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How much do you pay a web designer?

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  • admanbadmanb unionize your workplace Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    edited October 2009
    If this is really a critical thing then you're just going to have to make budget cuts in other places in order to properly pay this dude. Can't you guys give out pay cuts or something?

    Because the only way you will get a good web designer/programmer working for you at $15/hr is by holding a gun to his head as he works.

    And even then, since you have no ability to judge his work, he's going to fuck you in the ass. You just won't realize it.

    admanb on
  • futilityfutility Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited October 2009
    How could I not judge his work... does the page look nice, does it do what I want it to do, is it crashing... no? So then what's wrong?

    futility on
  • mrcheesypantsmrcheesypants Registered User regular
    edited October 2009
    futility wrote: »
    How could I not judge his work... does the page look nice, does it do what I want it to do, is it crashing... no? So then what's wrong?

    How do you know that it doesn't crash 10% of the time? That's 100 users out of every 1000 users that you're screwing over. And why would everyone of those users tell you about their bug when they could just not know about your website? Oh, and then there is the whole issue about XSS and SQL injection that a careless developer/designer can screw you on (and a few other attacks as well).

    As for looking nice, how do you know it looks that way for EVERY browser? How do you know you aren't pissing off potential clients by horrible navigation (you might miss this since you'll know how to navigate everything). How do you know that the site is efficent for SEO reasons? Could be loosing money this way as well.

    There is a hell of a lot to consider with a website besides just "looking nice."

    mrcheesypants on
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  • Smug DucklingSmug Duckling Registered User regular
    edited October 2009
    Maintainability and security, just to name two things, are not easy to judge if you don't know what you're doing.

    Smug Duckling on
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  • Tesus JesusTesus Jesus __BANNED USERS regular
    edited November 2009
    futility wrote: »
    How could I not judge his work... does the page look nice, does it do what I want it to do, is it crashing... no? So then what's wrong?

    There's a lot more to judging a website than just checking if it looks nice.



    Look here's the reality of the situation: You simply can't afford a web coder/designer/savant worth a damn (full time anyway).

    Look for unnecessary stuff in your budget and start cutting shit out. Either that or convince more people to give you guys money.


    If all else fails, pick up some books, get creative, and start making a website on your own. Go for something minimalistic.

    Tesus Jesus on
  • ScooterScooter Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    If it helps for comparison, right now I'm a fairly fresh CS grad (first real job) doing what could be described as 'web development' work, doing Python coding for a Plone site (might wanna google it). It's an intranet-only site, so I'm not too worried by my complete lack of net security experience (and Plone handles a fair bit of things), and the visual design is little more than some CSS tweaks to the default layout. In photoshop I can do little more than bevel a font. For this almost purely coding job I get 45k a year, which is quite decent but not ridiculous (my minimum price when job hunting was 37.5k). If they wanted me to make a site with professional-level design, they'd pretty much need to hire a second person or give me a loooot of time practicing with online tutorials, since there's no one else in the company who's an artist or web designer either.

    Scooter on
  • PracticalProblemSolverPracticalProblemSolver Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    I wouldn't think of it like you have enough money for a $15/hour full time person, I would think of it as if you have a yearly budget of $30,000, which is a healthy budget if you can find a good contractor.

    PracticalProblemSolver on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited November 2009
    futility wrote: »
    I'm not a 17 year old cousin... but really in writing the ad I went from my own tech experience, knowing what we don't want, and having read a lot of articles on how to tell if someone is a shitty designer. From what I understood, someone who can be described as "really good with photoshop and dreamweaver" isn't worth the pixels the text are displayed with

    We want someone better than we have now, which is someone who doesn't understand layout, how to manage content, barely understands how to make a picture appear, and has clocked out when it comes to pretty much anything (and we can't get rid of the guy)

    We want someone who is better than our other tech guys
    • me, who basically used to make web pages when html was cool and all there was, and is a really fast learn
    • tech head, who can use dreamweaver and is also a fast learn and can work with php
    • third tech guy in the company who swears he can remake our website in iweb

    Ultimately we want a clean looking website that makes our company look respectable and not stuck in 1993 while having another site that sells our goods and services. The goods and services part we really feel merits having someone in house because well, there are a lot of divisions of the company that need more than the fancy online brochure that they have now. Flash for interactivity and pretty prettiness.

    Yes we have other projects that we'd like to make and while I don't feel comfortable discussing them, I know that they require coding.

