Who Do You Recommend to Design a WordPress Website?

Here’s an email I got a few days ago from someone I met at a Meetup about 6 months ago:

Hi Mike,

I have a friend looking for setting up a non-profit website and they want to use WordPress. I was wondering if you’d be able to help with this, or if not if you know of someone you can recommend who does WordPress website design? My friend needs mostly graphics work, but also need help setting up their WordPress site. They already have the logo and the content. Their budget for this is around US$1000.

– Thanks!

Déjà Vu

I get an email similar to the above about once a week on average. It seems I’ve become branded in the eyes of many people in Atlanta as “The WordPress Guy” even though I don’t do what most people think of when they think of “People who do WordPress”; i.e. I don’t design nor do I build WordPress-based websites[1].

<sigh> :)

Pay it Forward

But when someone asks for help I really do want to help.

I’d never fault anyone for not knowing that I’m the wrong person to ask. And I also wouldn’t fault someone who doesn’t know how much it costs to hire a WordPress specialist; if someone is not a immersed in the web world how could they know?

No More 1-off Emails

Still, I’ve written a response to this type of email more times than I care to count. Speaking of, a few days ago a blog post by Eric Mann inspired me to stop replying long form to emails and to start writing blog posts instead.

So here goes.

A Custom Website Design for US$1000?

Let’s talk about that US$1000 budget. In the Atlanta area we have over ten (10) Fortune 500 companies and as a result we probably have over 100 digital agencies, all directly or indirectly serving those large companies as well most of the midsize companies in the area. Good graphic designers are in high demand here, and they are used to being very well paid. I’m not sure, but I expect the same is true in most major US cities as well.

For US$1000 it might be reasonable to expect to three (3) design comps for your future website’s home page. But it’s highly unlikely you’ll find a quality designer to generate a custom design for an entire site, encode the design into HTML+CSS, convert the code it into a WordPress theme, install WordPress at a hosting company, research, select and then install the various WordPress plugins needed for the features desired, and finally configure everything, all the while taking input from a client who is likely to constantly question aspects of the implementation. All for only US$1000.

And the previous paragraph assumes you can even find someone with the skill to do all those things rather than needing to find a team or to assemble a team of different skills to build the site.

Of course you might get really lucky and find a student from SCAD, Creative Circus, Art Institute, or Portfolio Center who would be willing to build your website for US$1000, assuming your student has already worked extensively with WordPress as a hobby.

So like I said, you might get really lucky…

What Should My Website Cost?

But what price is reasonable to expect?

Those who build WordPress websites know the “How Much?” question can be a landmine. Quoting a price too early can get a WordPress sitebuilder into hot water. I’ve seen WordPress websites cost between free – self-serve at WordPress.com – and US$500k or more. How can a site builder know how to price a website prior to fully understanding its requirements?

Price really depends on both what the client needs as well as what the client wants/expects. And the latter is rarely consistent with the former. For example, does a divorce attorney’s website really need a Flash-based header showing storm clouds, and lightning strikes on hover?!? (yes, that is an actual client request, no demand, that I heard from one of my friends who is a sitebuilder.)

WHICH IS WHY I LOVE this website price calculator:

• “How much should a small business website REALLY cost?“

It was built by Erik Wolf who runs ZeroG Creative. It walks a wannabe website client through a series of questions that help the prospect understand some of the things can affect price and by what magnitude.

Here are some of the questions:

• “Are you planning on hiring a designer/firm?”
• “How many people will be involved in the decision-making process?”,
• “Will your website require eCommerce?”,
• “Will your site require social media integration?”, and
• “Will you need a dynamic photo gallery that you can update yourself?”.

Depending on the options selected Erik’s price calculator generates prices between US$500 and US$16,500, where for $500 you basically get a site and theme installed, nothing more. And for small business websites I’d say that’s pretty close although frankly I’d expect more like US$1000 and US$25,000.

What About Non-US People?

Note those prices above are for US-based WordPress developers.

And yes, you can pay significantly less to have a WordPress site built by someone outside the USA. But it’s also possible that you will pick the wrong person and that person will either not deliver or will deliver something that doesn’t match your expectation after your entire budget has been spent.

Offshoring can work great for certain type of projects if you have the luxury to pay to try numerous people to find the one that really meets your needs. But if you have only enough budget to try one person, your taking a big risk with your money. And you’ll have no recourse if they fail you.

So caveat emptor if you hire your web developer off Elance.

Agency Projects for Large Companies

By the way, if you are trying to determine the cost of a WordPress website for your Fortune 500 employer expect that your site will cost between US$100k and US$500k.

Why the huge difference in price between small business websites and large business websites? In a word, “Expectations.”

More specifically, because of their collective need to see exhaustive design variations, their need to allow your numerous stakeholders to control and approve every detail, their insistence that unrealistic deadlines be met, their expectation that every aspect is perfect upon first preview of features, their desire for constantly scheduling unnecessary and unproductive meetings, and their IT department’s insistence upon using a hosting company that has no expertise in WordPress and no desire to learn it.

But I digress.

But Do You Really Need a Designer?

Considering the budget of US$1000, maybe a “Website Designer for graphics work” is not really what is needed. Maybe what they need is a what I like to call a “Site Builder.”

