Can you imagine a world without the internet? While it’s impossible to even fathom, the fact remains that websites have become an integral part of life for many individuals and businesses. So, if you’re looking to create a website for your business, you may be wondering how much it’ll cost. Read on to learn more about the cost of building a fab website.

Let’s take a look into your Website Cost

The cost of creating a website varies depending on your needs and wants. For instance, if you are looking to create a basic website with a few pages and basic features, you should expect to pay anywhere between $500 and $5,000. On the other hand, if you’re looking to create a more complex website that requires more custom features, the cost could range anywhere between $5,000 and $50,000 or more.

You have the option of hiring someone offshore, hiring a freelancer or working with an agency and they all have their pros and cons but in the end you will need to pick what’s important to you – The cost, the experience or the safety of knowing you’re in the right place. A typical hourly pay of an off shore designer can vary from £10-£25, while a freelance designer in the UK like myself will charge £25-£60. Compare this to an agency and you will be paying £75-£150 due to overhead expenses, high number of highly skilled staff etc.

It’s important to note that the cost of a website isn’t limited to the design and development. You need to consider ongoing expenses such as hosting, domain name registration, and regular website maintenance. These costs can add up and can range from $100 to several thousand a year. But those expenses are not what determine the cost of your website – they are like utility bills for your house that you have to pay in order to reside in that property and are directly proportionate to the size and complexity of your website.

Lets take a look into what goes into building a website:

Knowing what sort of website you want to achieve and what features you want to incorporate will directly impact the cost. Web design includes a wide range of services and here are some of the basics:

• PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Briefing, meetings and consultation are the foundation of any project that allow brainstorming, problem solving, finding solutions to maximise your buck to get the best outcome. These hours can vary based on the type of business or how complex your website is.
• RESEARCH: This step includes, defining the objective, learning about the competitors, targeting your audience and creating content and strategy to maximise the return on your investment. This is a crucial step to ensure that your business stands out in the crowd and reaches your prospective audience.
• DESIGN: Creating a sitemap/wireframe, preparing layouts and ongoing iterations can take up more time than one thinks. A little change on a website can sometimes creates a chain of edits and adds up to the number of hours. The best way to avoid this is to work out the pages and content before hand and provide the designer with finalised version which can then be edited with minimal effect to the overall costs.
• BUILD: Development and third party plugin integrations while easy to install take up time in setting up and interlinking to your website. Some such examples the google analytics, social media or SEO integration, online payment systems which require methodic and careful implementation so that the user experience is seamless.
• CONTENT: Part of the design process is to aesthetically provide you a product that looks professional, resonates with your business and its ethos and attracts your target audience. This includes content layout, images that lift your presence online, custom graphics or icons that create visual interest and interactions that create interest and captures attention.
• TESTING AND LAUNCH Once the website is complete, then several hours will be spent in testing all links, checking image quality, content layout, user journey and bad links to name a few. Before the launch of the website these tests are run several times to ensure the website works on several browsers and most importantly on different devices in the same way.
• HANDOVER: When handing over a website, designers provide training in how to operate the backend, or online shop or access emails etc. This is a cost based on the numbers of hours needed and number of people that require training. Then there is the time required in preparing any relevant documents related to the website for future use such as guidelines, templates, access to back end, email integration etc.

Let’s look at what this means in terms of cost.

Let’s say you are a mid range business and you go with freelancer that charge £50 an hour or £400 a day.

• Project management: 1/2 day, £200
• Research: 1/2 day, £200
• Design: 3 days, £1,200
• Build: 3 days, £1,200
• Content: 1 1/2 day, £600
• Handover: 2 hrs, £100
• Testing and Launch: 2 hrs, £100
• Domain Name: £50
• Hosting: £240

Total example: £3,600 + £290 ongoing yearly fees

If the same thing was presented by a larger agency charging say, £800 a day or more, your costs will go up substantially, not only for the initial development but also for ongoing maintenance or edits that you might require in the future such as scaling your website. At the end of the day you need to see what your budget is, how much time you are willing to put in it and how do you intend to use your website for your business.

Now remember these are cost estimate of a mid range business and if you are a small business with a far simpler website requirement then your estimate will reflect that. We offer bespoke solutions for your business and create scalable websites which means you start with the basics and grow them as needed. GET IN TOUCH to arrange a FREE 15 min Consultation.

There are several online softwares like Wix and Weebly etc. that allow you to create your own website for cheap or free and while they are great way to get your feet wet into the world of web design they have their own set of demons that can impact your business and online presence at a later stage. We have an article article outlining the Pros and Cons of a DIY Website which will give you an insight into why we don’t recommend them!

There’s also an article that outlines if having a website is worth the investment and you can use it grow your business.