you are independent and provide website design services to owners of various activities, you will face a major challenge in pricing your website development services, and it may be one of the things that confuses you, especially if you do not have previous experiences with many clients that help you know the mechanism of setting prices, as well as your lack of knowledge of the factors that… It affects the client’s decision to choose one developer over another, as well as the lack of experience in determining the total time that the work is expected to take in order to complete it exactly as required, the size of the client’s purchasing power, and other challenges that hinder you from setting a fair price for services.
In this article, you will learn about many of the factors that affect the pricing of website creation services (in particular, we are talking about WordPress website design services), and we will give you the most important tips for pricing your services in a way that suits your efforts, as well as the level of purchasing readiness among customers who want to build their websites. We will also show you some personal skills in dealing with the client to achieve a higher income with a better profit margin from the same project.
Factors affecting the pricing of your services
There are some factors that affect the pricing of your services that must be taken into consideration. For example, if you work within the Arab Gulf countries, you will be required to have a pricing system that differs from the European Union countries. Likewise, if you provide your services to emerging projects, the pricing will also differ from the services that you provide to government agencies or E-commerce companies each have the budget allocated for their own project on the web.
You must take these factors into consideration in the beginning before anything else, and we will review the most important factors below and how to deal with these variables correctly.
Customer country
One of the most important factors that affect the pricing of website design services is the country of the client or the company to which you are providing the work. In countries that are characterized by having high purchasing power and improving economic conditions, you can charge a higher wage than other countries that suffer from deteriorating economic conditions, so Try to consider the customer’s purchasing power.
We do not tell you to always focus on countries characterized by high purchasing power in order to obtain a greater return from the purchase process, but we advise you to diversify your customer base and take into account the currency difference as well as the size of the business activity and provide a product and service that suits all categories, as this will help you increase the spread and increase the number of sales.
The amount of work required
When you look at the amount of work required of you, do not just look at the number of pages, the size of the site, or the developments required from the client, but look at the actual time it takes to complete the work on all the required developments.
For example, if a client asks you to create a WordPress website to display the services that the company provides to its clients, and these services are 5 services in total. In this case, the steps to work on the project will be as follows:
- Purchase hosting + purchase a domain for the desired site
- Configure hosting and install an SSL certificate for the site
- Download the WordPress system on the hosting, install it and activate it
- Upload the required template and install the necessary additions to the site
- Designing the internal pages of the website to showcase services and products
- Installing and configuring SEO for the site in general, as well as backing up the site
- Additional modifications
After you determine the steps that you will take in order to complete the work on the project in the required manner, you will need to determine the time to work on these tasks. For example, these steps will take you 5 full hours to complete and implement them in the correct and required manner…
…Therefore, you will multiply the number of hours required to complete the project * the price of one hour, and the total will be the price of the service requested by your client.
If you are a beginner, we advise you to set a low hourly price ranging from $10 to $20, in order to gain the trust of more clients. Also, you are still in the learning and gaining experience phase, so there is no need to impose a high price on the client in the beginning, and therefore in that case you can set a price. The service is paid at $10 (your wage per hour) x 5 (number of working hours) = $100 (total amount due on the project).
After you price your service in the previous way, you can add from 10% to 20% of the total service price to the final price, in anticipation of the commissions that platforms and banks deduct when withdrawing funds (this is optional for you and it is not necessary for you to add this percentage, and also the issue depends on The degree of compatibility between you and your customers).
Are you dealing with an individual or a company?
There are some cases that affect pricing that relate to whether the client is an individual or a company. For example, if the client is only one individual, the dealing will be between you and him only, and the amount of adjustments required of you will be limited in most cases, so you can set an average hourly price between 10 and 20 dollars. for example.
If the client is a group of individuals or a large company, in this case you will receive instructions from more than one individual, and the amount of modifications required to the work will be greater, and the project will require a lot of physical and psychological effort from you to complete it. In this case, you can raise the value of one hour to more than $20, depending on the amount you deem appropriate for you and also for your client, and always be realistic about prices and adhere to the average price of the market in which you are selling.
Competitors’ prices
Competitors’ prices come as one of the important criteria that you need to pay attention to during your work. It may be an obstacle when you work in a highly competitive market, and it may be a challenge that you can overcome. For example, if you work in a market where your competitors work and they have more experience than you with WordPress technologies , in this In this case, you will find that their prices are high, and in this case you can offer your services at a lower price than the price offered by competitors, but without burning prices so that customers do not underestimate you and feel that you are providing them with worthless work.
On the other hand, your competitors’ prices may be significantly lower than yours, and in this case you have to take one of two paths:
- Having some features that your competitors do not have, for example, you can provide technical support for 60 days on the site after it is delivered, while the competitor offers technical support for only 15 days, or does not provide support at all.
