How Much Should You Charge For A Webflow Website?

In my short time as an inexperienced webflower (3 years on an off but 1 year solidly), I have done design and dev projects for between free and $10,000. I know experienced Webflow freelancers that are doing regular $10,000 - $20,000 website projects, and established agencies that are doing $100,000 website projects.

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So, as far as I’m aware, you can charge between 0 and up to at least 100K for a website. Nice one, thanks for reading, have a great day (dad joke).

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You know this already. So within that wide ranging ball-park, how much should you charge? How do you know where to price yourself in a busy Webflow market? Are clients more likely to pay if you are cheaper?  Do you even want bigger projects? Are larger projects always more profitable anyway?

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I’ll try and answer ‘How much should you charge for a website?’ by going through what are, in my opinion, crucial questions.

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What Is Value Based Pricing?

What If The Client Only Wants To Pay Me Hourly For A Whole Project?

How Do You Work Out How Much To Charge Based On Value?

What Do Webflow Website Customers Actually Pay For?

How Do You Have The Confidence To Charge More?

What Value Are You Providing For A Webflow Website Customer?

How Much Money Do You Want To Charge Per Project?

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DISCLAIMER: It’s important to say that I am in the first 3 years of my Webflow journey. I am NO EXPERT. I am simply trying to share what I have learnt from far more talented people than me to try and help you answer the thorny question of how much to charge. I am constantly learning so if you think there is something I didn’t talk about, mention, or completely miss the point, please email me:

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info@jackredley.design

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What Is Value Based Pricing?

Fascinating video here from John D Saunders. According to John D Saunders, Value Based Pricing is “pricing set according to the perceived or estimated value of a product or service.”

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Value Based Pricing is an important mindset shift from your freelancer perspective to the client’s perspective.

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I used to think that my time is worth $30 an hour and so if I was working on a project for 10 hours, I should get $300 so that is what I would charge.

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The problem with this is that this pricing doesn’t include the cost of any overheads of running a business; acquiring a lead, advertising, sales calls, software etc etc.

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The other problem with this mindset is that it doesn’t account for the actual problem you are trying to solve with your time.

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It’s useful to think about how big the problem is that you are solving for the client.

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You might think “But Jack, what if 2 clients both just need a website done for them. How do I judge how big the problem is for them?”

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This is a fair point. I’ll try an analogy to answer this:

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Let’s say you’re a freelance Webflower - you generally do small websites for local businesses in the town where you live.

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One day, Marvel Studios approach you saying they want a landing page designed and developed in Webflow for a new film they are releasing. They want it to excite people about the film’s release and capture emails to send discount tickets out when the film is released. Would you charge the same amount for this landing page as what you charge for a local business?

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If not, why?

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It’s probably because the value of your website for Marvel Studios is far greater than for the local business. This Marvel studios website will hopefully attract thousands of people from around the world to see the film. The difference between a good website design and a bad website design will affect how many people attend the film. For Marvel Studios, this website plays a key role in their marketing campaign to hype the film of which they hope to earn millions of dollars from. Since this website is part of a expensive problem (Taking strangers from not aware of the film to excited people about the film and helping to get bums in seats at the cinema), it is worth a lot more than the website for a local business.

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With a value based pricing, you are not charging for your time, you are charging for the value provided to the client.

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What If The Client Only Wants To Pay Me Hourly For A Whole Project?

I have tried to use the same words that Chris says in this video as a script when talking to clients that only want to pay me hourly for a website project. I wasn’t nearly as convincing as Chris is here but I think it’s great to try and educate clients about the asymmetry in their logic.

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You: The project’s price will be X

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Client: What’s your hourly rate for the project at X price?

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You: Why do you want to know my hourly rate?

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Client: I want to know how long it will take you to charge that much for my project?

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You: So if I take less time, you feel you should charge me less?

Client: Yes!

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You: So if I take more time, you will pay me more?

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Client: …I could just hire someone at the same rate who could do it quicker…

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You: So you value your time over money then?

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Client: Yes

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You: So I work fast. I can do a website quickly and to a great standard. So I get punished if I work fast and do a great job. Surely I should get paid more if I do work fast and thoroughly? That’s why I don’t work hourly.

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Killer Question To Ask When A Client Wants To Pay An Hourly Rate For A Job:

So if I take longer to do the work, will you pay me more?
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How Much Of That Value Should You Charge Roughly Then?

This is a screenshot from a video entitled How Much to Charge as a Consultant - Value-Based Pricing Strategy

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Sabri Suby, the founder of full-service digital marketing agency, King Kong, advises charging 10% of the price of the problem.

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$100,000 problem = $10,000

$1000 problem = $100

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I have heard other people say different numbers here but the point is value based pricing does not take in to account the amount of hours or charging per website page or anything else - it is based on the price of the problem.

