How much does a website cost?
The most common question we get is: "How much will it cost to build us a web site?"
There is no easy answer to that question. Here’s why:
The amount of time and attention to detail that goes into a website is strongly influenced by how much time and energy you (the client) is prepared to put into the project as well as your budget. The list below shows some of the steps we go through when designing a site.
The different phases of website design (simplified):
- Planning Phase
- Design Phase (graphic design)
- Development Phase (converting the design into a webpage)
- Adding Content
The typical first website for a small business has pages such as home, about, products or services with an image gallery and a contact page. It gets more complicated when we introduce further site functionality and using a content management system for a website.
Cheapest Option
In the cheapest scenario a rather simple and basic template is used and you are paying for the time to lightly customize that and add content. If you are on a limited budget this approach can work well, but your content must fit the template design. The basic templates are quite good but still best chosen by us to match your content and business. We only do slight modifications. If we have to modify the template too much to fit your content you might end up exceeding your budget on variations and spend more than on a custom design.
Most Common
Getting a custom design as opposed to using a template results in a website that better fits your business and the content you want to display. Another advantage is that updates to your site will take less time when the designer has coded the site rather than used a template.
More Expensive
When the designer puts time and energy into helping you plan your website and lay out your content in a way that will increase sales or enquiry conversions it takes time in the planning, design and development phases. The extra thought into designing 'mini ads' and 'calls to action' that help draw the viewer to the most important pages on the site can make a big difference to the success of the site.
We also put time into making your website search engine friendly which means researching keywords for your business and applying best practices while building the site. This process does not guarantee you magically land as the first result in Google but is a necessary first step towards decent placement in search engines.
How much should you spend?
This will depend on your budget and the goals of your website. If your site is simply putting a business card online then something simple might do. If you want your website to portray your business and products/services in the best manner then a professionally designed and organised website is the way to go. The time to build usually reflects upon the quality of the final product.
Important for any website: you should invest time to gather or write sufficient content and supply images/graphics/logos. It is difficult for a web designer to collate and organise content into a website with only a few paragraphs of text in a word document.