    Futility I am constantly going to reemphasize that you need to get a firm, because you do not seem to be able to evaluable talent and payment thoroughly enough to be anything but lucky or disappointed in your new hire. With adequate research you are far less likely get burned with an established vendor than some in-house person, and are also likely to get a better product.

    Jasconius on
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  • World as MythWorld as Myth a breezy way to annoy serious people Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    getting a firm is totally unnecessary -- you can just as easily get burned by a firm, not to mention you're going to pay tons more for an entire company's attention

    you can look at a designer's portfolio online and learn everything you need to about the work they do, and if you're still not convinced, you can contact them for references and they should be all too happy to send you information from happy clients in a heartbeat

    why would you go to a firm when money is clearly the issue?

    World as Myth on
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  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited November 2009
    No, they wouldn't just as easily get burned. And as I've pointed out and as is a complete matter of fact, you can get a lot of work from a firm on a similar annual budget because they often have processes in place to do a lot of mundane development very quickly.

    You're more likely to get a shitty employee than a shitty vendor with an equal amount of research. Especially if you know nothing about the position you're trying to hire.

    That's business.

    Jasconius on
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  • MichaelLCMichaelLC In what furnace was thy brain? ChicagoRegistered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Jasconius wrote: »
    No, they wouldn't just as easily get burned.

    It is possible - my last place seemed to have a habit of picking shitty vendors, but then they compounded the problem by making bad contracts. This is the advantage of hiring a firm - you can draft a SoE (Statement of Work)/Contract that spells out exactly what they need to do and the consequences if they don't.

    MichaelLC on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Of course it's possible. That's not the point. The sun could explode tomorrow, should we incorporate that into the business plan?

    Jasconius on
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  • World as MythWorld as Myth a breezy way to annoy serious people Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    the fact that he's looking for a company to "work on, manage and design multiple websites for our company" implies a continuing relationship, and no firm is going to charge anything remotely close to $15 an hour for work. the design firms I've worked with have charged between $100-$150 an hour. it's an unreasonable suggestion.

    World as Myth on
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  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited November 2009
    the fact that he's looking for a company to "work on, manage and design multiple websites for our company" implies a continuing relationship, and no firm is going to charge anything remotely close to $15 an hour for work. the design firms I've worked with have charged between $100-$150 an hour. it's an unreasonable suggestion.

    He said 30k per year, and when you add in payroll tax and benefits you will get an even larger figure.

    Which is more than enough money to get a serious web application built. I've seen great things built for 30k by a firm with a 115/hr rate, and they were nothing special.

    Thanks for playing, though.

    Jasconius on
    this is a discord of mostly PA people interested in fighting games: https://discord.gg/DZWa97d5rz

    we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
  • World as MythWorld as Myth a breezy way to annoy serious people Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Jasconius wrote: »
    the fact that he's looking for a company to "work on, manage and design multiple websites for our company" implies a continuing relationship, and no firm is going to charge anything remotely close to $15 an hour for work. the design firms I've worked with have charged between $100-$150 an hour. it's an unreasonable suggestion.

    He said 30k per year, and when you add in payroll tax and benefits you will get an even larger figure.

    Which is more than enough money to get a serious web application built. I've seen amazing things built for 30k by a firm with a 115/hr rate, and they were nothing special.

    Thanks for playing, though.

    do you have any idea what you're talking about?

    World as Myth on
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  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Of course I do, do you?

    Everything I am saying I have seen done first hand with great success. And yes, by non-profits.

    Jasconius on
    this is a discord of mostly PA people interested in fighting games: https://discord.gg/DZWa97d5rz

    we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
  • LewishamLewisham Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    This thread keeps going round to the same point:

    1. Good website
    2. Something OP can afford

    Choose one. You can't have both.

    Also, like Scooter, I was a web developer for a Computer Science department, and I did template tweaks as my main design work. I was paid 50K NZD, which was a wage well above average in New Zealand. You're asking for money below average for LA, I would bet.

    Lewisham on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited November 2009
    He's offering below the average for Florida which is in a particularly low ebb right now in terms of wages.

    Jasconius on
    this is a discord of mostly PA people interested in fighting games: https://discord.gg/DZWa97d5rz

    we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
  • World as MythWorld as Myth a breezy way to annoy serious people Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Jasconius wrote: »
    Of course I do, do you?

