How Much Should a Website Cost?

How much should website cost? This is the most frequently asked question of any website developer or designer.

To establish the cost for a website without knowing the clients' basic needs would be like a contractor quoting prices for home renovations without knowing what work needed to be done.

Complexity of website features you require will usually be the determining factor for the actual cost of your website.

When considering the total cost of a website, please keep the following in mind:

Customers most often turn to the internet when they are searching for a product or service, far more often than the yellow pages.

Many people have found the initial cost of a website to be less than the cost to their business NOT making their presence known on the web. The cost of investing in a professional website is comparable to the cost of advertising in periodicals. In fact, many websites can cost less than one display advertisement in a major big city newspaper!

There are 4 main components to any website:

Domain Name

Your first step is to purchase the right to use "www.yourname.com" on the web. The yourname.com is the domain name. Purchasing a domain name ranges from $5 - $35, depending on the type (.com, .org, .net). Your webmaster will have a relationship with a reliable place from which to purchase your domain name and will handle the set up of your domain if necessary. Note: You can have several domain names all pointing to the same location, and this can be an inexpensive way to increase your website traffic and search engine placement. Your domain registration fee is an annual cost.

Hosting

You pay a website host to keep your website online. This cost can be billed monthly or yearly. They host your graphics and html files on their server, and keep it running 24/7. Your web designer can add code which will log visits to your website, and run software that allows you to know how many people have come to your site, from where, what pages they visited, and so forth.

Hosting can be included as part of your web design package, or can be charged to you separately from your provider. This cost can range from $20 a month on up to hundreds of dollars a year, depending on how much information you're going to have on your site, how many people will come to it, and the other services provided along with the hosting.

Design

Most of the start-up costs are going to be involved with the design and development of your website, both front end and back end. What type of graphics will you have? Are you providing graphics, or will your designer need to create custom graphics for your site? How involved are you doing to be in writing the copy? Do you know how you want the pages set up? Do you need help gathering information and content? What extra features do you want on your site, i.e. blog feeds, calendars, Flash elements, photo galleries, etc? Will your website require a database? A standard small business site could cost as little as $500 from a freelance designer, or as much as $5,000 from a large web agency.

Maintenance

How often will your site need to be updated? Will you offer interactive pages on your site that need to be monitored, such as blogs and forums? Does your business have consistent news and information updates or will your website remain relatively static for long periods of time? This is another area in which costs can be included in your initial design contract. Contracts can be written to include one year of maintenance and updates as part of your start up costs.

Some people choose to update their own site once it's been built. Letting your webmaster know this upfront can help everyone do a better job. A professional can update an entire site in less time than it probably takes the average computer user to figure out how things are set up, where they are, and how to make changes and publish them. If you feel qualified to make your own updates, that will be an additional consideration to be made in the development of your site. Maintenance costs can be included in your contract, or charged separately by your web designer, at hourly costs that range from $35-$150 per hour and higher.

In conclusion, it is important to remember that a professional business website reaches a worldwide audience, and promotes your company, your services or your product 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The cost of a web site can vary greatly, depending upon the site's features, needed marketing services, aesthetic qualities, and the design firm, advertising agency, or freelancer creating the Web design.