How much does a UX/UI design project cost in Switzerland?
"How much does design cost?" is a question that, behind its simplicity, always hides another one: design of what, for whom, and with how much research behind it. Designing a simple landing page and designing a web app with several roles and complex flows are not the same investment, even though both fall under the same general heading of "UX/UI project".
What a UX/UI design project really includes
A serious UX/UI project is not just choosing colours and fonts. It includes a phase of analysis into how people will really use the tool, the design of flows and screens before anyone thinks about visual appearance, testing with real users or a small reference group to find where the journey isn't clear, and only at the end the concrete visual definition of the interface. Skipping the early phases to get to the visual part faster is the most common way to end up with an interface that looks polished but keeps confusing the people who use it.
Indicative investment ranges by type of project
For a simple website, such as a landing page or a few presentation pages, the design work usually sits in a more modest range, often already included in the cost of building the site itself, as described in our website service. For a more structured company website or a small online shop, dedicated design work starts to weigh as a line item of its own, with an investment that grows with the number of pages and journeys to design. For a bespoke web app, where several roles, complex flows and company-specific logic come into play, the design project calls for far broader analysis and design work, with a proportionally higher investment, often comparable to a significant part of the cost of developing the application itself. We covered this more broadly in the article how much does it cost to develop a bespoke web app in Switzerland?, where the investment in design is one of the components added to the overall cost of the project.
Why costs in Switzerland tend towards the top of the range
Rates for digital design services in Switzerland, as for software development, are higher than the international average: a freelancer with proven experience in this field often works at rates comparable to those of other specialist technical roles, between CHF 90 and CHF 180 an hour depending on level of experience and the complexity required. This means a direct comparison with price ranges meant for the international market can mislead: for this kind of specialist skill, the Swiss market tends to sit in the upper part of any generic range.
What really drives up the cost of a project
More than the number of screens to design, what affects the cost is how much research and testing with real users the project needs, how many different roles have to be considered in the design, and how far the result has to integrate with systems and data already in place in the company. A project that merely "makes prettier" something that already exists costs less than one that redesigns from scratch how an entire process is experienced by the people who use it every day.
Why it doesn't pay to choose on lowest price alone
A design project done by skipping analysis and testing costs less up front, but risks producing an interface that will need fixing after launch, when real users run into problems a prior test would have caught. The cost of those fixes, made once the tool is already in use, is almost always higher than what it would have taken to do it properly from the start.
How we arrive at an estimate for each project
We set the cost of the design work after understanding what the tool really has to do and who will use it, not by applying a generic price range to a project we haven't yet seen: the website with our website service, the bespoke web app with our web development service.
If you're considering a UX/UI design project for your website, your online shop or a bespoke web app, get in touch: we'll look together at what your project really includes and give you a concrete estimate, not a generic price range.
