Like many things in business, a simple answer is ‘as much as you want to spend’ when it comes to the cost to build a website. It all depends on three things – your expectations, your budget, and your time. If you have a lot of time to do it yourself and less money to spend, your costs can come in around $1,000. However, if you want to spend less time on the website and have more budget you can spend over $10,000. You cannot, however, expect a $10,000 website to cost $1,000.
Balancing these things will help you build a website that meets the requirements of your business in regards to size and complexity.
Option 1: Hire the Professionals
When you hire the professional website development company you get a lot of value back on what you spend in terms of reliability, experience, and time.
Professional website designers tend to charge between $3,000 – $6,000 for a modern, functional, and professional website. Website costs for a small business can go upwards of $10,000 if there a huge number of pages or a complex site structure is required.
Page Volume
The number of pages your site needs will impact your website costs. If the package you have chosen includes 10 pages but you need 25, expect $100/extra page. Every professional will have a different method of calculating this, so make sure you are clear what you need before starting the work!
Site Layout
Generally, websites are customised from templates. This is a fantastic thing because themes and templates can cut $10,000 – $15,000 from the costs, which keeps the average cost for small business websites around $3,000 – $6,000. Starting a site from scratch would be like planting a tree in order to build a table instead of going to a timber yard!
Visual Effects
Having custom graphics, video, and photography makes your site 100% yours, but this all comes at a cost. Custom photography and videos require special editing software, as well as the time and skills of a graphic designer.
Bespoke Programming
Many ‘out-of-the-box’ plug ins work fantastically, especially if your website doesn’t need anything special. However, many plug ins do not work the way you need them to and can actually damage your site. Having a professional website development company with the experience to write custom programming can turn a midlevel site into a phenomenal user experience – from simpler sites all the way up to a complex custom auction site.
Revisions
Sometimes, first time is the charm. More often than not, there needs to be a discourse between site owner and site developer. Most packages will come with a set number of revisions, and usually any revisions beyond that will add to the overall cost.
SEO
Search Engine Optimisation is an integral part of your site and an important part of the cost to build a website – your customers need to be able to find you! This is a vast and constantly changing field, having a professional on your side can be a game changer!
Revisions
Sometimes, first time is the charm. More often than not, there needs to be a discourse between site owner and site developer. Most packages will come with a set number of revisions, and usually any revisions beyond that will add to the overall cost.
Option 2: Try It Yourself
It can be done. How well it can be done relies entirely on the amount of time and effort you are able to put in and this way you can always reduce the cost to build a website.
Domain Name
This is your address, getting your .com registered can sometimes be included with your hosting (see below) but there are dozens of providers all with different prices.
Hosting
If your site is the showroom and the domain is the address, hosting is the piece of land those are on. Hosting companies have their own packages and these can change. Hosting levels dictate site speed, site size, monthly visitors, and site security.
SSL Certificate
SSL Certificates might be included with hosting or cost extra, but they are a requirement. Most browsers will show a ‘unsafe website’ warning if the SSL Certificate is invalid or expired – and you don’t want that!
Theme
When building your own website costs for the theme can add up, because you want a reliable and professional visual site. These can cost anywhere up to $400 for a lifetime licence.
Plug Ins
Free plug ins can be great, but they can also wreak havoc on your site if it isn’t updated regularly. Reliable premium plug ins are the best way to go.
Photos
Unless you’re a photographer with a library of relevant photos you will need to subscribe to a stock website, or buy what you need for $50 – $200. This should be simple but copyright is a complicated field and stock websites can have their problems. Stock photo scams are not uncommon, and using random photos from the internet is not ok, legal, or safe as the rightful owner can require back payment!
Training
SEO, copyright, basic programming, cyber security – these things are always changing and therefore you will need to stay on top of them on an ongoing basis. This is in addition to basic skills like Photoshop, file management, HTML coding. These training costs are on going if you want to keep your site up to date and stylish.
Ongoing Website Costs
Just like the true cost of a house isn’t just the bricks and walls, it’s the land tax and rates as well – websites have annual costs like hosting, licencing, cyber security.
SEO
SEO has hundreds of thousands of words written on it, it is a full-time job for many people. Additionally, many ‘drag and drop’ website providers are notoriously bad for SEO.
Dealing with hires
Say you DIY, but with help for the things you don’t want to do yourself. Do you have the skills to manage those people you are employing? How to know what they are saying is correct? This extra stress is taken away when you hire a professional website development company.
Your Time
What is your time worth? Do you want to spend a few weeks learning and setting up your site? Add on weekly hours to maintain and update your site. Hours that could be spend on other things in your business. Hours you could have as free time. Hours that could be delegated.
Pros of Hiring a Professional and investing in the cost to build a website
Pros of DIY
Hire or DIY?
The monetary the cost to build a website for a small business is only half the battle. Unless you’re extremely tech savvy with tonnes of free time – hire someone. They take the headache – and heartache – out of site management and free up hours for you to dedicate to yourself or other aspects of your business.
In Conclusion… Hire the Professional!
Just because you can technically do something yourself, doesn’t mean it’s the best idea. You can spend days and weeks working out how to do it yourself, or trust someone who has all the skills and can create an incredible website for you without the drama!
If you do it yourself every aspect has to go right, but when you hire a professional you only need one thing to go right – choosing the professional. To get your business website up and running sooner, and a proper cost to build a website, contact us today!
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Our web development experts are able to assist with the designed and development of your business web site. We take into account your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) needs and consider how your site needs to integrate with your current or planned future assets. As an end to end solution agency, we look forward to assisting you with the best SEO.
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