Charge Smart: How To Price WordPress Website Design Projects For Fast, Consistent Results

Imposter syndrome. An all too familiar feeling for freelance web designers and digital agency owners around the world.

​​Navigating how to price your WordPress website design projects can be particularly challenging for many of us.

But honestly, until you find a clear and consistent way of determining your pricing structures, it doesn’t get any easier, no matter how long you’re in the web design business!

Why you need a solid pricing structure for WordPress website projects

Your services should come with a price tag that is fair to both parties involved in the transaction. It needs to be attractive to your clients while also being profitable and honoring your time.

Striking the right balance between your experience, client requirements, and market rates can make you feel like you’ve been thrown in the middle of a House of Mirrors and for some reason you’re dressed as a clown. Imposter syndrome and self-doubt is something that many designers and developers struggle with.

Don’t worry! It’s totally normal to feel this way.

All you need is a little help to set you on track, and I’ve got just the right solution for you!

First, let’s highlight all the elements you need to consider before you start pricing your WordPress website design services so you don’t feel so overwhelmed.

Factors to consider before finalizing your price

If you’re a web developer, web designer, or any business owner in general, it’s not wise to rely on guesswork when coming up with pricing.

While many people are doing it, this approach can end up costing you a lot of time and money, taking days or even weeks to finalize a proposal and getting caught in a cycle of indecision and confusion.

So, before you go panicking and pluck a figure out of thin air that in no way relates to the level of work you’re about to commit to, here are the main things to bear in mind so you can provide great value to your clients while operating on a profit.

Define the scope of the project

Before pricing a WordPress website design project, you’ve got to understand your client’s goals, objectives, and requirements.

This will help you estimate the work required to avoid your workload quietly creeping up during the project.

Project scope is influenced by:

• Number and size of pages
• Custom functionalities
• Design complexity
• E-commerce integration
• Additional dynamic features
  

Decide on an hourly rate vs. a flat fee

Charging an hourly rate allows for flexibility if the project scope changes. However, it may be difficult to communicate the final cost to your client before it’s finished, and if you’re super efficient in getting it across the line, it can feel like you’re not getting paid adequately for the value you’ve provided.

On the other hand, a flat fee removes any cost confusion with your clients, but it can be tricky to estimate correctly how much the final project should cost to ensure you’re still making a profit by the time it’s finally wrapped. (Stay tuned for more on this!)

Whatever pricing model you choose, check in post-project to make sure it works for your agency and that you’re charging fairly for your experience, expertise, and efficiency.

Consider your experience and expertise

Your level of experience and expertise will naturally impact how you price your WordPress website design projects.

If you’re just starting, you might need to charge a slightly lower rate to build your portfolio, gain experience, and create your client base.

However, as you become more skilled and established, you can justify higher rates based on your expertise, the unique value you bring to clients, and the awesome reputation you’ve earned in the industry. Yay for progress!

Evaluate market rates

Pricing options for WordPress websites are vastly varied, ranging from an average of $75 to $115,000 for an entire project.

You might be thinking, “Wow, that’s super broad and unhelpful!” But these prices are so enormously different because of all the variables involved in professional website design and development.

Rates can vary depending on whether you’re operating your own site as a freelance web designer or as part of an agency, as well as location, target audience, and industry specialization.

Research the market rates for WordPress website design projects in your area of expertise and with similar skills and experience so you can establish truly competitive and fair prices for your business websites and services.

It’s also important to think about whether you want to position yourself as an affordable option for small business owners or put your fancy hat on and focus on a more exclusive niche where you can offer premium services.

Consider the time and effort required for each WordPress site

Seeing as every project is different, and things are inevitably going to come up in the process of creating a new WordPress website, this is where things can get a little tricky.

However, estimating the time and effort required for a WordPress website design project is essential for accurate pricing.

There are plenty of things to consider, including the complexity of the design, WordPress theme customizations, themes, content creation, search engine optimization, or integrations.

It’s also important to remember that your clients will likely request edits and updates to their new website. You must clearly communicate the number of revisions included in your pricing to avoid uncomfortable situations.

Finally, factor in additional costs and web hosting overheads

Besides the basic outline and design of your WordPress project, there are other elements your clients may need to incorporate into their WordPress websites that might cause an increase in the overall cost of building a website.

It’s always best to be upfront and transparent about these things, so make sure you communicate any additional expenses right off the bat.

