The question we get asked a lot is "How much to charge for a mobile site?"
Just like with traditional web development, prices charged for setting up a mobile website vary greatly depending on the type of client's business, the requirements, the value of the site to the client, and the agency or freelancer doing the work. In this post I'd like to mention a few things that may help in developing your pricing guidelines.
Based on what we've seen, the bottom price for a managed mobile site development services in the US tends to start at around $300 (e.g. $295 or $297), and this is for a very basic cookie-cutter no-frills mobile website with 5-10 content areas (pages, text or image sections), perhaps a simple mobile form that emails the lead information to your client, and a few images.
If you consider the minimum time you would spend on this project (a couple of hours to contact the client and close the deal, an hour to build the site and another hour to review it with the client and make a few changes), then $300 is probably the absolute minimum you can charge. (And that doesn't even cover the time you'd need to spend on marketing and business development).
Most resellers we've talked to charge $500 and up for setting up a mobile site, and also an on-going monthly or annual maintenance and hosting fee.
Here are some things you would typically charge extra for (as they have an additional value to your client and also can take up some extra time for you to set up):
- M-commerce (selling products or services on the mobile site)
- On-page SEO (adding keywords and meta tags, image ALT tags, etc)
- Custom design (besides the basic color-matching to maintain the same brand identity as the desktop site, you can put a bit more effort into design uniqueness with custom graphics, backgrounds or gradients)
- mobile surveys and contests
- mobile coupons
- setting up multiple locations (for a business that has more than one store) with a store-finder for detecting the closest store. Obviously, the more locations the business has, the more value there is to the client (and possible, more management work for you as well)
- And, of course, any additional services you may offer on top of basic mobile website development (e.g. additional marketing and promotion, SEO, advertising management, newsletter management, blog writing, video creation, SMS, etc.)
Packages or custom pricing?
Two common approaches to mobile website pricing are packages and custom bids. With the first approach, you would typically offer several pricing options for the client to pick from. You can break your packages by the features included, and the number of pages.
A good tactic is to "discount" the cost of the mid-range package, to make it look like a really attractive deal so that customers looking at a lower plan have an incentive to upgrade. (For instance, you can price your packages at $395, $595, and $795, and discount the middle package by $100 as a current promotion).
The main benefit of the package approach is that it makes it easier for the client to understand the options and what is included. The downside of this approach is that a similar project can offer different value to different types of businesses. For instance, a high-end beauty salon could pay you a lot more than a mom-n-pop pizza shop, however a high-end business is also likely to be more demanding. So the alternative here is to go with the custom pricing approach, and instead of disclosing any prices ahead of time, you would discuss the requirements with the client first and offer to come back with a recommended solution and budget.
What to charge for on-going maintenance and hosting?
At a minimum you should charge a small on-going hosting and maintenance fee ($10/month should be the minimum) for hosting your client's website. However, most small businesses want to make sure that they are covered in case any site updates are needed. You can either give your client access to their account and train them to update the site content. But since the updates may be relatively rare, your client may not remember the instructions by the time they are needed, and many will want you to handle the changes anyway since this is what you are good at and they are not. Therefore it makes sense to either increase your monthly fee to include support and website updates, or charge for the updates separately as they come in.
You can also offer an annual payment option (with 2 months free if they prepay for the full year).
In a nutshell, a monthly fee of $35-40 that includes hosting, support and a few updates, as well as a monthly report on visitors and conversions is reasonable for many small businesses. (A stats PDF report for the mobile website can be easily generated in your piJnz account). Including a report as part of your monthly service adds value - after all, the numbers is what your client ultimately cares about.
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Image credit: Loadmaster (David R. Tribble) and Wikipedia