In the world of websites, it has always been a battle between free template websites and custom built websites. All businesses are beginning to migrate to the internet as a means of increasing their customer base, making the use of websites more essential than it appears.
While a free website template doesn’t cost you anything to have set up, custom built websites can cost you as much as $5,000 and even much more, depending on what your website requirements are. And funny enough, this is what has stalled so many business owners from moving ahead with their website plans – they simply cannot guess how much they will be paying for developing their website!
Do you belong in this category of people? Are you eager to promote your business with a website but you don’t have the slightest clue as to what your website budget should look like? No need to rack your brain as this article will doing a thorough work on exposing you to virtually everything you need to know about websites and how much you are likely to pay for their developing and stuffs like that.
The cost of a website can varied based on different parameters. It ranges from the size of the website, to the kind of components on the website, to whether it is an e-commerce site or not, and to many other factors.
And beyond all the necessary information of websites and their different costs, this article will be showing you the wonders of our website budget calculator and how you can use it to relieve yourself of the normal headache that comes with thinking about the cost of your website. Let us start by taking apart the factors upon which website costs are based.
Table of Contents
For Small-Sized Websites
Small-Sized in this regards simply refers to an international website that requires only a few customizations and perhaps a little over 15 web pages, with some stock photos to go with. These websites also do not need any special functionality. They fit the most elementary of websites and can cost you from say $2000 and as high as even $8000. With a website budget plan of this magnitude you could achieve your dreams for building a small-sized website.
For Medium-Sized Websites
These websites are regarded as medium sized because they are much more than the previous category in terms of web pages and some other parameters. These sort of websites have about 70 web pages if not more than. Plus they are not without their customized imagery and layouts, content management system enabled, as well as special functionalities that can only be put together by developers. After doing a website budget breakdown for this class of website, it was discovered that they cost between $10,000 and $25,000 for upfront rates.
For E-Commerce Sites
These are websites that are enabled to support buying and selling of goods, and as such you will not expect them to cost the same with the other website categories that have been mentioned above. These websites cannot function without the integration of payment gateway, copywriting, a content management system, imagery, etc. Finally, the cost of putting this website together will depend on the number of products you are featuring as well as their intricacies. An ecommerce website budget would normally require an upfront cost of between $5,000 and $40,000.
Large Business Sites
These websites are regarded as large scale because they will eventually comprise hundreds of webpages. Their imagery as well as design layouts are well customized, they’ve got content management system, customized functionality and other supplementary features like multimedia creation, personalized development, blog integration and others. Large business sites undoubtedly have more traffic than any other more website type because they contain more content are meant to target a larger number of persons. You would expect such websites to be at their best in terms of performance, and cannot be undertaken by inexperienced hands. The upfront cost for building such website can be anywhere between $25,000 and $40,000.
The above piece explains how one website type differs from another and what you should expect to pay when you want to build one. As we discuss other additional expenses that are associated with running a website in the subsequent sections, it is important that you know that you can have all these estimates easily figured out when you implement our website budget calculator.
The financial implication of running a website has to be included in your budget, and highlighted below are some of the things you could start considering.
Domain Name
The domain name represents what is typed into your browser before end-user can access you, which explains why domain name has become very necessary in recent times. Without a domain name, it will be impossible to access your site; the only way to go a website would be to enter the IP address of the site in question. Fortunately, these domain names don’t cost as much as the development of the website itself.
You can expect to pay as little as $10 to $20 for the domain name. However, if you are seeking domain extensions that are customized like .online and .restaurant, you will have to pay a higher rate like $200 and $300 in a year, strictly dependent on what you want. These payments are usually made within a period of 12 months unless you are sticking with other cheaper options that are meant to last for several years. The plans are that flexible since the various hosting companies want everyone to be a part of their packages. So all you need to do is subscribe to a package that fits with what you can afford.
Again, our website budget calculator makes it extremely easy for you to know how much you may need to pay for such expenses without you having to contact anybody.
SSL Certificates
SSL stands for secure socket layer. As the name implies, this certificate is for encrypting sensitive like personal information and credit card details. Having an SSL certificate is absolutely necessary for anyone who is operating an ecommerce based site. It prevents such sensitive information from getting into the wrong hands or getting intercepted before they get to their destination. How much you are going to be paying for this can only be determined by those issuing the certifications – Certification Authorities. The cost of an SSL certificate can range between $10 and $1000 yearly. The payment is basically in made annually.
