I am putting the final touches on a spec for a new website that we're going to get started on shortly (hooray!).  As I read through emails from the early stages of conversation with the client I saw a great question posed as to how on earth websites can cost more to build now than they did during the dot-com bubble.

Client Question: It's been over 4 years since I've built my last website.  Only thing was, I paid less than $1,000.00 for it then.  And that was during the bubble.  Why would it cost more for a website now?

I know where you're coming from - I was developing sites before, through and now after the bubble and have asked some of the same questions.  A lot of the issue is that technology has changed in huge ways since I got started in this industry.  Now a good web company needs to keep a lot more in mind for even a basic site, things like:

• displaying well on mobile devices
• being compatible in all browsers
• allowing clients to update and maintain the site themselves
• building on a platform that can be expanded upon in the future

I'm guessing your old site was in Flash.  Those were the easy days in a lot of ways because as web companies (and actually a lot of pure design companies who didn't have any coders) we could simply do a Flash website, throw it up on a page for Internet Explorer and call it a day.  Today you don't want to use Flash (won't come up in search engines well, Apple devices won't render it, other devices are spotty).  Today you have a lot more devices to think of (a lot of our sites see 10%+ traffic from smartphones and browsers used are all across the board).  Today you need to create a site that clients can easily edit (I'm a huge proponent of this).

What I've heard from other clients is that we charge less than similar companies on the coasts (usually an hourly rate of $150+) because we are in the midwest.  You can find cheaper companies (hourly rate maybe in the $50+ range), but the clients we now have who started there ran into two problems - first, when they wanted to expand their site later on it was incredibly expensive because the site foundation wasn't well built; second, often the "company" disappeared or got distracted and so response time became weeks or months for simple changes.

It is a tough decision, I know.  What are your thoughts?