking:)

I'd also love to hear some first hand experience with weebly.

I'll try to get more details about the quote.

Hi there,

I've got more details:
Total £9710 excluding VAT

Any thoughts on that? Btw, what is copywriting in this context?

So the cost includes original artistic work, graphic design and some content production? I'd say it's in the ballpark.

'copywriting' will be writing of the actual content; maybe substantially typing stuff up, probably some degree of invention of the stuff to be typed (the kind of stuff that an advertising agency will regard as its bread and butter). In practice, a lump of this will be 'asking people in the org that we are working for what is important, sanitising and putting that into advertiser-y terms, and inputting that to the CMS'.

It won't be anything to do with intellectual property and 'copyright', if that's what is confusing you.

Whereas I, very frankly, wouldn't. :eek:

And here, quite frankly, is why.

If we could time-warp back fifteen years or so, when a web-site such as this one were new, then I might consent to paying £10,000.00 for it. But that simply isn't the case anymore. Today, there are literally tens-of-thousands of companies who have been in a similar situation to this client, and they don't have to "start from scratch."

Welcome to the oldest economic principle in the book: "economy of scale." Weebly (for example!) hosts more than 20 million websites now ... and, by the by, every single one of them is already mobile-ready. No matter what this particular client's needs might be, they are not "unique" anymore, and therefore there is no justification to spend £10,000.00 for it. Instead, you latch-on to what 20 million people have already paid about £40 a year for.

You do the math. Instead of spending £10K of your own one-time money, to do a "one-of-a-kind" thing as though it were "one-of-a-kind," hitch a ride on a £400M revenue-stream that's already being paid. Instead of forking-out all of it, just pay your tiny pro rata share and be done. (And yes, if need be, you can cook-up your own custom formats and appearances. You can even download all the HTML and move it somewhere ... anywhere ... else.)

I said it all in a blog-post last month: End of An Era: The Death of the Botique Web-Site Company (1996-2014). No, it isn't pretty or palatable – but, it's true. The stuff that we are doing is not "novel" anymore; it isn't "cutting edge." It's commonplace. And, as such, the premium-price that such work once commanded is gone.

Yes, I can start from scratch and have a complete on-line 30-page e-commerce plus blog website ... highly visible to Google and SEO and all the rest ... and have it (domain-name and all with SSL) on-line and visible within the hour, having paid about £25 total for the "privilege." And what I will have thereby produced will not be inferior to what your £10,000 would have actually produced.

I'm sorry to be the blunt bearer of bad news. But, the roses are out there now, and they demand to be smelled. (There was, after all, a time when we'd pay £100 for a four-banger pocket calculator, because it was so much better than a slide-rule.)

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Yes, I would recommend weebly ... and no, I don't have any "skin" in their game at all.

Thank you for explanations and comments.

I agree with the fact that the websites are rarely unique anymore. They are just variations around the most popular layouts. Actually, I have managed to talk them out of going for that option. Especially that they don't really need a full e-commerce option (well apart from a simple 'donate' button).

You say that you can take the weebly-generated code somewhere else - Once built and functional, could you just take the code and host it, for example, on your own server?

So far as I know, yes. You can make a zip-file backup of your site and take it elsewhere. This is not a CMS.

I mean, it's scary ... these guys (and they're not the only ones) have very quickly turned "a web site" from a custom creation to ... interchangeable parts. And the word's out, now. I quite-honestly think that the days of "quotes like that one," which were maybe de rigueuer just a couple of years ago, are now stone dead, all over the world.

hmmm.... interesting. What's stopping people from doing that? Support provided by weebly?