A Site Builder is a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, with respect to WordPress. This is someone who can setup a web host, install and configure WordPress, select an off-the-shelf theme and tweak it to incorporate the logo, and finally add and configure various plugins to add functionality such as email signup forms, social media integration and optimization for SEO.

To further illustrate the difference between a Designer and a Site Builder I roughly categorize WordPress skills as one of these where many people having more than one (1), but rarely more than two or three:

• User/Author (Content writer)
• Layout/Graphic Designer (Photoshop)
• HTML Coder (HTML+CSS)
• Themer (WordPress Themes)
• Front-End Developer (Javascript/AJAX Developer)
• Back-End Developer (PHP/MySQL/Plugin Developer) <– This is me
• and finally Site Builder (Installs/Configures/Adds a Theme and Plugins)

So for a US$1000 budget I think it’s realistic to find a US-based consultant who can deliver a basic website, assuming the client understands the limitations of using off-the-shelf themes and plugins, i.e. but no custom design and custom PHP or Javascript code. It’s a lot like buying a car; you might not like the wood-trim dash but if you chose a model that only comes with a wood-trim dash, that’s what you get.

Other WordPress Specialties?

I tend to want to make my lists exhaustive, so in that vein I might as well list these specialties too, for the record:

• eCommerce Specialist – Expertise in online retail and payment processing
• SEO Specialist – Optimizes for search engines
• Security Specialist – Reviews code for security holes
• Performance Specialist – Helps developer improve performance
• Hosting Specialist – Configures servers for high scalability

What are Off-the-Shelf Themes?

Yeah, I threw that bit of jargon in there when I mentioned Off-The-Shelf Themes. If you are not familiar with this term it refers to packages of design and code that you can purchase from 3rd party vendors that, once installed will update the look and feel of your WordPress-based website.

In it’s 10 years WordPress has spawned a large number of commercial theme vendors, more than 100, although the vast majority of themes are probably sold by 10 or fewer vendors.

Look for an Existing Theme.

If you need a website and your budget is small I’d recommend you surf the main theme vendors websites to find a theme you could envision your future site using. If you can find one that meets all your needs, your low budget website might just be able to be reality.

The following list are the theme vendors I know the best, in alpha order (if you are a fan of another theme vendor feel free to list in the comments.):

• AppThemes
• DIY Themes
• Elegant Themes
• Graph Paper Press
• iThemes
• Organic Themes
• Solostream
• StudioPress
• Theme Fuse
• ThemeForest
• Themify
• WooThemes

But Don’t Expect Significant Changes

Please do realize though it is very difficult for a Site Builder, Graphic Designer or even HTML Coder to make more than trivial changes to the look-and-feel of an off-the-shelf theme without a huge expense. Themes can be very complex beasts and it often takes as long for someone to learn how to modify someone else’s theme than it does to create one from scratch.

So please don’t put your Site Builder in the position of having to explain to you why your “simple change” is really a very time-consuming and labor intensive task (that they will have to bill you for, if they will even agree to do it.) Instead, have them explain to you what is easy and what is hard and then only ask them to do the easy (and inexpensive) things. Your willingness to appreciate their efforts will keep them wanting to service you in the future when you need additional support.

Finally, Who Do I Recommend?

So who do I recommend to build your WordPress-based small business website here in Atlanta? Frankly in good faith I can’t recommend anyone. Why? Because I’ve never worked on a team building a small business website before so any recommendations I would make would really just be me telling you who I know.

That said, I can tell you who I know that specializes in building WordPress websites, in the Atlanta area. Here they are, listed in order of how well I know them (note: I believe all of these have minimum fees higher than US$1000):

• Kris McInerny of Websites by Kris
• Stephanie True Moss of True Moss
• Judi Knight of New Tricks
• Desiree Scales of Bella Web Design

There are a lot of others I know outside of Atlanta, but most of the requests I get are from people in Atlanta and thus I’m listing those I know who serve my local area.

And yes I know, it’s a potential faux pas for me to create this list as I’ve most certainly forgotten someone; if it was you who I have forgotten please accept my profuse apology and leave a comment with your contact information below.

Friends, Family or DIY?

Finally, if you or your friend cannot find a WordPress specialist to build your website within your budget, maybe you can find a friend or family member who can help? WordPress powers almost 20% of the web so that means you probably already know a friend of a friend at least who has set up their own WordPress website and can help you get your site going. Ask on Facebook, maybe?

If you are a non-profit, as above, maybe you can find someone passionate about your non-profit’s mission who knows how to set up a WordPress site; they might be willing to work for significantly below market rates.

And if all else fails, do it yourself. It really is possible for a reasonably intelligent person with moderate computer skills to install and configure WordPress; it just takes a bit of stick-to-it-iveness and lots of Google searches to figure out how to do it and launch it yourself.

Anyway, hope this helps.

–Mike Schinkel
WordPress Platform Architect

Footnotes:

1. Instead of designing and building small business websites I architect and build products based on WordPress for software companies and agencies. I call myself a “WordPress Platform Architect.” My focus is very narrow and as such I don’t develop the experience needed to build websites for small businesses. I can’t help select a theme and I don’t know which plugins work best. And I’m as far from being a designer as any web person has the potential to be. But if you want to use WordPress to implement a complex site and need a specialist to architect if for your team to then perfect, I’m your guy.