The Cost of a Website

Website development companies

A proprietor wanted her company’s website to be designed so she called to three website development firms to create a web site. Each of them received the same criterias for the website functionality. After a week, they got back with their respective cost estimates and submitted them to the client.

The first software developer submitted a quotation of $5000, the second one put the price up at $12000 while the third one took it up a notch and placed in their estimates at $27000.

There is no punchline here and no joke either, and if there is one, it’s on the client, who has to figure out how exactly can estimates for making one website having the same functions produce such wildly far-fetched and different prices? On top of that, they need to find out exactly which one is best suited as the most reasonable and realistic designer for their needs.

You might think of this as fiction, but we hear stories like these every day. Once a business owner was perplexed enough to send us not one but four price estimates for one job and ask us to explain the astronomic price difference. Unfortunately, it is not every CEO who knows how to identify which bids are overpriced and which ones incredibly  low.

Through the course of this article, we will be talking about small business websites. Please note, by that we mean informational websites made up of 10 pages loaded with some core widgets and simple CMS.

Main parts and costs of a website

On an average, you can use the following data to estimate the cost breakup of a smallish website.

• Hosting – This may vary from $10 to $150 a year, according to the hosting provider and the traffic generated.
• Domain Name – $10 per year (here’s a quick guide to root domains for reference).
• Website design and engineering – All of this will usually take up at least 60 hrs or more.
• Claiming your business in the internet – This would usually cost you around $750 per month.
• Continuous Website Management – This can usually cost you more than $500 per year. (The rate is increasingly relies on the type of and amount of updates needed).

Key factors that influence the pricing of a website development

Before you start planning the website development budget, there are a few questions that you should ask yourself. Here are just a few of them.

• Are you planning to redesign the existing version of the site or create a new one?
• Are you looking to request for bids? If yes, have you pre-arranged and established a documentation with all the requirements to provide it to potential bidders?
• Are you planning a CMS for your portal for you to easily handle the information on the site?
• Do you want to have your web-site mobile and tablet compatible?
• Have you finished creating the site content already?

We will go into details and endow greater estimates so you can organize budgets for each task. The fees listed are not calculated per se and are determined using our vast expertise in web and mobile development. Your specific needs and edits concerning the website design can drive up a cost as well as bring it down.

Documentation

If you would like to reap the rewards, all new projects shall launch with a documentation and research procedure.

• Online branding
• Site structure
• Website operation

This procedure is the key because it helps to outline the expectation for each side and makes sure any unnecessary expectations that could lead to future frustrations are cut down. Professional business websites or ones where the customer has a clear vision or what they are looking for can go ahead with little research and documentation. Yet, the websites which design is more complex will usually need a number of meetings and would require a number of detailed information to truly delineate the project.

Website design

You may even have  ready-made templates, but you should not suppose that you won’t  require them being redone or changed. In a case of a small website, for example, you can allocate around $1200 to $3500 to be enough to go from idea to the design being transmitted to the developer for programming. Adding some cool graphics can raise the bar for your business and its site’s effectiveness. On a conservative side, you should pay at least $99 for images in stock.

Yet that’s not the end of it, you’ll also need a number of buttons and icons for additional $50 to the budget.

Responsive and mobile design costs

After a number of years, the role of mobile phones has become vital to result online. Hence at its very least your website design needs to be mobile compatible. Top website designs are responsive which means they will automatically modify their functions and adjust to the layout that looks good on them and operate easily on mobile devices. When you are looking to make a responsive web design, it can set you back 20% to 30% more than what it would cost you to create a website for desktop purposes only.

Costs for content creation and its insertion

Adding information can be the most inexpensive stage for a number of clients since they can produce the content by themselves and add it onto the site whenever they want. Most designers will usually face no trouble catering a design template that is blank and a customer and fill in with texts and images among other things. Yet if want this job done by a  design specialized firm, even on the  lower side you should keep your budget measure at $150 to $100 per page.

Special development features that can call for some special cash

While some of the characteristics may be presented to you as an element of the website’s structure doesn’t necessarily imply they will work as you wish. The following are a few specific features you wish to implode into the website:

• Content Management System or CMS – it provides the opportunity for you to make some changes on your web-site. Generally the price of that would vary from $2000 to $20000.
• Blog – Some clients may sometimes want a blog inside their websites. The cost for adding one blog each can be $1000 to $2500.
• For adding E commerce facilities such as catalogues, shopping carts and purchasing tools could cost you around $1500 to $5000 or even more.
• Development of Identity/Brand – Often when you are looking to get your website designed people will ask for a new logo which usually takes up to about 8 hours to design around six logo ideas. When either of these logos are chosen, you will need to look over multiple rounds of edit before a final, polished edition can be produced, costing around $900 to $ 3500.
• A Landing Pages for Targeting – By that means, pages that look to advertise for a particular service or a particular product. These will usually form the banner ad campaigns, emails, social media etc. These pages usually are designed at $450.
• Social media — Set up and master social networking services: $500 to $2000
• Advertising campaign (Google and Bing Ads): $200
• SEO strategy and implementation: $500 to $400.

How much does a website development cost?

A large number of typically business websites can vary from $6000 t0 $20000. Such divergence is the result partly of the additional website features you will implement. One way to break this budgeting down is:

• UI/UX design 25%
• Planning 15%
• Development 40%
• Project Management 20%

Maintenance Costs are a Must

Don’t get carried away and think the finances mentioned above are the only finances you’ll need for developing the website. There is a need for you to make constant hands-on updating of the site content, widgets etc. Verify that the web design that you choose offers you the possibility to manage it after the launch, because some of them don’t. The lowest budget of this service: $250/month.

An Important Note

If you consider your website to be an integral and very important part of your company growth, you should not skimp on website development. If you wish $100000 of your funds to be invested in brick-and-mortar store, don’t bulge on spending a fraction of that on your online brand creation.