How to save money while creating a website
Alexander Smazhuk
helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals with systematic marketing without budget leaks | business coach
Due to the specifics of my work, I often help my clients create websites from the idea to the search for a developer. Most often, the cost announced by potential developers differs significantly from clients' expectations. Quite often, you can come to the best option by reviewing some elements or functions of the future resource. But not always...
Where does the false expectation of a certain website cost come from?
Quite often, the search for a developer is carried out by the company's owners or certain employees who do not have the relevant experience and do not understand the technical aspects. Therefore, they start searching in a search engine and get ads from agencies or websites with freelancers. Such contractors have a certain shortage of orders, which means that they can quote low prices during the initial contact in order to get a lead.
More experienced experts do not quote prices until they have a detailed brief filled out by a potential client.
What you need to understand when creating a website development request
The main factor that significantly affects the cost of developing a website is its management system or CMS, Content Management System (the basis and shell for content) - the "engine". Many ready-made popular CMSs (Joomla, WordPress, OpenCart, etc.) allow you to complete most small projects at a fairly low cost.
A more complicated solution is to use specialized frameworks, which are components, libraries, and tools that offer structure and ready-made solutions but require no ready-to-use templates. The most popular frameworks are Laravel and Symfony based on PHP.
In some cases, it is better to use fully self-written solutions. In this case, you have complete freedom in terms of design and functionality. That is, the CMS for such a site is completely written from scratch. Everything will be unique and customized for a particular business. Such websites have nothing superfluous and therefore work the fastest. However, their development takes more time and has limitations in terms of technical support (you become dependent on the developer).
Websites based on ready-made CMS (content management systems) will be cheaper. However, the use of frameworks or fully self-hosted content management systems will not have such a pronounced difference in cost.
The influence of CMS choice on the cost of a website
Stages of website development and employees involved
Customers usually imagine website development as a PowerPoint presentation. But in reality, it is quite a complicated and time-consuming process.
For a better understanding, I propose to go through the stages of development
Determining the real needs of the customer, his wishes, requirements, and goals that he plans to achieve with the help of the website. Analysis of the target audience and the competitive environment of the business. Determining the functionality of the future website and the customer's general idea of the final result. Formation of a full-fledged technical task.
Participants: Optimally, a marketer or business analyst. A specialist who will collect an "anamnesis" and "prepare the ground" for the future product. He or she should find out everything about the niche, preferences, requirements, and goals of the website customer. Based on the audit, they will provide recommendations.
In the case of a small business, a project manager can do this work.
The contractor collects references and offers various options for the structure of the site and the arrangement of blocks. The final version is approved by the customer and goes to the design stage.
Participants: Project manager, designer
The manager accompanies the process and provides recommendations, supervises the work of the entire team, and monitors the timely and complete completion of the work.
The designer creates sketches on the basis of which the website will be created.
In addition to an attractive appearance, a website should also be user-friendly and functional. That is, the style of the site should meet the customer's wishes and be pleasing to the eye, and all interfaces should be clear and comfortable to use. Thanks to the content, the site acquires meaning and is carefully thought out from the marketing point of view. At this stage, you need to think about how to capture the attention of users, keep them on the site, and direct them to perform certain actions.
Participants: Designers, marketers, copywriters
The more complex the project, the more important it is to work on design and functionality separately. That is, one person is responsible for UI design (appearance), and another for UX design (interface functionality). Sometimes a whole team of designers works on a website.
The situation with content is roughly the same. Depending on the complexity of the site, you will need one or more copywriters. Their task is to optimize all texts from button labels to blog articles. After all, the format and presentation of content will help direct users' attention in the right direction.
Both content and design should help to collect leads, encourage orders, sell, and upsell. And all of this needs to be aligned with marketing capabilities and experience.
After the prototype of the future resource is created, programmers start working on it. Their task is to recreate the prototype of the site with the help of code and make sure that the site is displayed equally well in all browsers and on all devices.
Participants: Front-end developer A specialist who uses code to develop the layout of a website and embodies all the ideas of designers. That is, they develop the external part of the resource intended for users.
Like a regular office or store, a website must have a physical address and a signboard. Therefore, for the future site, you need to purchase a suitable name - a domain name (the name of the site that can be seen in the search bar), and all files and information must be stored somewhere on a server - hosting.
Participants: Project manager, marketer, developer
Registering a domain and connecting hosting is quite easy, so a project manager may well be responsible for this. However, in some cases, a marketing specialist should be involved in the process of creating a website name.
