The most common question we get is “How much does a website cost?”. I’ve been answering that question for 18 years now. Hopefully I can help you.
You are trying to get a quote for a new website for your business so you google a few terms you think will hit the mark. Then you start making the phone calls. Now if you are in the early days of planning your website and you don’t have some sort of brief to give to the web design business on the other end of the phone you are going to get a lot of variation in costs quoted for your new site.
It is handy to know what things you should think about when planning your website and how this can help you when you brief your potential web designer.
There is more diversity in scope and scale of a final product in the website design industry than almost any other product I can think of. The cost of a website mostly depends on the amount of time required to build it. To give an estimate of costs for a website, your web designer needs to collect as much information as possible so they can estimate the time required to build the site.
I will give some examples of website pricing first and then explain the factors involved after that. Please note that these costs are only for the build of the website. This is referred to as website design and development. Most projects we do at Redfox involve ongoing digital marketing campaigns involving SEO or Adwords Management and website maintenance.
This is an entry level website for most small businesses. If your business has just a few services or products that you want to promote and don’t intend to sell online, a simple website will do. The site will work as your online business card where visitors will come and have a look at your services and find out about your business. This type of site is often used for small local businesses.
But don’t be mistaken as to the importance of getting this project right. Your success as a business can be determined by the amount of traffic and the quality of leads to your site. A well designed website goes a long way towards achieving success.
Budget around $2500 – $4500 for a basic small business website. Most professional website design agencies charge from $75 – $150 per hour, so effectively you are paying for 25-40 hours of work.
If you are planning on using your website as a tool to attract a stream of leads you will need to have a well designed and structured website. Your site will include more pages with more thought put into each of those different sections of your site. Your paid ads will need landing pages built to capture leads and maximise conversion. Other marketing tools such as newsletter signups and popups will need to be designed also.
There is most likely expenses involved for writing website copy for your site. Good professional copy will increase your sales through higher conversion rates. Another area that should not be neglected is paying for professional copy that is targeted specifically to your market and your targeted keyword and phrases. Someone needs to do this research and another to write the copy that maximises the chance of ranking well in the search engines. This would be your baseline content and we recommend this is improved through ongoing work by SEO experts.
Budget around $6500 – $9500 for a conversion focussed small business website.
View our website design services
I have outlined some of the different aspects of our work as website builders that will affect your web design quote.
More complicated websites require planning of layouts and navigation. Often sitemaps and wireframes are created to confirm we are on the right track. Options for different areas of functionality are discussed and the best options to meet needs and budget are decided.
The more pages the higher the cost. There is always work required to convert client text and image content into well designed layouts. This is a big area where money can be saved by applying clear structure to how content is supplied.
It’s a fact that well written copy increases the conversion rate (% of visitors that complete a desired goal) of a website. Good copy makes it clear why a visitor should buy your products or use your services. The text is part of the design and professional skills are required to not only write compelling text but do it in a way that is also search engine friendly.
The design or ‘look and feel’ of the website as well as components that make up the site are designed in a graphics program first and mockups are provided for your approval. Smaller sites are often designed directly in the browser with a similar progress approval process.
Color choices, font choices and styling can be glossed over or agonised over depending on the complexity of the design and size of budget.
Web design includes converting a graphic design or mock-up to web pages. This provides the structure for the pages and layouts for different parts of the site. The number of different templates the web designer has to build to lay out the content effectively affects the time to build.
Specialist web developers are required to provide functionality such as ecommerce or membership sites.
Even after the website has been built and signed off, there is still a lot to do. This includes setting the site up on the live server, speed optimisations, basic SEO (search engine optimisation), setting up google analytics and tools to monitor and often final tweaks to the site.
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 reflects upon the quality of the final product.
We hope we have answered your question – How much does a website cost. Estimating costs for websites is difficult even for experienced web design agencies. Often the initial brief is open and specifications are scarce. Often as a client you don’t know what you want or need for your business website until you talk to a web designer. We would can help you with that. Either book yourself a time for a chat with Darryn (owner at Redfox) or use our website planner to get an estimate.