Ok, now I've read the forum dicussions on the amounts that people should charge etc and ideas behind it but I'm stumped with the site that I currently am being approached to do...especially as it involves a bit more than just designing and developing a site.

I've been approached to design a department store's website. They have thousands of items on sale in their store but as of yet do not wish to have an online version of their store on which to buy items direct. However, they will want a wide range of items on show, and they are open to the opportunity to have an argos style reverse and pick up option for each item. The item pages will probably amass about 50 pages in total. As well as the basic developing of the site, I have agreed as part of the deal to take all the photos of the store, items (on white backdrops, like a photo shoot) and get in contact with each brand name on the site for copyright etc. I will also update their site as and when they need updating for sales etc.

So my question is...as a freelancer who has only done 1 commerical site previous to this but is doing an IT degree and designing sites, logos, graphics etc constantly could I charge around the £20/hour mark or around £3000 for the entire project and then £15/hour for updates?

Please any help is welcome as I need to get back to the client with a quote ASAP.

Thank you!

servedchilled

£3000 for the ENTIRE project - including the photography?!

Is this a department store chain, or just one store? Three-thousand seems very light.

Consider the fact that the inventory of this store will change regularly, and the new items will also have to be photographed and added to the site; old items taken down; prices and descriptions updated, etc... Personally, I wouldn't even consider doing something like this for under $40,000, and I would not tackle it by myself.

Thank you for all your comments!

It is a family chain of 3 stores but i agree that it should be much more than just 3 grand. In everyone's experience, is it easier to get paid per week/hour or in a lump sum (half at beginning and half at end) when approaching a company? Would updates also be better as a package...for example 10 hours worth of updates for another sum?

Thanks for all help again,

servedchilled

I agree with the suggestion of separating the project into sub-projects. I'd also recommend charging based on project "milestones". i.e. 25% deposit, 10% upon completion of design, 10% upon comletion of HTML/CSS build, 25% upon completion of dynamic elements and integration, 30% within 3 months of project completion. I'd also get the client to sign-off the sub-sections before moving on to the next. This also covers you for further design changes at the end of the production line, these would involve an additional charge at your typical hourly rate.

I learn from bitter experience... :(

what?? all of you are talking about $25000 to $50000 for such projects. I am surprised. I have been deploying e-commerce sites for more than 3 years now but not even heard of $2000; In nepal, its too cheap and no one even thinks of such amount.

Any way good luck.

The main reason that I use milestones is because I've had problems with clients completely changing the design when the project is nearly ready to go live, and I didn't have anything to cover myself. If you get them to sign-off and finalise the work at each stage of production, it means that they are aware that they have to take time over their decision. Of course, if they really need to change the colour scheme for some reason, you'd be very happy to go through with it, it's just that the design has been signed-off, the change is beyond the scope of this project, and you will be charging on an hourly basis.

I personally don't mind making little changes, and a couple of extras for clients... it's just that when they start taking the piss, and making so many changes that they might as well go for the initial more expensive package, that's when it really annoys me. I believe that it's called feature-creep.

Incidentally, £3,000 for what sounds like a static catalogue site does seem a tad steep, especially if you're inexperienced. Although, if you're doing all the data-entry for them, it could well add up.... Why not try quoting a project price, and then an additional fee per 100 products entered? Assuming it will take, say, 15mins to take a photo, re-size, load and add text per product.... that would equate to roughly £500 per 100 products.

To be fair, do you really want to load all the products for them? It takes ages, and is a waste of your time and skill, you might as well charge more for the initial project to make a dynamic catalogue with a simple CMS and let them load the products to their heart's content.