- Working outside the scope of your competitors and trying to open a new market for you in other countries or with customers with different specifications.
Remember that clients do not always pay the cheapest, but mainly pay for the quality ones. A job that meets their demands at a higher price will be better than a job that does not meet their needs at a low price.
Top tips for pricing your services
In this part, we present to you some of the most important tips that will help you price your services in working on creating and developing WordPress sites in a fair way and achieve a satisfactory return for you, if you follow these tips correctly.
1. Place a fair value on your time
As a WordPress developer or a freelancer who works online as a freelancer, you must know that time is the most valuable asset you possess in all cases. For example, you can accept a project that takes you 5 hours and get $100 in return for it. However, if the project is for 5 hours and its budget is Only $10. In this case, time is not on your side, as you can invest those five hours in learning a new skill or reading a new book that can add skills to you that will raise the price of the services you provide to business owners.
On the other hand, you are afraid of never losing a client. In some cases, “gaining a client means gaining money,” or “losing a client means gaining time!” “. Therefore, always respect your time and set a price that is satisfactory to you and also appropriate to the level of experience, skill, and value that you can provide to your customers on time, and do not offer greatly exaggerated prices.
2. Never burn your prices
Most of the time you will find that a serious client is willing to pay good money in exchange for satisfactory results. In this case, you must have confidence in your outstanding skills which will definitely benefit your client.
In this case, if you lose a client who did not accept your high price offer, you will have an opportunity to attract more serious clients who are willing to pay more in exchange for the distinguished and unique service that you provide.
3. Don’t ignore the cost of technical support
In most cases, the matter does not end once the work is completed and delivered to the client, but the work may continue for hours and perhaps days and months after the project is delivered, as the client always requests technical support, follow-up, and making modifications on your part. In the beginning, keep this matter in mind and count it within the project.
In this case, you must specify the time required from you for technical support for the project, explain this to the client, and put the cost of those hours on the total price of the project you are working on.
4. Be flexible with your pricing
In some cases, you may have to raise the price of your service at a time when you have a lot of pressure working on a lot of projects, and you want to reduce the number of new projects to try to focus on what you are working on. In this case, you can either reject the new projects until you finish working on the projects. Current projects, or you can raise the price of your service in a way that makes receiving additional projects at a high price an incentive for you to finish current projects and start new ones.
Also, sometimes the price for your service is reduced based on your desire to gain experience from the project you are working on, or if you are psychologically satisfied with the project you are working on, as this increases your self-confidence and satisfaction with what you are doing.
In all cases, whether you intend to increase or decrease your wage, be careful that this change is within the permissible limits so that you do not offer a low price or an exaggerated price in some cases. You are still restricted to the market in which you work, and your reputation may be built based on the prices you achieve. It works.
Tips to increase the profit margin of the same project
The work does not always end with the project you have delivered to a client, but most of the time there are more services you provide on the same project with the aim of increasing the value of the deal. Let us review some tips for increasing the profit margin from the same project as follows:
1. Providing monthly technical support
One of the things that helps you increase your profit margin from any WordPress website creation and development project is providing technical support to the client on a monthly or quarterly basis, or according to your agreement with the client.
Technical support may include many procedures, such as installing periodic updates to WordPress, templates, and plugins for the site, reviewing the site’s security procedures, designing more internal pages and sections as needed, and solving all problems that may arise during the site’s launch.
Technical support may also include following up on backups and developing the site interface, as well as managing the site’s hosting and some administrative work that may be carried out by some other people from the work team, such as some administrative tasks, marketing tasks, and site content management.
2. Increase the value of the deal
If you have some marketing skills that may benefit your clients such as SEO optimization or some skills related to online marketing , you can offer some marketing services to the client to start promoting the site across different platforms and reach potential customers.
You can also provide some other skills such as site content management, especially if the site has a large database , so you can help it in one way or another to organize and manage this content. You can also provide some graphic design services, social media account management, creative content writing , or other skills that increase the value of the deal if you already have them, or you can mediate with a professional to complete these tasks.
Conclusion
It is assumed that you now understand well that the pricing of your website design services depends on your level of experience, the time spent, and some other factors that affect the completion of the required work. Therefore, if you estimate your skills and time well, the work will be satisfactory to you.
Do not exaggerate your prices in a way that makes your clients raise doubts about your ability to complete the task, and do not set ridiculous prices that are not commensurate with the size of the project you are working on, and you must also take into account any additional expenses or fees on the total price of the project you are working on, such as commissions. The financial resources and tools you use to complete the work and the years you spent learning your current skills.