    Everything I am saying I have seen done first hand with great success. And yes, by non-profits.

    futility created this thread to see if he was looking for the wrong things with the wrong wage, and you told him he clearly didn't know what he was talking about and therefore needed to hire a firm.

    let's say he does. his company hires a firm to build out a website (or maybe even a few) for $30,000. let's say they're really awesome so they get them done in a month and hand them over. they're beautiful and they work great.

    so what happens when it's time to update these gorgeous brochures they've just had designed?
    who gets to edit photos and put them up?
    who creates the graphics for the front page?
    who writes the copy?
    who formats and posts this information?
    who tests this across multiple browsers and OSs? who QAs it?

    now, let's say that you actually do have someone who can do all this, and the company you've hired has even been clever enough to design your site inside a CMS, like wordpress, for example. you can update the content of the page to your heart's content. but your business moves locations, and now you have to update your static files and includes wherever there's an address. who gets to dig around in wordpress to find all the places this change needs to be made?

    and worse, what if they've set up the website in a CMS like drupal? an extraordinarily powerful and common choice for business websites -- with an insanely high learning curve. who teaches the folks at the company to use drupal? who teaches them how to manage the modules and create new ones? I wouldn't even know what the hell to do with a drupal installation.

    moreover, what if the company who designs it isn't hosting it? what if the website has some kind of bizarre technical error -- the mysql starts fucking up for some reason, and they have to get on the phone and call somebody? boom, you're back to paying the firm a firm's rate.

    you are advocating exactly what he stated he no longer wants -- a "pretty brochure". websites are a living thing that must be maintained, and to do that you must have someone around whose specific domain it is to maintain it.

    World as Myth on
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  • World as MythWorld as Myth a breezy way to annoy serious people Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    I guess one idea would be to pay twice as much for half the time.

    Yeah, sure, you don't have a guy there for half the day, but on the other hand, you do have someone with good skills at your disposal.

    this is a terrific idea.

    plus, for $30 an hour, you will likely get someone who is twice as talented and efficient as the guy who's working for $15 an hour (imagine that), and so you lose nothing, but gain quite a lot. I'd go with this.

    World as Myth on
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  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited November 2009
    You're right. He's going to get all that by hiring someone for 30k in LA.

    It's silly of us to even discuss this!

    Jasconius on
    this is a discord of mostly PA people interested in fighting games: https://discord.gg/DZWa97d5rz

    we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
  • ThanatosThanatos Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Stop with the dickwaving, continue with the constructive contributions.

    Thanatos on
  • solsovlysolsovly Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Only skimmed but you may want to consider another approach when working with a firm. Whip up some detailed requirements and ASK firms for their own projected prices/time.

    Is this just a quick and dirty job or something long term? I was at a place with shitty patchwork web applications/sites and the maintenance is many many times worse than getting it done correctly in the first place. One application ballooned into 3 full time "Developers" just to maintain it. It was horribly buggy, inefficient but the business became dependent on it. That one app costs more YEARLY to maintain than it would have to get an off the shelf enterprise product.

    solsovly on
  • ZeonZeon Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Jasconius wrote: »
    the fact that he's looking for a company to "work on, manage and design multiple websites for our company" implies a continuing relationship, and no firm is going to charge anything remotely close to $15 an hour for work. the design firms I've worked with have charged between $100-$150 an hour. it's an unreasonable suggestion.

    He said 30k per year, and when you add in payroll tax and benefits you will get an even larger figure.

    Which is more than enough money to get a serious web application built. I've seen amazing things built for 30k by a firm with a 115/hr rate, and they were nothing special.

    Thanks for playing, though.

    do you have any idea what you're talking about?

    Im going to go ahead and agree with Jasconius... With a 30k/year budget, you could probably find a really talented firm to handle your site... I mean, lets say, for sake of argument, the base initial site costs 20k dollars to develop... To me, that seems excessive, but whatever. Im also assuming you have a basic corporate brand and everything already set up, so the actual "design" aspect really is just in terms of site layout and what not. That leaves 10k/year for whatever. Im assuming you are going to be doing some basic work after that yourself, considering you have at least one other person whos job at least partly entails website maintenance. You could have your outsourced firm set up a system where you can do basic content revisions internally, and call them back in to do major design work (site rebranding, major content overhaul, whatever).

    I mean, really, unless your site has some sort of contantly revised content, you really shouldnt need someone on full time to do this. Of course, i have no idea what your company does so maybe you really do. But hiring an outside design firm wouldnt mean you have to constantly be paying them because they wouldnt constantly be working.

    Zeon on
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  • SzechuanosaurusSzechuanosaurus Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited November 2009
    I think jasconius and wam are both ulimately correct; from what you've told us of your needs the most effcent use of your budget is likely to be a combination of paying a firm to design and develop the site(s) and then hiring a site admin to maintain them. Depending on the work load necesseray the site admin could potentially be a part time position.