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It’s important to note that running a business costs money so that’s why it’s important to charge more than to just cover your costs and survive. I know taxes are different for everyone but if you’re reading this from the UK, at least 20% of your income needs to be given to the government. Instantly, 20% of every project is wiped out so bear that in mind when charging! (I wish I did earlier).

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How To Have The Confidence To Charge More

Here’s a question for you - if I offered you a car for £5, what would you assume about that car?
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Even if it looks brand new, you might be thinking something like “It’s probably so shit that it won’t even start.” You might be more likely to buy that exact same car if it had a £1000 price tag.

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The same is true for your creative work. The price that you value your work at sets assumptions in the mind of the client that your work is either sufficiently good that you will be able to solve their problem or not.

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If you charge too cheap, it might give a client a lack of confidence that you can do what you say you can do. If the problem the client has is worth a lot of money to them, it is risky hiring someone who could potentially make a complete mess of it.

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So to some extent, it’s not even about having the confidence to charge more. It may actually be a necessity to get more work.

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If confidence is a problem though, the tactic I find most effective is imagining that I am trying to get the project on the behalf of someone else.

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If you were trying to get the work for my best mate who is an incredible designer, you might be a lot firmer and confident about your price point.

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It sounds weird but I find it’s easier to say higher prices as if they were someone else’s than my own.

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What Value Are You Providing For A Webflow Website Customer?

Have you ever thought to yourself “What are businesses paying for when they hire you to redesign and rebuild their website?”

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If you asked me this a year ago, I would’ve probably responded with something like “a beautiful, responsive website, attention to detail, fast replies and great organisation.”

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Recently, I have realised customers don’t pay me to redesign and rebuild their website. It’s actually the result of the redesign and rebuild that they are paying for.

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It’s to solve business problems for them.

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This is not say that the website being beautiful, responsive, and good client service are not important. But they are not the solutions to the core problem you are solving for the client.

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As Rob O’Rourke from Fox Web School says, the problems you can solve as a web designer broadly falls in to 4 categories:

1) Marketing

If your client’s website is not their best marketing asset, it is a huge problem to solve. Things are potentially problems that you may be able to provide a solution for:

• Does your client even have a marketing strategy and how does the website fit in to it?
• Does the client have some kind of lead generation strategy?
• Does your client’s website rank on Google for any keywords?
• Is your client currently tracking any metrics at all?
• Can your client and their team easily make a landing page currently?

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2) Sales

When people actually come to the website, are they turning in to customers? Things to think about:

• Is the copy compelling?
• Does your client know their customer pain points - is that clear on the website?
• Is your client just talking about features rather than benefits?

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3) Support

If there is no support on the website, there may be fewer repeat customers (depending on the business). Things to consider:

• Does the website have specific pages for customers?
• Does the website have a blog or content that is going to help repeat business?
• Is it easy for customers to find information?

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4) Systems

Does the website play a part in their wider business goals?

• Does the website help them or hinder them currently?
• Can you design a website that makes the customer experience a delight?
• Can your client and their staff easily use the site or need to rely on a developer?

As Chris Do says, the more you can speak the language of business, the more you can speak to the problems you are helping business owners to address. If you ask your clients what problems they have, you will be able to work out how valuable you are to the client quite quickly.

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How much money do you want to charge per project and why?

So, we’ve talked about Value Based Pricing, and we have talked about working out what problems your client has to understand what value you are bringing them. This will help work out your price point to guide how much you charge.

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I want to finish this article by asking you how much money do you want to charge per project and why?

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I used to want to charge as much as I could for projects regardless of the project industry and try and ignore the glaring red flags in client calls.

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When I worked for Crafted Studios run by the great Dexter Washington, I learnt that larger projects sometimes meant larger teams to deal with, more meetings about meetings, a whole load of red tape and lack of creative control. Bigger is often associated with better but it’s worth exploring that thought in regards to website projects with massive budgets, massive requirements and massive timelines.

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I am not saying this is every bigger client and I am not saying this will be your experience if you start trying to get bigger projects. I am not trying to suggest that you shouldn’t try and charge more. It’s great to feel valued for what you do by being financially rewarded. If a client is asking you to solve an incredibly important problem that is worth a lot of value, it’s important to recognise that and charge accordingly. There is nothing worse than feeling a grudge towards your client because you feel like you have massively undercharged them.

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What I am saying though is that I believe it’s important to know what kind of projects you like working on, with who and what lifestyle you want to lead.

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However, I would pause to think whether your metric for success as a freelancer is to earn as much as you can, or to feel creative fulfilment, or to have as much free time as possible etc.

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I know freelancers that only facilitate dev work for agencies because they realise that earning as much money as possible is not their top priority. They earn less per project but they don’t need to talk to clients as much and they have more freedom to choose the projects they want to do, and when they do them.

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I hope this helps!