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Hence is the crux of the problem with people who assume its easy work.....
Its one of those games... easy to start...... hard to master.
If you think its easy, then go ahead and start. Join the thousands of self proclaimed web designers out there.... see if you can survive and thrive.
If you want to tap the resources of a web designer with any sort of mastery of the skiills required to do it right, you need to pay for it.
This rings true for many other professions.....
PS> Some of the most effective websites were not designed by someone with a firm grasp of the technical but someone a firm notion of UX.
I don't think anyone is arguing web design is not a uniuqe skill worht paying money for. That said aside from some highly customized website or app its also typically not worth 20k, at least not to me, especially when I can go use a template website like wix or shopify for a small monthly fee. Shopify is basically on a wordpress platform so if you want to add some type of scrolling banner or customized element you could always hire someone for a small project to add the customization and still come well under tens of thousands of dollars.
Even when you shellout big bucks no gurantee your going to be happy with the company or the finished product.
Your right though, a good webdesigner is worth their weight in gold. Its kind of messed up you have people on craigslist advertising themselves as web designers and then you see your finished product and it looks like something slapped together in powerpoint or microsoft publisher lol
I don't think anyone is arguing web design is not a uniuqe skill worht paying money for. That said aside from some highly customized website or app its also typically not worth 20k, at least not to me, especially when I can go use a template website like wix or shopify for a small monthly fee. Shopify is basically on a wordpress platform so if you want to add some type of scrolling banner or customized element you could always hire someone for a small project to add the customization and still come well under tens of thousands of dollars.
Even when you shellout big bucks no gurantee your going to be happy with the company or the finished product.
Your right though, a good webdesigner is worth their weight in gold. Its kind of messed up you have people on craigslist advertising themselves as web designers and then you see your finished product and it looks like something slapped together in powerpoint or microsoft publisher lol
Futhermore...
Web design to represent a product is a part of marketing. When you have a template marketing strategy... guess what? You have a marketing strategy that doesn't stand out from your competition.
Define worth?
In reality, "worth" is whatever someone is willing to pay for. So if a company is selling web design services for $20k and is a thriving business, then absolutely their service is worth $20k! Who are we to tell them otherwise?
I am a "backend" developer... I too had a similar notion to what many of those in this thread are expressing. We are an enterprise product BUT the biggest complain in our product line was the UI. It wasn't until we had a management change that resulted in the hiring of a dedicated UI developer and a contracted UX expert that I realized the importance of front-end design. I was one of the initial people asked to participate in UX conceptual discussions and such because of my experience with our customers and domain. It renewed my view of UI, UX and web development.
Do you know how to program? If so then I guess teh only expense is your time, however if you don't it will cost you a pretty penny to have it designed.
Heck, just to get a simple ecommerce website designed I'm being quoted 15k, 17k, 20k, its crazy how much some of these small boutique design firms charge. My first site I outsourced to India and got a site for $2300 that probably would have cost me 20k getting done here. Most or a good portion of us companies dont even do the work themselves they outsource it to india and act as middle man and jack up the price 3x.
Creating "an app" that is Web-based and worth a squat may be a hundred thousand to several million dollars, or anything in between, for a moderate sized development team (including UI/UX, data layer, etc), testers, project managers, marketing people, and others who actually know what they are talking about.
There is nothing crazy about $15-20K for a "simple ecommerce site," not counting maintenance, hosting, etc. Sounds about right for something really straightforward but not terribly functional beyond basics. What's that, a week or two of actual dev time, tops? Probably including test? And yes, outsourcing scut-work to India or China is a fantastic idea in IT, for firms who understand how to manage it effectively. Onshore firms may be $130 - $225/hr, going rates in Seattle area anyway.
Hosting, ongoing operations and dev, etc. is another set of costs. Usually covered under maintenance contracts.
Creating "an app" that is Web-based and worth a squat may be a hundred thousand to several million dollars, or anything in between, for a moderate sized development team (including UI/UX, data layer, etc), testers, project managers, marketing people, and others who actually know what they are talking about.
There is nothing crazy about $15-20K for a "simple ecommerce site," not counting maintenance, hosting, etc. Sounds about right for something really straightforward but not terribly functional beyond basics. What's that, a week or two of actual dev time, tops? Probably including test? And yes, outsourcing scut-work to India or China is a fantastic idea in IT, for firms who understand how to manage it effectively. Onshore firms may be $130 - $225/hr, going rates in Seattle area anyway.
Hosting, ongoing operations and dev, etc. is another set of costs. Usually covered under maintenance contracts.
I'm not saying a site isn't worth 20k, however I highly doubt many small business owners agree with you that they are willing to drop 20k on a simple ecommerce site, especially considering most would probably be fine with a template build with a little bit of customization.
I had a site built by an indian company, had a team of 6 guys working on my project, I believe we had like a 45 day rollout, all in all cost me $2300, I have seen the work of some of these design teams doing 20k jobs and don't see a $17000 price difference.
The OP said APP I'm assuming he means a Java app written for Android device or Objective C for the Iphone/ipad? I write both it took me about a year to learn each tons of online classes I started with udemy.com. I had not written code for 20 years when I used to work as a C programmer forgot everything since. Today's debugging tools are way easier then 20 years ago.
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