Website Hosting
You cannot draw up a website budget without including website hosting. Website hosting ought to be given extreme importance if you want users to access your site on a daily basis. Website hosting is all about the servers that will be hosting your web contents. Different companies offer different web hosting packages. It is up to you to decide whether you would prefer a shared hosting plan that can go for between $10 and $99 monthly, or even a managed hosting plan. The web hosting prices are determined by the type of features you have and the amount of traffic you are getting on your site. However, it is always better off if you can do the annual type of subscription instead of monthly.
See how our website budget calculator works by inputting the type of hosting you plan you prefer and some other related information and giving you a clear estimate of what is expected at the end of it all.
Content Management System
A content management system, as opposed to what many people assume, is a necessary measure for managing how you display, videos, texts, pictures, articles, etc. on a website. Although it is not a must that you must make use of content management systems in managing your site, CMSs are known for helping you save time as well improving the efficiency of your site in many regards. So now that you’ve probably had a better understanding of what a content management system is, the next question on your mind would be – how much will it cost to use one for managing your site!
The cost of a CMS actually depends on the particular content management system you are using. For the customized types, you could pay close to thousands of dollars to use it, while the free content management systems like WordPress are for free.
The customized content management systems service providers charge yearly for their subscription, while you don’t need to pay anything if you are using WordPress.
Web Design
Another hugely significant part of a budget for website development is web design. Before you can have an aesthetic that will be pleasing, your website ought to have been designed by professionals and not amateurs. If you are putting up a brand new website or your aim is to do a complete makeover on your existing website, then you will need to dole out some cash so you can have a site that can attract your audience. Plus, there will be a lot of testing along the way as the designs are being implemented.
Redesigning a site could be estimated at between $1,000 and $20,000. The actual cost depends on the type of website you are operating, your content management system type, as well as the amount of customization that will be needed.
Hence, if you desire that your site is always on top the trend, you will have to order for a redesign every couple of years.
Theme Design
This allows you to modify the way your website looks, especially if you are implementing WordPress themes. These themes make your website look astonishingly beautiful. Just with a few clicks here and there and you done with your outlook modification. Implementing themes on your website sounds like a very good choice, but it does come with a price – there is a pretty good chance your website will look very similar to any website that is using the same theme out there. A considerable number of public themes are totally free. Paid themes can cost anything between $10 and $10; it all boils down to the type of features that come with such themes.
There are various rates for having it personally customized or exclusive to you. Stay on top change trends by changing your themes from time to time. This will be most convenient for you if you were using public themes that don’t cost a dime.
Responsive Designs
In this age and time, the subject of building websites that are responsive cannot be overemphasized. A lot of the market activities that happen online are transactions that were done on mobile devices. Google decided to modify the algorithm they were using for ranking websites in 2015, and since then ranking has favored sites that are more mobile friendly than those that are not.
Responsive sites are smart enough to realize the device that have consumed their content, and thereby rendering its content to fit the screen of that device. A great deal of today’s websites are responsive. However, if you have an old-fashioned that isn’t responsive and you feel like upgrading it to a responsive website with a modern feel, it may cost you up to $2,000. The good news is that you wouldn’t have to make that payment every year because upgrading your site is a task that you are to pay for just once and that’s all! So if you want a comprehensive website budget proposal, then don’t forget to add responsive factor in it.
Search Engine Optimization
Long ago, one needed to have lots of money before thinking of anything that has to do with SEO. But these days, that is not the case; investing in SEO has become a major part of the online business. So whoever wants to succeed online cannot run away from SEO matters. So what does SEO do?
It represents tasks that are put together to ensure that a website shows when a particular keyword is searched for. It is what determines whether people will see your website or not when they search for contents on search engines.
As for securing SEO payment, you can expect to pay anything between $3,000 to $9,000 as upfront cost. The more advanced your company is in terms of size and other parameters the higher your SEO cost is likely to be.
Plus, you should have in mind that SEO activities are ongoing; that is, it is not something you do once and stop. It has to be part of your long-term website budget breakdown, while you also ensure you are partnering with an agency that has succeeded in this field. You certainly don’t want to do business with a company that cannot deliver anything but empty promises.
