How Much Does a Website Cost?

This is a question we get asked all the time – how much does a website cost?

In truth, this question is about as easy to answer as “How much does a house cost?” or “How much does a car cost?” – it very much depends what house or car you buy! A two-bedroom terrace in Huddersfield is far cheaper than a seven-bedroom estate in Surrey! Equally, a nine-year-old Fiesta is much cheaper than a brand-new Aston Martin.

The same is true with websites, it all depends what you buy and yes, you do get what you pay for!

Put simply, even if you’re getting someone to build your website for you, Jimmy Smith down the road who builds them in his bedroom, you’re still always going to get value for money. The website that young Jimmy produces for you is likely to be better than that of a Wix or a Weebly website, that is beyond doubt… However, is Jimmy going to be able to offer you regular support on the website? If he goes on holiday, does anyone else answer his phone and deal with your problems? Probably not!

What happens when Jimmy goes off to University or goes and gets a job? Do your website or your emails have any chance of being accessed should anything ever go wrong?

Anyway, we’ve made that point, now we’ll move on with answering the question.

There are two main categories that websites fall into, well, three or four, but for now we’ll keep it simple and say two.

Brochure Sites

These are sometimes called magazine sites or business card sites. Whatever they’re called they mean the same thing, basically they don’t do anything really apart from show off your business. They have some pictures, some content, maybe some nice graphics showing off and explaining what your business does. They are your online brochure, they tell your potential clients what you do and how they can get in touch with you.

If you’re in the early days of business where budgets are tight then, depending on how important leads via your website are going to be to you, you ought to realistically be able to get a decent-looking brochure site done for less than a thousand pounds.

But it doesn’t end there… brochure sites can range widely in what they do and how they look. Templated, off-the-shelf versions that don’t have any moving parts are quite simple and quick and have a standard page layout which simply repeats with each newly created page. This mean that they do not require much time from a designer and so therefore are a lot cheaper.

Then you have the more advanced brochure sites. These might want to have clever moving pictures, objects that slide on or off the screen, moving graphics, styled-in videos, images or GIFs that require a lot of design time. One of these could cost you anywhere up to five thousand pounds from a reasonable agency and from some of the really top London agencies you could easily be talking twenty thousand for such a project – depending on the level of design and clever stuff you want!

E-Commerce Websites

This is the name given to encompass any site that takes money, they’re usually referring to online shops such as Amazon or Viking – but your site doesn’t need to sell a physical product to be classed as e-commerce.

Maybe you take bookings for classes or equipment hire or deposits for your services – an easy and sure-fire way to get your customers to pay you is to put the payment gateway right there on your website. These often make use of a payment system such as PayPal, Sage Pay, World Pay, Stripe or similar payment systems that secure the customers payment details and ensure they can spend money online safely.

Now e-commerce sites are often more expensive than brochure sites and there are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, there’s generally a lot more information to put onto such a website. Each product needs to be placed and tested. There’s a process through which a transaction must pass and this needs to be checked to be correct and accurate and functional. The payment system being used has to be integrated into the website so that it can work properly and you can actually get paid for it.

In addition, there are more things to consider with an e-commerce website, the calls to action need to be far more obvious or at least more effective and thought through, the “similar products” and “customers also bought”/ “you may also like” elements need to be considered and set up too.

As a general rule, an e-commerce website will usually start at around twelve to fifteen hundred pounds and could go anywhere up to fifteen or twenty thousand.

We’re getting there, we promise!

There are other kinds of websites too; subscription sites, streaming sites, social sites, affiliate marketing sites, and blog sites – and combinations of all the above!

Put simply, an honest web agency will usually charge you based on the amount of time a site you want built will take them and therefore the amount they will have to pay their staff in order to fulfil your order to your satisfaction. Many will build in “what if” padding into their price – this meaning they’re overestimating the time they’re going to take in case it takes longer than anticipated.

Basically, you can go to numerous web agencies and find you’re getting a massive range of quotes. The secret is choosing a web agency that will fulfil the needs of your business and that is in the right place to deal with yours – ask them about their process, how do they work? How do they insure you get what you want?

It is all important stuff!

So to conclude, the amount a website costs depends on the following things:

How unique you want it to look?
How important it is to your business?
Whether it needs to take payments or not?
How much design work you want done on it?
How much value you place on it?
How big and professional the web company you’re using are?
How important it is that you have a relationship with your web developer or not?
How much of the work you want to do yourself?
How professional a job you want done?

There are other factors too – but these are the main ones and these will have the biggest effect on the cost of your website.

For more information please ask us!