03/28/2024
Clients will ask me when I give them a quote for a website "How can you charge thousands of dollars to just install WordPress themes?’.
Here is the answer.
"I am a WordPress designer, and I do plenty of custom work, but I use commercial themes for my clients for a variety of reasons. But “just installing WordPress themes” for a well done website involves:
1.) In-depth technical and roadmapping sessions to determine what the client’s needs and goals, the scope of the project and his/her target audience are, all of which influence and even determine the direction of the audience.
2.) Consulting for the most appropriate web hosting solution for the client’s needs.
3.) Organizing the pre-existing branding materials and determining any gaps (usually in the form of written content) that will need to be filled by the client or me during the course of the project.
4.) End-to-end project management.
5.) Securing the site with a CDN, firewall and other best-practices security measures.
6.) Vetting any premium themes the client may want to make sure that they’re buying a well-documented lightweight well-reviewed theme from a developer that isn’t going to disappear in 3 months.
7.) Designing the navigation and information architecture of the site, organizing the content in intuitive logical ways for the client if they don’t have a sitemap.
8.) Basic on-page SEO for all pages.
9.) Configuring custom plugins and platforms, including BuddyPress, Multisite and other stuff that actually, you know, takes skill and experience to do properly.
10.) Determining the necessary plugins for complete functionality that meets the client’s needs and project requirements.
11.) Several rounds of detailed revisions.
12.) API integration of social media, mailing lists, etc.
13.) Customer service answering your client’s 39471231 questions.
14.) Post-project client education and documentation. etc.
15.) Thousands of dollars of computer hardware and software to pay for to even do this type of work.
16.) Thousands of hours of training and practice to be proficient and productive with WordPress, it's plugins and themes that are constantly changing.
17.) No matter what the project is, it will take minimum of 200 hours.
18.) And $150,000 in college tuition to get my degree in the field and I didn't do that to work for minimum wage.
So, yes, I do charge thousands "just to install a WordPress theme."