Conversation Rate Optimization
Optimizing conversion rates is necessary for increasing conversion methods like CTAs such as newsletters, buttons, landing pages, sign-up sheets as well as other options. All methods differ in the way they function. Some are more efficient than others. So for you to know the one that will be most suitable for your website, you can conduct A/B testing to get that out of the way. Testing can cost about $300 and even up to $600 in some cases. You could decide to pay for a complete test package or pay for individual testing. Whichever one you could afford will be good enough to do the job, just have it included in your website budget plan.
Pay Per Click
PPC ads are mostly common on the Google result sidebar, footers and banners of various sites, and YouTube video bottom. They can be found on any platform because the people who published get paid whenever they are clicked. The main focus of such paid ads is one thing – generate and increase traffic to a particular site. After the traffic gets to your website, how they are converted to money is entirely your business. If you want quick results when it comes to non-organic traffic, then you need to turn your attention towards PPCs.
How much you will be paying for such services actually depend on how many times such an ad will be clicked as well as the level competition that is tied to the keyword in question. You can expect anything between $100 and $1000 in a month. And sometimes it could even cost more. How long you would want to do the subscription actually depends on what you want and how satisfied you must have been with the previous services. So you might want to include this as part of your budget for website development.
Copywriting
People never saw the need for copywriters many years ago concerning the contents that was put up on their pages. It is now a different ball game however, as business owners now realize the indispensable services of copywriters. Their job is to give your content a touch of class.
However, some copywriting services such as writing duplicate content leave a lot to be desired. Getting your copywriting responsibilities handled can be a lot easier because you could work individual freelancers or decide to partner with agencies that offer same services. You can expect to pay anything from $5 for every 500 words to other bigger contract dimensions that may involve an entire project. And you can expect to pay much higher when the contents have been originally crafted by the copywriter.
You shouldn’t think twice about this sort of services because Google gives consideration and favors pages that are regularly updated, particularly lengthy piece and those that are divulge of errors.
Hence, if you do not mind, a good website budget proposal should equally take into account what one is likely to spend on a monthly basis on copywriting services.
Social Media
Social media has become a sensational platform for creatively promoting your business without having to sell to anybody in particular. Social media now allows users to advertise their businesses in fun and more enjoyable ways. Social media platforms have become an excellent spot for people to do business because that is where customers voice their feelings about a product or brand easily and they can be heard instantly.
There are several social media channels, and whichever one you choose will definitely come with a price. Make sure you have different contents on the different social media platforms if you are promoting your business with more than one. Avoid the act of just copying and pasting on all platforms.
So if you are doing this, your contents are supposed to be fully customized to fit with your target audience. Getting this done by a third party could cost you anything between $250 in a month and $2,500 in a month, depending on who prefer to work with. This sort of marketing is something that will continue for as long as that business exists. Hence, that should be clearly considered in setting up and maintaining your online business.
Content Marketing
Customers have always been and will always be in favor of business that can entice them will pleasing content. The level of trust customers have on businesses is heavily dependent on the kind of content they see. Those content can be channeled through videos, blogs, social media imagery, charts, infographics, white papers, etc.
Content marketing services are usually expensive. Infographics service can cost as much as $500 for just one graphic. Video production can be as expensive as $3000 or much higher depending on what you are looking for. Writers give their rates in per word. Podcasts uses audio equipment for sending their messages. How often you are supposed to pay is strictly dependent on the rate at which you publish your contents.
So if your content should be regularly produced, as is the case, it should be part of your monthly website budget.
Implementing WordPress for Building Your Websites
We have hammered on how you could employ basic generic means for developing and setting up your website. This section of this post will be dealing squarely on how you can achieve great results on your website when you set it up with WordPress.
Virtually 26% of the websites you have worldwide is run with WordPress site builder. Developers and designers are really leveraging on this site builder for making their work a lot easier.
So if you are implementing WordPress for putting your website together, how much are you expecting the whole thing is going to cost?
So let us dig deep into the rabbit hole of WordPress and let us see how deep the rabbit hole truly goes.
Getting Professionals To Do The Job
WordPress is suitable for developing whatever website you like to build. It is extremely flexible in terms of how it can used. If you understand coding and design very well, you could take advantage of this site builder for fleshing your website.
The only thing is that it is hard to make your website come out exactly how you want it when you lack the required WordPress expertise. That leaves you with two options: Get professionals to do the job or go through the learning process yourself and build the website yourself. The latter of course, will be most rewarding in the long-term.
