How Much Does It Cost To Build A Website?
A question which many think to be a fairly easy question, but has eluded many, whether you are a small start-up or an existing medium size business. The cost of building a website is not a question that has a straight forward answer. Websites have different purposes, features and assets. Plus there are many different ways to build a website. This article will outline the main factors that effect the cost of building a website and how to choose the right website building solution to meet your needs.
So what factor determine what a website will cost?
One of the easiest ways to answer this question is basically because all sites aren’t the same. We say this because the information that each business intends to display on their website will be vastly different from another company. Some businesses will want to have as much information available to their sites visitors thus taking up the role of a sales person. However other businesses might want to have minimal information hoping to have the website visitor fill in a form or make a phone call.
Herein lies the challenge; understanding the websites intended purpose. A websites main function is to provide information to the website visitor when you aren’t available or the visitor is on the run. The next would be to provide an easy way for website visitors to contact you. After that we find that a website can do much more; Photo Galleries, PDF Downloads, eCommerce, etc…
So to setup and configure many of the additional features for a website can be time consuming and tedious, again this is on a base by base scenario. Of course the end result has to be amazing to ensure visitors convert on your website. Generally you would engage a website design company to do all this, so that when it is ready to Go Live (seen by the public) no additional work is required.
This means all pages and products need to be inserted into the website. Most general websites usually have between 5-8 pages, whereas eCommerce websites can have between 10-30 pages depending upon the amount of products.
Checklist for building a website
We have created an easy to follow checklist that will help provide all the information required to get accurate pricing for your website.
- Main Goals for the website (Submit a contact form, Make a phone call, Download a PDF, Make a purchase)
- Workout the content for the website
- What has to be on the website
- What doesn’t need to be on the website
- Domain Name & Hosting (your website name & where it lives)
- Website Design & Build
- Website Marketing (marketing initiatives that can be actioned once the new website is live)
Australian Website Design versus Overseas Freelancers
Some businesses we have assisted have gone down this dark and somewhat troublesome path. These decisions have generally been made solely on the quoted price. They may have gone to a freelance site or received a pesky email.
But you may ask why did it become troublesome?
- Increase project time & Delays
- When dealing with an overseas provider you almost immediately have to deal with a time difference.
- Project management, more time is often required to project manage a website build due to the communications barrier.
- Communications barrier, even though many overseas providers can speak English often things get lost in translation. So often the back and forth communications can take a lot longer than you originally anticipate.
- Miscommunications – Many clients whom we have helped described the need to have to graphically draw out and make notations directly onto images.
- Change Requests – Often a website project can change from the initial brief, when this happens is when overseas providers charge more for their services. Change requests are common practice however going back to communications barrier issues, they can occur more often than you can imagine.
- Frustrations – stemming from the above mentioned issues can drive a person crazy as it has been described as going around in circles.
Affordable Website Design
Websites can be now built easily and in a cost effective manner utilizing pre-built templates. Using such website templates vastly reduces the design & development time.
Most website templates are flexible enough as to allow customization to suit your branding with little development time required. Plus provide a series of additional website plugins and functionality that will bring your website to life.
It is common practice in this ever changing online world to design and build websites within built responsiveness. With templates now accommodating to varying screen sizes development time is reduced, saving businesses money.
Custom Website Design
However you might prefer to have a complete customized website design solution. Project management, design & development time increases to achieve the same results as a pre-built website template but you are left with a unique website that will stun and amaze your website visitors.
Many clients engage in this sort of website design for the flexibility in the ability to create custom applications or integrate into 3rd party applications or systems such as Facebook, PayPal, etc.
What does this all mean?
You can have a website built on a shoestring budget of about $700 or have something made more substantial around $3000, or for the high roller a fully customized website with the bells and whistles for around $10,000. At the end of the day your starting point is to address your websites goals.