Clients often ask me why custom websites are so expensive.  My reply is twofold.  Too often too much money goes into design as royalties on quality photographs can easily be $750 each.  The second major cost driver is added features such as search, analytics, slideshows, galleries and flash animations.  When a client wants a number of added features, I switch away from simple Dreamweaver CS site building to application programs that incorporate many features such as search, password login, analytics and content management. These systems are more difficult to configure and may require simpler design, but offer cost reductions in not having integrate separate applications or features.

Most websites seems to be classified by their use such as ecommerce, news, or corporate.  From a developer standpoint use or purpose is the most important aspect in deciding the best method or tool for developing the web site. The tool then becomes the major determiner of cost.

A Dreamweaver site consists of content, navigation, coding and design.  Dreamweaver is a good tool because it separates the design and content.  The design look can thus be constructed and placed into the templates.

A Dreamweaver CS site will always be the cheaper method if the design features are moderate and the amount of content is small and primarily text-based.  Dreamweaver offers strong integration of graphic design and flash or flash video with text but the process is manual.  Page templates and library items make building a moderate amount of content manageable and efficient.  This method is best for basic static sites that do not require frequent updates or changes.  Developers often refer to this type of website as online brochures or brochureware.  If the company has a good set of brochures that process is relatively inexpensive.

When the client wants a website that can deliver lots of content and with changes made by staff, then a content management system (CMS) application is the best choice.  If a client wants to restrict content to certain groups, the choice of a CMS-based system is a given.    If only a portion of the site is to be dynamic or restricted then a limited CMS like Coranto can be used.  Coranto works well for a dynamic newsroom application on an otherwise static website.

A secondary cost with dynamic sites is the requirement for hosting that supports configuring the server for an application and supports the use of databases. CMS applications such as Drupal, WordPress, or Joomla are open source and well supported.  Good hosting companies for these applications are Webmasters or GoDaddy.  Most hosting companies charge $150 to $250 a year for business hosting of a website with database.

Lastly, most companies are poorly supported for photography of their products, services and operations. The cost of using a paid photograph on a site can cover the much of the cost of getting a good commercial photographer to document your products and services.