How much does a website cost?

It’s a question we get asked a lot and we understand why you need to know.

People like to know the cost of things before they buy them, and that’s the same for a website, it’s only natural. Everyday we’re all faced with products that come with a price tag, it helps us to decide if we can or should buy them. And it’s the same for a website.

 Asking how much does a website cost? Is a little like asking, how much is a house? OR How much is car? There are prices available for both of these, but you need to know a few things before you can give an exact cost.

Buying a car for example might include questions like…

Do you have a preferred brand?

What size car do you need?

Do you want diesel, petrol or electric?

Do you want a brand new car OR an older car?

What colour would you like?

Do you want alloy wheels? A sunroof?

OR, if you are in the market to buy a house…

Do you want a detached or semi-detached?

How many rooms do you want?

What area do you want to live in?

How many bathrooms do you need?

What size garden do you want? South facing?

The same applies when you ask…

How much does a website cost?

We have a strict process called ‘18 Degrees’ which helps us to understand the needs of our clients and ultimately your customers so that we can create a proposal.

Some of the questions we would ask are as follows:

Who is the website targeted at?

What outcomes would you like to achieve from this?

What are the key calls-to-actions when someone visits your website?

What pages do you envisage the website requiring?

Are there any specific bits of functionality the site needs? Downloads, uploads, forms etc

Are there any other websites that inspire you?

Will you be providing all images and copy?

Does the website require any integration with any other software?

Do you want a CMS system?

To be honest our full list of questions is quite extensive, but, if nothing else, the above gives you an idea as to why the question, ‘How much does a website cost?’, has no easy answer.

However, as a digital brand agency we aim to rid the world of bad design and poor communication, so below you will see some costs that we’ve put together for a few different websites to help you budget for your future investment. These are all based on being responsive for mobile, tablet and desktop and include testing on these devices and multiple browsers.

How much is a brochure website for a start up business?

We class a 5 page brochure website as an entry level requirement for a small business. This type of website typically includes pages such as home, about us, products / services, news and a contact form. This type of website can work well for a small business if you start with a design template from one of the many providers such as WordPress, SquareSpace or Wix and work with your designer and developer to shape the site to suit your brand identity should you have one.

As you can imagine the design style for such a website can vary dramatically and the amount of content (copy, images, video etc) required and be very different too.

But you came here to get an idea of costs for a website and our estimate for a 5 page responsive website would be between ￡2,500 – ￡5,000.

How much is an event website?

We class an event website as a place that attracts people that want to engage with an activity they enjoy / want to attend to either participate or listen. This could be a sporting event, a speaker event, summer camp or an experience day to name a few.

Again, the size and scale of these websites can change dramatically and be quite complex, depending on where the events are located, how many events are running or whether a payment gateway needs to be included.

This type of website typically includes pages such as home, about us, events, news, gallery, social feeds, training, booking facility and contact form. Again, the design for each website can vary dramatically and the amount of content can be quite different too.

Our estimate for a 7-8 page responsive event website would be between ￡5,000 – ￡10,000

How much is an e-commerce website?

On the face of it an e-commerce website can seem very similar to any other you wish to look at. They all want to showcase their products and want the user to be able to easily identify what they need, be presented with information about the product, see the price clearly, add it to their basket and buy the product.

The systems these websites can be built on vary in complexity and cost, and you need to choose which system will be best for your online shop such as Shopify, WooCommerce or Magento to name a few. This is where a digital brand agency can help you make the right decision and shape your budget to match your needs.

Once more, like the other websites mentioned in this article, the size and scale can change dramatically from one to another based on desirables including the amount of products required, size variations, colour variations and many more varying factors.

Our estimate for a responsive e-commerce website would be between ￡5,000 – ￡30,000+

All the websites mentioned should include the following in the proposal:

Planning & Set-Up

• Domain Name Set-Up
• Hosting Setup
• Legal Requirements
• Identify User Types
• Competitor Audit
• Content Inventory
• Site Map Creation
• User Testing
• User Journeys
• Goal Identification
• Idea Generation

Design & Website Development

• Design wireframes for Mobile & Desktop
• Collate Copy / Imagery
• Design & Build pages

Testing

• Physical Devices
• Remote Devices
• Link Checking
• Code Validation
• Browser Testing

Deployment

• Review
• Sign-Off
• Upload
• Final Testing
• Launch

A website (once live) should not simply sit there. It needs to be active and you need to create content too.

This is where the following activities should take place:

• SEO
• PPC
• Content Creation (Copy, Images, Video etc)
• Social Media Strategy

So, whilst appearing to be a relatively simple question on the surface, “How much does a website cost?” can be a difficult one to answer.

We hope this has helped to make things a little more clear before you start your exciting journey.

If you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to get in touch.