How Much Does it Cost to Set Up a WordPress Site?
Having your website ready comprises a couple of basic steps which include: locating a hosting company, understanding FTP application, linking your website to your hosting company, and eventually, having your domain name connected to your website.
Just in case you are new to the aforementioned terms, you can read the subsequent sections with more interest to understand what they mean.
Website Hosting
See these hosting companies as containers that hold your website contents for others to see. It will be impossible for end users to access your website when it has not been hosted by any hosting companies.
There various hosting types which can be used to manage different volume of visitors coming to a site.
- VPS Hosting
- Shared Hosting
- Dedicated Hosting
If your website is as big as I suspected, then you would probably do just fine with Shared or VPS Hosting. Dedicated hosting is only for those extremely big companies. With as small as 5 to $30 dollar, you can have your website up and running on a shared hosting package on any web hosting company.
Applying FTP
Don’t fret when you hear of FTP, on the context of this post, it is talking about how files are managed on the host server. These files consist of pretty everything you can see when you open a browser: images, website design, content, features, etc.
A great deal of hosting companies offer instructions on how to implement FTP for managing your files. If you are not conversant with using FTP, then no need to be afraid, just make a dash to YouTube and get loads of videos on the said subject. Using FTP to manage the files on your WordPress site can cost anything between $0 and $50.
Installation of WordPress onto a host and having your domain name connected
A lot of hosting companies are now working with pre-installed WordPress. So if you are not interested in going through this process, you could subscribe to a hosting company that has WordPress installed already.
Hosting companies normally outline steps on how you can have your website connected to your domain name. If you are willing to do all these by yourself as against getting a designer o or developer to help you out, you will be spending almost nothing to get your site linked to your domain name. It actually costs about $5 if you are doing it yourself.
How much it cost to build a WordPress site?
When it comes to building website with WordPress, you will be left with the choice of either implementing pre-installed templates or customizing those pre-set templates for suit various business needs.
The pre-installed templates are already finished designs that you don’t need to do too many technical work before you could get your site running. While using pre-installed templates can only cost you between $35 and $200, you should be aware that there are heavy limitations that come with using such pre-installed templates to meet your unique business needs.
In stark contrast, custom built WordPress sites don’t come as cheap as their already made template counterparts. You could have a professional designer customize your pre-set templates into something you can use for your business purpose.
This is the reason why professional developers and designers charge you a lot because they would be apparently doing a considerable amount of work on your website. But the good news that you can cut out all that expenses if you knew how to do the customization yourself. Get registered on a course on how to code on WordPress and every other necessary skill that is needed to make you a pro in customizing WordPress websites. Hence, fleshing out a custom site from a pre-installed template can cost between 300 and $1000.
What about doing WordPress sites that are completely customized from the ground up? This is where your creativity can be fully explored. There are no limitations as to what you can achieve with this approach. And if you are paying for this services, you’d bet that it is going to cost you a fortune. Expect to spend nothing less than $5000 and sometimes as much as $10000 for such services. You don’t need to be told here that you will be doing yourself a whole lot of favor when you learn how to use WordPress inside out.
Who Is Fit To Use WordPress?
The simple answer to the above question is anybody! WordPress is not designed for a special set of users. In fact you would be amazed to know that big news companies are into WordPress for publishing and their contents. Other well-known businesses are equally employing this open source platform for promoting their business and keeping their customers engaged.
Are you running a medium-sized or large or small scale business, this platform is just fit for your use. WordPress has also become a popular choice amongst bloggers because find it convenient to use for many obvious reasons. And are we looking down on newbies when it comes to using WordPress for web design and stuffs? Absolutely No!
As a newbie, this is more like the best place to carry out your web design skills. With the already existing templates, you will not be coming out with anything short of an astonishing website.
How Do You Know A WordPress Theme That Is Good?
Every WordPress website has a lot to do with the kind of theme they are built with. Using a theme that aligns with your business needs can make all the difference in causing your site to reflect professionalism, trust, and competence. These are factors that go a long way in determining how you end up with your customers in the long run.
So having known that your website theme is as important as what you are trying to advertise, how can you tell if a WordPress theme makes sense of not?
Every efficient WordPress theme has to be extremely user-friendly. Your site has to be easy for users who are coming in. They shouldn’t find it difficult to navigate and use your website. If they ever do, you can be rest assured that you would be losing a couple of them much faster than you thought. Hence, go for user-friendly themes.