    Szechuanosaurus on
  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    I guess one idea would be to pay twice as much for half the time.

    Yeah, sure, you don't have a guy there for half the day, but on the other hand, you do have someone with good skills at your disposal.

    this is a terrific idea.

    plus, for $30 an hour, you will likely get someone who is twice as talented and efficient as the guy who's working for $15 an hour (imagine that), and so you lose nothing, but gain quite a lot. I'd go with this.

    Additionally you if you advertise it right. (point out the flexible hours) you will be able to probably snag a freelancer who would like the guaranteed 20 hours a week and then have a bit more room in his week to pickup side projects. This makes it more attractive to them as well because you can tell to come in whatever hours as long as they get the work done.

    I mean using Kate for an example she is far more likely to drop her rate from 35 to 30 because she is guaranteed over a thousand hours of work over one year and it continuing.

    Blake T on
  • DrZiplockDrZiplock Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Yea, speaking as a freelancer, I'm going to echo was Blaket said.

    I'm always willing to drop my hourly a bit if there is the assurance of hours. There is something to be said for steady income.

    DrZiplock on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited November 2009
    That's possible but you get into a different realm of pay scales with freelancers due to disparities with benefits and security, I think you're likely to break even by doing that as opposed to hiring someone since we're talking about a long-term engagement. You go freelance when you need something done quickly and the project has a defined scope.

    I don't think $30/hr is going to buy an incredible freelancer for the job you are asking for him to do.

    The OP has already stated that he has gotten burned by vendors before, so I fail to see how he will be more inclined to go with a freelancer since he is more likely to get burned with less recourse.


    I think the best approach might be a synthesis of these two opposing views.

    Bite the bullet, hire a group of savvy professionals to give you the foundation of a reasonable web presence, and then hire some fresh out of college graphic designer with some cursory web skills at a low rate to do your content updates for you.

    Jasconius on
    this is a discord of mostly PA people interested in fighting games: https://discord.gg/DZWa97d5rz

    we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
  • MelksterMelkster Registered User regular
    edited November 2009
    Jasconius wrote: »
    Of course I do, do you?

    Everything I am saying I have seen done first hand with great success. And yes, by non-profits.

    futility created this thread to see if he was looking for the wrong things with the wrong wage, and you told him he clearly didn't know what he was talking about and therefore needed to hire a firm.

    let's say he does. his company hires a firm to build out a website (or maybe even a few) for $30,000. let's say they're really awesome so they get them done in a month and hand them over. they're beautiful and they work great.

    so what happens when it's time to update these gorgeous brochures they've just had designed?
    who gets to edit photos and put them up?
    who creates the graphics for the front page?
    who writes the copy?
    who formats and posts this information?
    who tests this across multiple browsers and OSs? who QAs it?

    now, let's say that you actually do have someone who can do all this, and the company you've hired has even been clever enough to design your site inside a CMS, like wordpress, for example. you can update the content of the page to your heart's content. but your business moves locations, and now you have to update your static files and includes wherever there's an address. who gets to dig around in wordpress to find all the places this change needs to be made?

    and worse, what if they've set up the website in a CMS like drupal? an extraordinarily powerful and common choice for business websites -- with an insanely high learning curve. who teaches the folks at the company to use drupal? who teaches them how to manage the modules and create new ones? I wouldn't even know what the hell to do with a drupal installation.

    moreover, what if the company who designs it isn't hosting it? what if the website has some kind of bizarre technical error -- the mysql starts fucking up for some reason, and they have to get on the phone and call somebody? boom, you're back to paying the firm a firm's rate.

    you are advocating exactly what he stated he no longer wants -- a "pretty brochure". websites are a living thing that must be maintained, and to do that you must have someone around whose specific domain it is to maintain it.

    I work for a non-profit too, and we had a similar situation with our database. We needed software that did a whole bunch of things that no out-of-the-box database management software would be able to do.

    We used a firm, and in our contract stipulated a bunch of solutions for the problems you've listed above, and we negotiated it at a pretty low rate. If you have some foresight, you can address all of those problems at the beginning and still be within budget.

    And btw, when it comes to drupal, it's really not that hard at all for an end-user content-updater to update content, if they set it up correctly. The thing is designed to be easily-updateable by non-drupal/html/prgramming savvy folk. New modules, of course, are a different story all together, but why would you need to make any if the original firm did a good job?

    Melkster on
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