Every company should aspire to have a strong online presence – and the most fundamental requirement is a great website that tells your brand’s story. Having seen the effects of the pandemic more businesses than ever have increased their online presence and are enhancing their client’s relationships through their websites.
A website visitor will judge what they see within 1/10th of a second -today’s society demands quality information, and wants it swiftly. But to get the best possible web design for your company, how much will it cost you?
The design should entice the visitor to stay and, by intuitive navigation, enable the visitor to seamlessly become a client – one that requests more information or purchases online.
There are two main options for creating a new website and they have different costs.
Browse the internet and you’ll find numerous companies offering website templates such as those based on WordPress, Joomla and ThemeForest. Some will also offer templates that are responsive and modify themselves depending on whether the viewer is using a desktop computer or mobile device.
At first glance, the prices are attractive and the fact that the providers boast you don’t need a professional web designer to implement them sounds very attractive if your company doesn’t have any IT support. However, there are a few important details to be aware of so we outlined the main pro’s and con’s before you commit below.
Costs vary from template supplier to supplier. But don’t think you’ll be getting something for nothing. Here’s an example of costs.
This company charges $75 and up for a single site license. Add in the template and installation and you’ll be paying another $100 to $200. And if you want to use the template exclusively, you’re looking at $4500 and rising.
Some other companies will vary anywhere from $49 to $300 for the templates, installation, and a few months of support.
This is a whole new ball game. When you work with a professional web design team, the fundamental advantage is that you gain a customized website – one that matches your requirements precisely. Furthermore, the professionals will take time to understand your company, your objectives, and how best to promote your services or products. This is crucial in building a website that will convert and produce more business in the long term. In short, they will guide you through the project, from initial ideas to a final website that appeals to the right target market by following these 4 key steps:
A professionally designed website for a small business may cost anything from $5,000 to $50,000 from the beginning of the project to the website launch. Below is a summary of the many factors involved in the design and implementation of a unique website to match your needs:
The more web design hours involved, the higher the cost. A small business should expect to pay about $2000 for several design options: one of which can be chosen and taken forward as the overall look of the final website.
The importance of this stage should not be underestimated – this is the make or break stage: get it right and visitors will stay on the website; get it wrong and they will bounce off almost immediately.
Don’t skimp on images. Non-professional photos will give the wrong impression about your company. If you don’t have photos or graphics, professional web designers can source appropriate stock images. Depending on the number of pages on your site, you will need to pay around $150 as a minimum for good stock photos. And if you’d like a photo gallery, that can add approximately $200-$1000 to the price.
Wherever possible provide your web design team with final content. However, if this isn’t feasible, add in around $75-125 per page if you need compelling content created – dependent on word count of course.
A customized contact form is desirable on any professional website to enable you to collect enquirer information efficiently. If you are looking for more advanced contact forms that are more functional than the standard form you can expect to add in around $250 for this.
Any website design that requires an e-commerce feature, such as a shopping cart and payment processing, will bump up the cost by $1000-$5000 depending on requirements. No surprise really when you consider the additional design and security elements in the coding of the pages.
A well-built eCommerce platform should be able to show you your orders, shipping costs, and product popularity in a clear and easily navigatable system for shop owners.
All websites needs to be responsive (and who wouldn’t want one nowadays?) the overall price of its development may increase by 20 to 30%. Why you may ask. A truly responsive website goes beyond sizing for smaller screens and is built to truly offer an amazing experience on mobile.
Incorporating CMS to your website offers you the great advantage of being able to make your own updates and saves costs in the future. However, the setup costs for the customization and integration of CMS may be upwards of $10,000.
It really is no surprise that the cost of a tailor-made, professionally designed website is more expensive than using a web design template. A simple template may be sufficient in the short-term but its limitations may hinder the expansion of the business.
If a company is serious about competing with the big boys in its niche market, it is far more cost-effective to invest in a professional web design at the launch of the company; any other decision is short-sighted. The numerous advantages of having a unique website that can sell the company’s products should be paramount in defining the company’s web development budget.