It’s a question I get asked all the time! So below I will go over some of the aspects that determine the cost of a website design.
Branding
If you already have your own logo and marketing material, then great! You don’t need to worry about this. If you don’t, then you will likely need to look at designing your identity before, or at least alongside your website.
The amount you spend on a logo generally depends on the quality of the finish you want. If you want a quick and cheap logo, then there are plenty of low cost, template based solutions out there – search google for ‘cheap logo’ and you will find a number of fixed price logo solutions. At the other end of the scale, you can hire a graphic designer or design agency to work on a series of conceptual designs, allowing you a greater range of unique ideas to choose from.
Content Writing
Websites are often based around content. This is what we read to learn about a businesses product or service and it’s also what google sees in order to determine what our website is all about. If you are a fluent and imaginative writer and able to engage and captivate readers then you will most likely be able to write a lot of the content yourself. If you don’t have the time or the articulation skills to write the content yourself then you need someone else to do it for you, which will in turn increase your website design costs.
Photography
Great photography can enhance the impact of your website substantially. Some industries demand that good photography is a must, like bars and restaurants. Other industries don’t have quite the same requirement for having good quality photos, like more trade based industries who can in most cases get away with having self taken photos.
Whatever industry you are in however, professional photography will enhance your website significantly so it is always worthwhile allowing for a professional photographer in your website budget.
Timeframe
This doesn’t require a lot of explanation. If you want a website designed and developed for you at lightning speed, it will cost you more! If you have a generous few months to spend on the website design process then this wont be a huge factor in the overall cost of your website design.
Marketing Strategy
The cost of marketing your website is often overlooked and can vary greatly between businesses. It can also vary greatly depending on your overall marketing strategy.
For example, if you are an entirely online businesses, with no other avenues for generating sales, then online marketing will likely be very important for you. However if most of your sales are generated via word of mouth, and your website is more of a tool to showcase your business, then you probably don’t need to allow such a large budget here.
You also need to look at how much you might need to spend in order to provide a return. Many businesses are targeting ‘high competition’ keywords, which basically means there are many other companies spending money competing for the same search terms as you. If you want to compete online for high competition keywords, then you will need to invest more.
Take my industry for example, web design is a very competitive keyword. Personally, as a small business competing with a number of much larger businesses, I find it more valuable that I spend my time marketing my business in other areas besides marketing it online, like at networking events or simply by spending time implementing a good sales process.
You also need to look at various areas of online marketing you want to spend money on. You could focus on longer terms results, by focusing on increasing your rankings in organic search results, or if you need business quickly, you could look at pay per click advertising, which can be implemented and tracked immediately.
Website functionality
The more functional aspects of your website also determine the cost of your website build. eCommerce websites for example require significantly more back-end functionality as well as order tracking and secure payment processing, which increases the website design costs.
Other common website functions which are factors in a website cost include, online forms, image galleries, products catalogues, blogs, secure login areas and there are many more. The more functionality a website needs to have, the more costs are involved.
It is a matter of determining how much functionality your website really needs, and whether there is room in your budget for these aspects.
Associated Costs
There are a number of associated costs that need to be taken into account too.
Domain names – These are relatively inexpensive (a .co.nz domain name is around $30-$40), but you may which to purchase a number of variations of your domain name like a common misspelling of your actual domain name, or possibly an abbreviated version of your domain name, to make it faster to type.
Hosting – Website hosting costs involve having a computer store your website, so that users can access the website and download and view the website. Hosting costs are determined by the size of your website and by the amount of traffic to your website. If you have a significant amount of visitors to your website, then your hosting costs will be more than a business with very few visitors to your site.
There is also the ongoing cost of marketing your website, which I have written briefly about above. In most cases this will be the largest on-going cost of your website.
There are many factors which determine the overall cost of designing a website and every business has their own unique requirements and budgets. We don’t offer packaged website design solutions because we like to talk through all of these cost factors first in order to develop an efficient and personalised quote, relevant to your needs and your budget.
If you have more questions, or if you are keen to see what a website might cost you, feel free to get in touch with us.