I am wordpress developer and designer based in Sydney. I mostly build site using WordPress as CMS and do some custom web design.
I am asked quiet often to provide an estimate about the cost of web design. Cost of web design depends upon various factors such as complexity of website, number of template designs, design samples you are after etc.
Factors Affecting Web Design Price
Relate web design price to any other service. You won’t be getting quote from one vendors only. Most of the time you will get quote from various service providers. And you must be amazed why the price estimate provided varies significantly. Well it depends upon various factors. As for example think of travelling from Place A to Place B. You can either travel with an international airlines or budget airlines. You can choose economy, business or first class. Cost of your travel is based on various factor you choose to fly.
In precise, the web design prices are based on:
Experience of Web Designer
The more experienced your web designer the better result it is going to be. Also this will increase your bill too. It’s suggested to look at the portfolio and see the capacity of the designer or agency you are going to hire.
Skill Sets of Web Designer
The ultimate goal of any web design is high conversion or better user experience. Web Design in not only how it looks, but it’s about how easy it is to use and how well it conveys to user. Optimal goal is to provide better user experience.
A web designer who understand how web and SEO works can for sure deliver better result. Depending upon your situation consider hiring full stack web developer and designer too.
Geographic Location of Web Designer
Depending upon the location of your web designer and cost of living in the particular city can also affect the overall estimate.
It’s always best advised to work with someone locally especially since the someone local will know about local market well as well collaboration will be lot easier. If you are thinking of overall return of investment, finding someone local is better idea.
Conclusion
As stated above, various factors affect the pricing of web designer. For a website to convert really well, web design can be either a deal maker or deal breaker. So finding a right designer with right mindset that can do justice to you and website should be priority. Cutting cost might be a temporary fix but long term loss. So my advise is if there is some marginal gap between good and bad designer go for a good one, as this will have much better return of investment.