Don’t forget to determine if your web server is going to need any of the following before you finalize a cost for your entire WordPress website project:

• A premium WordPress theme
• Stock photos
• Copywriting services
• Custom domain registration
• Web hosting fees
• Third-party integrations
• Costly domain name
• Install plugins for mobile devices
• Ongoing maintenance and support options

Are you still unsure about how to price a website?

Ok, now you know what you need to factor into your WordPress web design pricing. But that still doesn’t give you any concrete answers on how to set prices that reflect the value you provide while still being appropriate for your target audience.

Disclaimer alert!

I’m about to promote a product of mine. It’s been so helpful to me and other members of The Admin Bar community, I honestly feel bad not sharing it around!

So helpful, in fact, that it’s helped one of our members raise their prices by an incredible 50%!

If you’re struggling to put figures to all the different elements and come up with a profitable final cost for your WordPress website project or any other web hosting provider design projects, then our Project Estimator tool is for you.

Let’s get to it!

What is the Project Estimator tool?

The Project Estimator tool is an Airtable base that offers different variables and in-built calculations so you can accurately estimate the specific cost of each unique WordPress project.

This fantastic tool helps you estimate your WordPress website design projects’ total cost in 10 minutes or less! No more wasting time fretting over how much to charge! Instead, you can focus on doing what you do best; creating awesome websites.

I created the Project Estimator out of necessity as I was struggling for days on end to find the right price for my services, so you can trust that it’s designed with your exact needs at its core.

Here’s what our awesome client Austin had to say about the tool after it helped him raise his prices by 50%!

A few months back (maybe over a year ago now?), I bought Kyle Van Deusen’s Agency Airtable Pack because I was interested in a task manager. However, I didn’t count on it causing me to increase my pricing.

The pack includes the Website Project Estimator tool. It’s a pre-made, but customizable, formula where you plug in the various things a website build is going to require (how many web pages each, templated/custom design, how much copywriting, how dynamic/complex, plugin licensing, etc) and then spits out a number for you.

I was just tweaking this tool for my own uses today and I realized that using it has forced me (given me permission?) to up my pricing by about 50% per project. The reason is that you have to sit down and really think about all the various things you have to do to get the project launched. And then accounting for that in your quote.

For example, how many custom post types do you need to create an ecommercesite? How many templates will that ecommerce website require? Did you charge for the quality assurance check at the end? The Website Owner’s Manual? Setting up their SMTP? Writing content? migrating content? Building that contact form? You know, all the “stuff” you have to do that you forget has a REAL WORLD VALUE that you should be paid for.

How does it work?

The Project Estimator is a customizable, reliable way to determine the pricing of each unique project you take on.

Using the free version of Airtable (meaning you don’t have to pay for any software other than installing WordPress), you can simply input all the deliverables of any WordPress site and adjust them based on complexity to produce an accurate price for the scope of your services.

Here’s a video demonstrating how simple it is to use and how quickly it calculates your price.

The Project Estimator tool is specifically designed to help you remain consistent in your pricing across the board, offering tailored pricing based on your client’s requirements and ensuring you’re charging enough for your expertise.

It breaks all the elements down into relevant sections, with varying multipliers to accurately represent the level of work required in each area of the project:

• Assets: Scope of the web project, amount and size of pages, free and premium themes, free and premium plugins, contact/sign-up forms, pop-up modals, privacy policies and terms of service, 3rd party integrations, content migration, whether your client website has a free domain
• Copywriting: Whether it’s been provided by the client, a collaboration between you and the client, or if you need to hire a professional copywriter
• Design: Varying from client-provided, using design templates, to creating custom designs
• Dynamic: Does the website require dynamic content or not? If so, are you using a prebuilt widget inside of a website builder, or creating custom dynamic content takes more time to work on?
• Complexity: Some projects are inherently more difficult than others. The complexity rating allows you to change your multiplier after the other factors so it reflects the level of time and effort required

Shop the TAB online store to buy the Project Estimator tool now

For just $50 you can save time and money on your WordPress website projects by streamlining your pricing process while fairly increasing your prices.

What’s more, the daily anxiety of wondering whether or not you’re underselling your services or shooting too high and alienating your target audience is gone! Now the only anxiety you have to deal with is coffee-induced after foolishly pouring yourself that third cup.

Finally, the Project Estimator tool comes as part of the Agency Airtable Pack, which includes 5 of my favorite Airtable bases I created from my personal experience specifically for digital agencies, which helps you with everything from task management to generating more leads.

Does this all sound good to you? Awesome! I can’t wait to hear your success stories from using it!