A response to How Design Expectations Impact Website Pricing (February 2024)
In February 2024 I tackled the hardest pricing factor to pin down in any website proposal: design expectations. Page counts can be counted. Features can be listed. Design lives in language, and language about design is slippery. As I put it then, one person’s “dynamic” is another person’s “gaudy.”
I still love that line, and the problem it describes hasn’t gone anywhere. But the cost side of the equation has changed a great deal.
The double charge for ambitious design
The core of that video was an economic warning. Ambitious design didn’t just cost more to design. It cost more to build, too:
“not only does the design fee need to be higher, but the development costs have to scale to match, due to the custom front end coding needed to create these effects.”
That was true at the time. Animations, unusual shapes, curved typography, custom-styled form fields, layouts tuned for very wide screens: every one of those meant hours of hand-written front end code. A client who wanted something that broke the conventions paid twice, once for the idea and once for making it real.
That second charge is the one the agentic revolution has collapsed. AI agents now write and revise custom front end code under experienced direction. An irregular shape or a clever transition that used to take a developer a day can be built, checked in the browser, and adjusted in a fraction of the time. The design still has to be good. Building it is no longer the expensive part.
The template was a compromise too
At the other end of the spectrum, I pointed out that a client with modest expectations could skip most of the design budget:
“you could probably find a predesigned theme template that would be more than adequate”
That was honest advice for a tight budget. But a template always meant accepting someone else’s structure, someone else’s assumptions, and usually a lot of code for features you’d never use. You saved money by settling.
Today, the gap between “use a template” and “build exactly what we designed” is far smaller. When the build is fast and lean, a modest budget can still produce a site that fits the organization rather than one that fits a theme marketplace. We build on our own AI-native theme, so even simple sites start from clean, focused code and grow from there.
We no longer have to choose between a design that fits and a budget that fits. That’s the whole argument behind custom design without the trade off.
What doesn’t change: the conversation
Here’s the honest part. Cheaper building does nothing to resolve “dynamic” versus “gaudy.” My advice for getting at expectations still stands:
“Have them provide a list of websites that they like, and importantly, to provide a brief description of what it is they like about each example.”
Ask for counter examples, too. Show your own range of examples, from sites that follow well-worn conventions to ones that push the envelope. Agents can produce a design quickly, but they can’t tell you what a museum’s board will find dignified or what a young audience will find tired. Visual decisions, understanding the audience, and judging whether the result actually works still belong to experienced people.
What has changed is how quickly we can test those judgments. In 2024, trying a bolder direction meant real development hours, so we argued about it in comps first. Now we can often show a working version, look at it together on an actual phone and an actual wide monitor, and decide. Experimentation used to be a luxury. Now it’s part of the process.
Transparency still builds trust
I ended that video by saying that helping clients connect the dots between requirements and cost is one of the best ways to build trust. I still believe that. The dots just connect differently now. Ambitious design still takes more thinking, more review, and more care. It no longer takes a development budget that scales with every flourish.
So if a client wants the curved type and the clever transitions, the answer is no longer “that will double your budget.” It’s “let’s talk about whether it serves your visitors.” That’s a much better conversation to have.
¡Viva la Revolución!