If you are looking for a large site, with advanced functionality including social networking, blogging, ecommerce, or any other web application topped off with great design and content that speaks to your audience you should expect to pay a bit more.

We’ll detail out some specifics in our additional sections on e-commerce & Custom Applications.

Some e-commerce and web applications can be created for less, while more to most successful ventures are created for much more. There are countless sites that have fallen in this price range include Facebook.com, Orkut.com, and BestBuy.com to name only a few (all GREATLY exceeding 6-figures). A site within this price range may be built and hand coded from scratch – and in all cases will require extreme customization – and coordinating various technologies in order to work with your company or infrastructure.

That means your site is unlike any other and requires the attention and expertise of an experienced web application developer(s) and web site designer(s). A site that falls into this category requires months of planning, research, consulting, database design and implementation, software development and integration, site quality assurance and testing.

I know what you are thinking, ‘who knew it was so expensive?’ And the only answer I can give is that web design and creation is like any other craft or trade and requires a high level of knowledge and expertise.

Why are websites in this range so expensive? Here’s a few factors to consider, and examples of scenarios we’ve been in throughout the years that change the cost of a website, even when functionality may not necessarily be beyond the ordinary:

  • Tighter timelines
  • More meetings
  • More people (and approvals) involved
  • More exacting content specifications
  • More pages of content to port over or account for
  • Additional security concerns
  • Governmental or other requirements/regulations must be adhered to (for example 508 compliance is a beautiful and on some projects required element – accounting for this and testing for it takes extra time and money)

None of this is extreme or out-of-the-ordinary, but when needed or required, costs go up.