For many people today, designing a website seems impossible. Even with the free tools that are available, who has the time to watch hours and hours of tutorial videos? What if you make a mistake–how do you fix it? How do you make your website secure? Just these few questions are enough to make the dream of owning and running a website seem like something best left to the professionals.
Speaking of professionals, you might wonder how to hire a professional to design the website for you, and does that not cost tens of thousands of dollars? Not anymore!
Designing a site using freelance WordPress experts has become the go-to choice when it comes to WordPress for small business owners across the globe. Typically, the cost starts around $250 and goes up from there, depending on the features needed and how many hours the design process takes. In this article, we’ll dive further into what goes into the cost of hiring a WordPress developer.
Choosing a Template or Starting From Scratch
Templates can get a bad rap–some say they are too cliché, while others say they keep your website limited by certain design formats. But for the vast majority of ecommerce websites and small business websites, templates make a lot of sense, both visually and financially.
A template site allows you to choose from hundreds of pre-made templates that have already been proven successful for various businesses. Because templates are often somewhat standardized, they are very easy to navigate for the user as many are used to seeing websites laid out in a basic format.
Your freelance WordPress designer will spend far fewer hours designing the site with a template and will therefore charge less for services–which is money you can use to advertise or expand your business. Customized websites, on the other hand, have advantages. You can lay out the website exactly as you choose and create a variety of landing animations and menu styles. Still, it’s important to know that this customization comes at a cost, as the designer will have to spend far more time building a site from the ground up. Do not let this stop you–to truly stand out in a world of billions of websites, being unique certainly goes a long way!
Choosing the Right Developer
Who you choose to design your site is as important as how you market your site, so be sure to choose a developer familiar with your area of business. For example, if you want to start an ecommerce website, you should find a developer with experience in ecommerce, which includes knowing how to navigate virtual shopping carts, payments, and categorized product layouts.
On the other hand, if you are a doctor wanting to create a website for your clinic, you might consider choosing someone who designs corporate websites for other small businesses and can effectively showcase the benefits of your practice and team members.
Ask the developer for a portfolio of their previous work, and make sure those web pages look professional, are easy to navigate, and that all the menus work as they should. Keep an eye out for bugs or errors to ensure you have found a developer with an eye for detail.
Costs Depend on Your Needs
Like most professionals, WordPress developers charge by the project and by the hour. Typically, they will offer packages, starting at around $250 for the most basic pages up to $500 or $1,000 for something slightly more advanced. When it comes to customization, you can expect to be charged around $30 to $50 per hour for custom work that may be needed on top of the basic package cost. As the saying goes, good work is not cheap, and cheap work is not good–so consider the benefits of an investment in the design of your website, as long as the developer has a great portfolio with excellent reviews and references.
