50+ Factors that Affect the Cost of a Website

Teal has designed and built hundreds of websites since our founding more than 15 years ago. If your organization is about to take on a website redesign project, you might be wondering, “How can I appropriately budget for a website redesign? Why does the cost of a website seem to vary widely, depending on whom I talk to?” In this article, I list the questions that agencies like Teal need to ask to appropriately estimate your website project. The more answers you have to these questions, the more accurate your estimate will be!? And hopefully this article also sheds light on why website projects are sometimes more complex than they might initially seem!

Important Note: This article is geared toward organizations looking to understand how custom websites are priced – NOT websites that are made from prefabricated templates from services like SquareSpace, Wix, or out-of-the-box WordPress themes.

Project Logistics

1. Are you on an aggressive timeline (i.e. typically, website projects with less than a 3-month timeline are considered to be on an aggressive timeline, pending the required features and functionality)?

2. How many stakeholders need to be involved in deliverable review and approval??

3. Is there someone designated as a single decision-maker??

4. How many rounds of revisions on deliverables should we plan for?

Strategy

5. What is the goal of the website project? A face-lift, or a total rethink? Somewhere in between? Maybe you need us to advise you?

6. What organizational/business goals does the website need to help you achieve?

7. Who are the target audiences for the website in priority order and why??

8. Have you conducted research with your target audiences to learn how they are currently using the website and how the website could better meet their needs?

9. What does your Google Search Console (or equivalent tool) data tell you about how audiences are finding your website? Or do we need to do that research as part of this project?

10. What does your website analytics data tell you about how audiences are using? your website? Or do we need to do that research as part of this project?

11. Do you have any microsites or other web properties that need to be considered as part of our website strategy? What about chapter or state websites or pages??

12. How are you planning to spread the word once your new site launches to let your audiences know how they can benefit from what the new site has to offer?

Content

13. Approximately how many pages of content do you currently have?

14. If you are doing a redesign, approximately what percentage of content will need to migrate to the new website as is?

15. Have you conducted a content audit (i.e. evaluating content to determine what needs to stay, what needs to go, what needs to be optimized/improved, and what might need to be created)?

16. Does the website content that you want to be on your new website follow best practices for writing for the web?

17. Has your content been optimized for search engines (SEO)?

18. How many different types of content do you have, and how does that content relate to each other??

19. Do you plan on introducing any new types of content on your new website? If so, please describe.

20. Do you have a taxonomy (classification/tagging system) for your content? If so, is the taxonomy still supporting your needs?

21. Will you be optimizing and/or creating new content for the website, or will you need us to do that as part of this project?

22. Will you be adding alt text, captions, and meta data for SEO and accessibility, or will you need your vendor to do that as part of this project?

23. Will any of your content need to be behind a login for members-only or other reasons?

24. Will the website content be available in English only, or do we need to account for multiple languages? If multiple languages, do we need to account for any right-to-left languages?

25. Will you need some sort of archiving system for older/outdated content?

26. Will you need to plan content or data for a specific feature like a calculator, data visualization, interactive map, etc.

27. Do you have written guidelines in place for evaluating what content to create, who is responsible for that content, the format of the content, and when/how often to create/review/archive that content?

Design

28. What is the visual strategy for the website? Is it to convey information quickly and succinctly (i.e. more editorial)? Is it to emotionally connect with audiences to motivate them to action? A mix of both? Something else?

29. Do you have existing brand guidelines in place that we need to follow?

30. If you’re looking to ‘refresh’ your visual brand as part of the website project (yet still adhere to your brand guidelines), how far are you willing to ‘push’ things? Please note that if you need a more significant visual identity update, that is out of the scope of a website project and will require a separate estimate.

31. What is your best guess on how many different page templates are needed on the new website?

32. Do you plan on taking a more minimalist, structured approach to webpage layout, or will you need more organic, print-like page layouts?

33. Will you be supplying your own imagery, or will we need to source or perhaps even create photography, illustration, iconography?

34. Are you open to paid typography options or do we need to stick with free typography sources like Google Fonts?

35. Will you need any custom interactive features like maps, calculators, data visualizations, etc.? If so, please describe.

36. Are you looking for any sort of custom animations as the user scrolls, loads a page, or engages with content?

37. Do you have specific requirements or standards for website accessibility that your new site needs to adhere to?

Development

38. Will the new website be a ‘brochure’ website (i.e. a passive experience where information is conveyed to the user), or will it be more ‘interactive’ (i.e. a more active experience where the user can interact with page elements to get information more tailored to them)?

39. What third-party systems does the website need to integrate with (e.g. CRMs, donation platforms, email sign-ups, etc.)? Please list and describe.

40. Does the website need to connect to any databases to display information and/or intake user-submitted information? If so, please describe.

41. If the website requires multiple languages, will you be supplying the translated content or do you need automated language translation?

42. If the website requires multiple languages, are you looking for full website translation (i.e. even things like the site navigation, headers, and footers are fully translated), or page-by-page translation (i.e. only certain pages of the site are available in multiple languages)?

43. If you require a members-only or logged-in area, please describe the features and functionality that need to exist behind this firewall.

44. If you have an equivalent of a Resource or Research Library on your website, approximately how many pieces of content exist in that library? Hundreds? Thousands?

45. If you require custom interactive features like maps, calculators, data visualizations, etc., please describe the functionality needed.

46. Will we need to plan for any location-specific ‘views’ of the website?

47. Do you need a robust on-site search, or will a basic site search suffice?

48. Will we need to include any type of e-commerce functionality on the website?

49. Will we need to collect any PII (Personal Identifiable Information) on the website?

50. Approximately how many individuals will be managing content on the website?

51. Will all content managers share the same editing and publishing privileges, or do you need certain permissions in place for certain roles?

52. What types of user interactions do we need to record and track in your website analytics?

53. Do you have specific requirements or standards for website accessibility that your new site needs to adhere to?

Quality Assurance & Testing

54. Will you need to undergo any third-party compliance, accessibility, or security testing?

55. Will any stakeholders who have NOT been a part of the project to-date be participating in final quality assurance and testing prior to launch?

Launch & Post Launch

56. Websites require ongoing maintenance, specifically when it comes to CMS updates and security. Do you have in-house resources to test and manage these updates? Or will you need the assistance of a vendor?

57. How will you be monitoring the performance of your website post-launch to protect your investment?