I recently turned our Google Adwords campaign on to get 2bscene out there and drum up some more business. It’s not that we’re not busy, but more the fact that I’d really like to see us grow this year after being too worried about consolidation last year. The more business I get in, the more staff I can employ and the feel good factor of that would be just amazing with all the doom and gloom that fills our lives because of the recession.
My Google advert states clearly “Professional Web design from just €1,499”. There are a number reasons we push that price. The main one is that it’s a very competitive price for a professionally designed, custom website and the other key reason is to stop people that aren’t serious about their web presence from contacting us.
I’ve outlined in detail many times before how we cost our websites and why they cost the price they do. But for some that message doesn’t seem to sink in.
Now, more than ever before, we get the “is that really how much it costs? You know we’re in a recession don’t you?” response when someone is presented with an estimate or proposal on the costs involved in developing a website.
The reason for this is simple. Most people just don’t fully understand what is involved in designing and developing a website. The work a professional company puts into designing a custom designed website is not comparable and cannot be compared to a website that costs €300. They are just two totally different things – it’s like comparing apples with oranges.
Some sad person is so ridiculously consumed by it all, feels it’s his duty to inform me that websites can be purchased for as little as €300.
Already he’s filled in the form on our website twice to let us know how he feels about our charges, the economy and how backward he thinks we are. Yet unfortunately, both times he has left non-existent email addresses, which means we can’t respond to him.
We’re pretty confident we know who this person is, I just hope he reads this… so I can let him know that I understand my business, the market place and that we don’t and don’t want to compete with those cheap and nasty web design firms.
#1 by Gerard Brandon at April 24th, 2011
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It is really a case of you get what you pay for. I can imagine what this person would be willing to pay for a mobile development project which costs around $50 per hour for a reasonable programmer or as much as $150 per hour for some.
Bear in mind a prototype would take about 10 hours to put together before any programming really starts. For a basic mobile application with a small amount of back-end database work let’s consider maybe 50 hours to build the application. 10 hours to ensure that full testing and error handling is managed properly. Then put graphics design on top of which is likely to take a good designer perhaps 16-20 hours of work at $50 per hour.
Now you are hitting $4,500 for a single device platform say Android, or iPhone for as I said a basic concept to working application.
No doubt the same party would suggest that you can get an iPhone app for $199. Of course you can get an RSS feed of your blog wrapped neatly into a brochure application.
From a marketing perspective this results in a one-time download and dismiss forever ‘brochure ware’ website conversion.
A users phone is an intent driven device and at the disposal of the user 24 hours a day. The difference between engaging with the phone user in a conversation through your application and slapping a news feed onto a device sized browser window is about the same difference as a customer looking in your shop window or trying on multiple pieces of clothing in your boutique.
Of course if all the guy has is $199 or $300 to spend then I am sure he will be happy with passers by not coming into his shop. You don’t sell until you engage with customers and you never cut corners on how you pull shoppers through your door.