Pricing and Process
Andrew Lehman Design is a collection of several professional experts. They are from diverse professional backgrounds in graphic design, illustration, photography, e-commerce, programming, and web site development.
A complete basic site costs $800.00. This package includes:
| • Design • Programming • Coding for search engines • Server connection • Domain name registration for 2 years • Search Engine Submission (no additional cost) • Introductory Splash Page + 4 pages • 20 graphics |
1) The cost for maintenance is $33.00 per month. (The fee includes monthly server costs plus revisions, additions and deletions to your site on a monthly basis for up to an hour of labor per quarter. The alternative is a $60.00 monthly maintenance fee with twelve hours of changes per year. (The $60.00 fee includes monthly server costs.)
2) This package includes registration with the primary search engines at no additional cost. We construct your site to be "found" by those search engines and make revisions in your site's coding to be continually found by those search engines as part of the maintenance program. Search Engines for more information.
3) This basic package comes with an introductory or splash page plus twenty graphics divided into a maximum of four categories. If we can get your copy or text electronically, there is no charge for text. Additional graphic costs are $10.00 for each image over 20 in the basic package, $25.00 for each thumbnail blow-up over 8 for the basic package.
4) You will be billed when your site is up and running to your satisfaction for the initial design/programming cost. We ask the first maintenance charge up front at the point that you hire us to design your site billed at the cost of our least expensive package of $99 a quarter. We post a temporary one page site when we receive this initial check. There is no other initial charge. We hook you up to the primary search engines upon receiving payment for design and programming. For those that want more complicated sites over $2000.00, payment is 1/2 at the beginning, and 1/2 upon completion. Once your site is up and operating and you exceed your the number of hours in your maintenance package (see maintenance) we bill standard design work at $60 an hour, Flash at $75 an hour, and php programming for more sophisticated sites at $90 an hour.
5) We estimate your site will be ready 5 weeks after we receive graphics and copy. We like to drop our company logo and additional links at the bottom of your first page as a link to our own page. We create your site to be operational in all browsers.
6) Sites with shopping carts are more expensive than our basic package. The monthly maintenance charge increases from $60.00 or $33.00 a month to $105.00 a month. The complete basic 20-image shopping cart site costs $1000.00.
In conclusion, a basic five-page website includes an introductory or splash page plus four additional pages with twenty graphics. Up front you pay the balance of that quarter's maintenance ($33, $66 or $99) based upon our lowest maintenance plan of $99 a quarter. You pay the balance to us when your site is up, looking and behaving to your satisfaction. Next, we will toggle your site to the search engines. (A complete 20 image shopping cart site costs $1000.00.)
GETTING STARTED
There are four things that we need from you to create a site.
- Your Domain Name - Your first decision is whether you use the name of your company as your domain name (the domain name is what follows the www) or if you use a word or words that summarize your service or product. If you will rely on advertising or promotion to bring in visitors, then using your company name makes the most sense. If you plan to bring in most new customers via search engines, then your primary service or product should be embedded in the domain. The domain name is one of the six criteria search engines check when they decide how high to rank you in a search. For some search engines it makes the difference between a high ranking and a low one. Please let us register your domain name. Transferring domain names is one of the most common challenges in our industry.
- Your Categorization System - People have the shortest attention span when they are on the Internet. Making your message quick and easy to read is essential. This means your site has to load quickly. To make an immediate, clear impression means you have to categorize your service or product into easy-to-understand categories that will load quickly. We will guide you to not overwhelm any one category with too many graphics or words. We create your navigation system to directly reflect the categories you use to communicate your message.
- Your Graphic Choices - For some clients, such as retailers, this is another challenging step. Picking 100 SKU's from an inventory of 3000 items from 400 vendors can take time. We work from photographs, disks, e-mailed jpgs, transparencies, or brochure material. Many of our web sites are created from vendor catalog sheets. Processing graphics is the most time-consuming step when creating most web sites. Our staff is Photoshop savvy. Tightening up contrast, cleaning up the color, deleting unrelated material, and dropping out backgrounds (to decrease loading time) often take fifteen minutes per graphic. For most sites, the number of graphics will determine the cost of your site.
- Choosing Your Text - We do not charge for text if you transmit it to us electronically. We just lift it from a disk or e-mail and drop it into your site. If there are sizable amounts of italics, bolds, or unusual indentations, we charge our normal hourly rate for the additional coding. Most sites, aside from academic sites (lots of italics), do not incur any charges. Copy for the web should be short, clear, concise and easy to read.