Costs
What does a web site cost?
Answer: about as much as a car! You can't really imagine anything like this?

 
Question after question:
* Who are you?!
* What do you want?
* What is the special thing?
* Who is to work on what?
* What is the time scale?

In this initial phase it is mainly about getting to know each other. It's about targets, but also about subjective assessments: are we suited to each other, is the chemistry right, do all those involved see an opportunity to finish the project.

The most successful is a joint 'conference' on a Saturday in charming surroundings, a workshop where the course is set and the strategy is defined.  Incidentally, also the realisation that an internet presence makes NO sense, is within the scope of possible answers - at least in our experience.

Steps to the goal:
Step 1:  Structure
Step 2:  Navigation
Step 3:  Ideas for the look
Step 4:  First sample pages
Step 5:  Test and optimisation
Step 6:  Corrections / amendments

Time is money .  Therefore, after the thinking process the main thing is to take the next step together.  The better and more efficiently customer and team work together, the more favourable - not just in money terms.

Concept: approx. DM 2,000
Design: approx. DM 1,500
Implementation:  approx. DM 4,000
OnAir phase:  approx. DM 1,000

So, altogether a little more than DM 10,000 (at the end of your tether and on air with 20 to 30 pages). Time scale: minimum of 6 weeks.

Time is money:
Bear this in mind the next time you want to have an approval meeting with the whole team in your company.  Just so that you know what you are letting yourself in for, here are our hourly rates:

1  Advice, project management DM 160
2  Design, graphic design DM 120
3  Text & Text editing DM 120
4  Page design HTML DM 100
5  Video, flash movies DM 160
6  Programming, database DM 180

An example:
Each meeting in which the project management team, a designer and a copywriter take part  costs DM 400 per hour - which really is not peanuts and is very often a complete waste of time; honestly !!

Perhaps you have already read the comparison with a car here; let us take it one step further.  Why is a Mercedes 500 so much more expensive than a Fiat 500 - five hundred is five hundred...

Therefore, please just consider these figures and facts as orientation values and remember:
there are no upward limits.

Websites (examples)
1 simple, static site from DM 3,500
2 graphic site from DM 10,000
3 dynamic site (database) DM 15,000
4 e-commerce shop system DM 25,000

Realisation:
It is never as reasonably priced as the customer secretly thinks; but never as expensive as the team fears.