People, who know that I’m designing, easily walk up to me with this question: How much for a website?

My answer usually starts with: How much does it cost to build a house? That usually brings the point across: You can’t know, until you know what’s supposed to be on the website.

To build a house you need to know how many rooms, what material is preferred, what kind of roof, etc. With websites you also need to know what the purpose of this site is, what type of applications are needed (guestbook, forums, portfolio, gallery, shopping cart).

And even when you tell a web designer what you need for your site, don’t expect a straight answer right away. They will always let you know that they need to check out every possibility for that what you want, so they can give you a right price.

But, it’s always good to know exactly what you want on your site, if you want a verbal estimate for building your site.