This is why I don’t really entertain people asking “I need a website. How much do you charge?”

Or “I want a website that looks like this. Can you quote me?”

Because when I replied, 80% of them are never be heard again.

Design is not a commodity, it’s a service. You can’t come to ‘my store’ pick what you like and pay at the counter. It just doesn’t work that way because there are so many ways to do things.

There are a lot of variables involved that we need to sit down and figure out what are the goals, the issues, the constrains etc. and work together to find the most elegant solution.

If you have a low budget and want to just customize a template – no problem. But if you don’t tell that to your creative guy you’ll be jumping off the cliff when you receive the quotation.

Further reading: http://www.purposive.com/web-design-is-not-a-commodity/