How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Website?
Answering this question is like trying to answer the question "How much does it cost to build a house?". Anyone that is familiar with the home building process knows that there are many factors that impact the price of a house. Some of them include the location and size of the property, the square footage and layout of the house, the exterior building materials, the interior building materials, the appliances, the interior fixtures, and the landscaping. Ultimately, you have to clearly define the scope of what you want before you can get an accurate price.

The same concept is true for custom website projects. The primary difference is that..

• Most decision makers don't understand the factors that impact the price of a website, and

• Most web design firms don't understand the factors that impact the price of a website

Unfortunately, this truth leads to a "blind leading the blinder" scenario. Because decision makers typically know less than the web design firms (or individual web designers) to whom they talk, they rarely recognize that they are being led off of a cliff until it's too late. Fortunately most web design projects are simple, so the cliff is short, and the fall doesn't hurt that bad. However, if your website project is business critical (i.e. it's a tall cliff), you have to take your blinders off before you select a firm. You can remove the blinders through education, and this article will give you a great foundation from which to start.

Note: The "decision maker" is the person who is ultimately responsible for determining the high level scope of the project, the budget for spending, and the web designer that will do the work.