Determining the cost of your site:

The determining factors of cost depends on whom you choose to create your site. There is a tremendous range of quality of sites to be seen on the web, from the ridiculous to the sublime. Shopping for a web site is no different from shopping for anything else. If you choose quality over other choices, in the final analysis the results will show.

These given prices are the median for web sites created in the Bay Area according to gathered information.

A lone page of an HTML document with simple graphics is about $200. That does not cover the cost of hosting. A hosting company can charge normally, from $10 dollars to $25 dollars a month to host your site. Sausalito Web Company charges $100. a year for hosting which includes a domain name.

The cost of creating a Multimedia site is between $800 to $1000 a page.

A video applet can cost this much also. This price does not include the production of the video.

FLASH applets depending on complexity will cost between $400 to $1000. The same for an animation. Take into consideration that you are having an artist create a unique animation that has been created for your site and wiill carry a copywrite that will belong to your company.

 

The cost of an HTML site that is professionally done will again be determined by the following factors:

The number of pages

The amount of graphics involved

The quality of graphics involved.

(For example if the graphics are especially created by the web company, the price will, of course increase.)

 

FLASH applets on an HTML site is a good combination. Beware of any web company who warns you against using multimedia (FLASH) on your site. Most likely they lack the technical knowledge to pull it off. FLASH has always been difficult to learn but todays masters of Flash are even more challenged at the tremendous advancements that have been made in recent years by the latest FLASH software programs. It essentially has become a programmers and designers application and tremendously impressive when done by a master. It will give your site the polish that reflects the professionalism of your business. With the new programing technology there is no longer a waiting period before multimedia loads. FLASH also allows you to have a video presentation on your site and unlike previous times, it is now possible for a FLASH site to be found by search engines by using code that tells the search engines to ignore the FLASH file and allows it to be indexed.

 

Contact pages are a convenience for the user and the client. We would normally charge a client $300 for a contact page using HTML and CGI scripting. This includes a response message that thanks the submitter by name and emails them a thank you message by email.

For a FLASH contact page we would charge a little more simply because it is more difficult.

 

Credit card validation on a server will cost $1500. Shopping carts are difficult in determining cost. It will depend on the amount of items to be presented.

The New Site

If this is your first site it is always good to know the basics of what dealing with a web company entails.

Try to find a few admirable sites that you would be proud of having for your own in order to give us an idea on where your preferences lay and helping us choose and develop an appropriate site for your company. For a designer this is the one of the most difficult tasks involved in creating a web site for our client. In larger companies there may be many pencil sketched layouts for the client to choose from. Some of these companies are staffed with experts in each area. The graphic designer, the FLASH designer, the FLASH programmer, a contact person that deals directly with the client, an HTML/XML/CSS person to deal with the pages and a programmer who will deal with any back-end programming that is required on the site.

A site such as this is for clients with huge budgets set aside for the web site and are more interested in the quality of the site than the cost.

For the smaller businesses, a design studio such as Sausalito Web can be a more appropriate choice because we have the ability to do everything as well as a larger company with a limited amount of experts. This makes the final cost more efficient. We are constantly hired by larger web companies that are unable to do the programming or graphics that are our expertize.

 

The Business at Hand

 

Once you have decided that you would like to go ahead with the site, a work order/contract will be signed by both parties stating the number of pages that will be involved and the final price that will be paid for the site. It is customary to pay half of the price on signing the contract and the rest will be paid once the site is on-line. In reality we do a lot of sites for businesses we know where we have signed off with only a handshake. I believe however that it is better to formalize the proceedure in order to protect the client and reassure him that the design will be what they have requested and paid for and that the site will be finished in a timely manner. Once the site begins we are in constant communication with our client. It is our custom to have a site where our client can check the progress and correct any mistakes that are made along the way. Actually, we seldom sign off on a site if we feel that there can be an improvement, even if we have been paid in full.The reason we do this is that we take great pride in our work and love what we do.