The choice of website hosting depends on its technical characteristics and planned load. So when it comes to choosing a hosting service, you should heed the recommendations of developers.
When the "wrapper" of the site is ready, it's time to move on to the internal functionality that will allow you to conveniently manage content and other data (for example, updating the catalog, adding media files, creating special offers, designing a shopping cart, etc.) When the backend is connected to the front end, we get a full-fledged resource.
Participants: Backend developer. The work of this specialist is not visible to website users but is well known to employees of sales, service, content, marketing, etc. departments. This behind-the-scenes work is very important for the normal functioning of the resource.
After development, you need to make sure that everything works properly and that all links lead to the right place. You need to check the resource for bugs, and correct display in different browsers and on different devices.
Participants: Project manager, and tester. His task is to make sure that everything works flawlessly and without bugs, and that even the strangest user actions do not lead to unpredictable results. This person makes sure that all buttons work, all forms are filled out correctly, and all pages open as they should.
For small resources, the project manager himself can play the role of testing.
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A website alone will not bring in the target audience. It needs to be told about. This is where the marketing department comes into play, creating and implementing a promotion strategy based on the specifics of the business.
Participants: Marketer, SEO specialist, PPC specialist, SMM specialist, copywriters, photographers, videographers.
The lead generation process is quite complex and depends on the specifics of the business and the products it sells or promotes. Therefore, at this stage, it is important to work out the overall website promotion strategy and marketing strategies in accordance with the priority promotion channels, taking into account budgets and business opportunities.
As you can see, developing a website from scratch (or using frameworks) requires a significant amount of labor.
Here, the cost of a website consists of:
(salaries of specialists, specialist/agency margin) Complexity of the site time for its creation + domain + hosting + finance for promotion
I hope you now understand why some websites can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
But not everyone needs such sites.
After all, there are many solutions where some of the work performed by certain specialists has already been done. We mean paid and conditionally free CMS. At the very least, the backend is formed from ready-made modules, blocks, and elements. The front end is also usually almost ready. In most cases, there are templates that need to be filled with texts and you can proceed to testing. This stage is also much easier, and any bugs found can most likely be fixed without the involvement of a programmer. However, there is still a technical position in this case.
Thus, the website development cycle on a ready-made CMS looks a bit simpler:
Since programmers are hardly needed in this process anymore, a separate specialist, the administrator, should be responsible for technical issues. This is a person who can help with domain settings, forms, application forwarding, and other technical issues that would normally be handled by programmers. If the team is small, this work can be handled by a project manager.
As you can see, there is a significant decrease in efforts and specialists.
If the company needs a small and simple website, the team can be reduced to a manager and an administrator.
Such opportunities are provided by rented template sites based on platforms such as Shopify or Squarespace.
Classification of websites depending on their functionality and purpose
Depending on the purpose, websites should have certain functionality that determines the amount of work required to create them.
It can be distinguished:
Landing pages are one-page websites that can be created quite easily and quickly. Their task is to encourage the visitor to take a certain action: buy, register, leave a request, or subscribe. Landing pages are used in marketing to advertise and sell a product or service, as well as to collect contact information of potential buyers (leads) and check the likely demand. The landing page is aimed at presenting the product in a high-quality manner, removing the objections of a potential consumer, and leading the user to the target action.
A business card site. Its name speaks for itself: this is the case when a visit to a website does not necessarily lead to a targeted action. A business card site is a fairly simple and small resource consisting of one or more pages that contain basic information about a company, product, service, or person. In fact, it is the same landing page, but with differences in content, design, and semantic part. Despite the fact that both types of resources usually have one page and brief information about the company, a landing page is most often created for an offer (an offer that stimulates sales growth), and business cards rarely contain information aimed at obtaining benefits.
Multi-page websites with simple functionality. These are all types of sites that can be implemented with the help of ready-made CMS and their standard functionality. For example, corporate websites of organizations, websites for educational projects, or for the service sector - in general, everything that does not go beyond 500 pages and the built-in functionality of a ready-made CMS. In fact, such sites are suitable for 80% of businesses.
They take longer to create than a landing page or business card and cost accordingly.
Online store. This type of website is designed for online commerce and allows consumers to buy goods or order services online.? On them, users can choose the item they like, put it in the shopping cart, pay for the purchase, and pick it up in a convenient way: either from the store or by ordering delivery.
Sites of this type contain a lot of data. After all, each product has its own page, and there can be tens of thousands of such pages. In addition, this entire array needs to be systematized for the convenience of the buyer. This is how you create pages for categories, subcategories, manufacturers, specific selection criteria, etc. It is very important to think about navigation, which should be simple and intuitive for each user. Add to this personal user account, which can increase the cost of the site by 25-30%.
A portal with interactive features. A portal is a large website that contains an extensive system of links and many additional features. These include various forums, classifieds, etc. Such sites usually provide for communication between users.
They are most often used by news agencies, government agencies, or educational institutions.
This type of site is mostly focused on informing, so it's great for bringing news to readers and allowing them to share something. In a classic portal, you will probably see an event feed, calendar, announcements, links to the archive, and other similar information. You can also find discussions, chats, blogs, and communities built into the portal.
It sounds large-scale and costs accordingly.
Portals and all other websites whose functionality does not fall into the above categories require special preparation. Usually, templates, off-the-shelf management systems, or rental services will not be enough to implement them. Therefore, you will have to deal with frameworks or custom CMS.
Development features
Even if you've decided on a CMS, the variety of offers and prices will be enough to give you plenty of opportunities to get caught up. We all understand that a high price doesn't always mean bad, but a clearly low price can lead to a number of problems in the future.
In order to avoid such situations, you should formulate the terms of reference as well as possible and consider at least 5-7 proposals from different contractors. Moreover, they should be evaluated not for their ability to sell well, but for their experience and understanding of technical requirements.
I'm sure that most people realize that ordering a website from a freelancer is a kind of roulette. But working with agencies may not be much more effective if the customer is completely "out of the loop."
After all, in the end, the site needs to be filled with good-selling texts, to ensure proper promotion and recognition.
And these are the things that few people think about when creating a development specification.
That's why, even at the stage of developing a website, you should seek the help of marketing specialists who have enough experience in this area. As a result, the more expensive the audit and the creation of the terms of reference, the cheaper the cost of developing the website itself will be.
Conclusions and forecasts for pricing
What do we have in the end? Website development remains a rather costly affair for the most part, but on the other hand, the price for the work directly depends on what you want to get as a result. If you need a small and simple enough website for self-presentation or advertising a profitable offer, it will cost you quite a bit less (websites for $500-1000 do exist).
However, the higher the needs, the higher the price. But at the same time, ordering a website from a small agency can be more profitable and faster than from a renowned freelancer.
Speaking of time, the cost of website development naturally increases over the years (just like everything else). However, the difference between the cost of development by a freelancer and an agency can be 3-4 times higher. At the same time, the development speed of agencies can be 2-3 times higher.
For most small and medium-sized businesses, the cost of websites ranges from $1000 to $4000. They can be developed in 1.5-4 months.
Of course, you can spend tens of thousands on some sites, but we're talking about large companies that can take several years to work with.
This article has turned out to be quite lengthy, but I hope it is useful for you.
By the way, if you have ever ordered websites from freelancers or agencies, please share your experience and the cost of such work in the comments. I am sure that such comments will also be interesting and useful to other readers.
P.S. Website development is one of the key topics in my online course "Marketing Stripping". The aim of the course is to develop a sufficient level of knowledge among business owners and managers about marketing in general and an integrated approach to promotion, which allows them to formulate and implement truly effective business development strategies. If you want to know more about the course, subscribe to my newsletter and write to me in your personal messages "course" (I will send you additional information)
Senior Media Strategist & Account Executive, Otter PR
5 个月Great share, Alexander!
Senior Back-End Developer (Python/Node.js)
1 年It's a good article for business owners. I would like to add some notes. For some small business it can be more convenient use of site constructors (no code). Also among CMSs you you provide examples of old heavy PHP solutions, but there are also new lightweight ones in Python and Node.JS
Product development for commodity brands | Concepts | NPD | Supply | Life Cycle
1 年Uffff, what a great summary! I would love to have my site renewed for $1000... ??
Founder Goryacho Agency
1 年Very useful manual. But I think that saving money sometimes we lose time. And how we know time equal to money??
IT Project Manager & co-founder of Emotion Agency | Crafting Stunning Websites/Interfaces/Apps for Businesses & Startups | Web Development Management
1 年Alexander Smazhuk, I agree with most of the points. When we create a commercial proposal for a client, we always offer two prices: one for the minimum viable product (MVP) version and another for the maximum version that includes all of the client's requirements. However, there is often a paradox where these desires do not align with the business goals. This is particularly true when the CEO only communicates their own desires without listening to their marketing team or the agency responsible for website development. To address this, we focus on these aspects and prevent the client from wasting unnecessary money.