A good theme is also expected to promote the very best of website UX (user experience). Reports and statistics have shown on various occasions that users will do anything to stick with sites that efficient in terms of page loading and stuffs like that. If your theme cannot ensure a fantastic user experience, then you certainly do not have need for such a theme.
Your website will not enjoy the best of patronage if it lacks reliable security features. Many businesses have had to shut down their website simply because they compromised their investment on online security. Users are never happy when they have to contend with unauthorized users having access to their data. Actions like that have caused a lot of fracas in organizations, both big and small. The Facebook and Cambridge Analytical scandal is a very good example, and no entrepreneur would want to experience that ever again.
One more thing before we wrap up this session is how SEO-friendly is your WordPress theme? This is very important as it concerns serving your pages to those who would like to see them. Any WordPress theme that is not good enough to help your SEO needs is certainly far from what you need. Your purpose can only be fully served when your website theme of choice supports your needs to make it visible to those who would be looking the search engines. We’ve got a front-end team whose job include making WordPress themes to be SEO-compliant as much as possible through adapting it to better optimization.
Some of The Benefits of Using WordPress
Time is of great essence in life, and designing a website is not any different. Dedicating time to build a website from the scratch with all the rigorous HTML and CSS coding can be extremely challenging for many people. That is what makes WordPress a sound choice for website designers and developers. They do not have to waste precious time trying to start everything from genesis. They only have to build on existing templates and adapt those templates to specific business needs. Doing this helps them flesh out competent and robust website within short periods, while they can focus their time and energy on other more important stuffs.
WordPress is the home of where you see dynamism in functionalities. It simply means you are free to customize your site the way you want it with the many plugins that are available out there. You can use WordPress plugins to personalize your site in this regards, aiding you standing out from the park. Our developers are exceptionally good at how they apply these numerous and various plugins in bringing our clients’ dreams to life by actualizing their business needs.
SEO has certainly become a determinant in the success equation of any website. Websites that are not SEO compliant only end up as decoration pages with not much people surfing them. WordPress has made life very easy for website operators with its SEO section that guides users on how they can optimize such opportunities. This is another area where we seem to have made a name for ourselves. We will also help you in managing your content SEO-wise by helping you with keywords and every other SEO related elements that can promote your website within the search engines.
If you want to know straightaway a WordPress website can cost, you can actually input all of these into our website budget calculator and have a near accurate estimate of what the market looks like with respect to your demands.
Website Mistakes To Avoid
Some business owners have had to exit online market not because they could not afford the cost of maintaining a website or because their websites wasn’t good enough, but because they failed to stay away from the same mistakes that have sank other businesses in the past. There are certain mistakes that can send your business to 6ft, and this section would be discussing those mistakes so you don’t end up like your predecessors.
Never try to patronize a technology that is not proven for whatever reasons. Website plugins and themes are more important than you can imagine. As such, so many people are going into this thing producing all sorts of stuffs, leading to many websites suffering all sorts of hiccups. It is absolutely best if you work with known names in this regard. Patronize those who have enjoyed success in this field and have become a household name. You can count on us when it comes to website plugins and themes that are of high quality.
Your website could get busted simply because you were working with the wrong advice. Are you surprised about that? I bet you are. Many businesses, unfortunately, have had to pay the gruesome price for sticking with the wrong information they got from their clients. If you are working with those who lack the experience and with the wrong information, your website will be heading in just one direction – Trash! You sound like you want to make the best out of your website because candidly speaking, that is the dream of everyone who owns a website. Allow our experts to advise you on SEO, content marketing and other related issues. Our services have been tested and proven by many organizations. So you can be sure we are not one of those hype figures that exist out there.
Many people are keen to have their business online, but at the same time they would prefer have something simple, something not as complex as the regular business websites. In that case, you could start considering landing pages if you are in that category.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are mostly known for serving a user’ purpose with just one page that has been fantastically built. It is good enough for advertising a brand to those who care to listen. So if you are looking to promote a single service, we advise that you do that with a landing page. That way, you would not be spending too much and you can boast of high quality page that can convey your contents to the quarters of your existing and potential customers. A good landing page will expectedly cost a reasonable amount of money, though not as expensive as a complete website. Well, our website budget tool will give you a good idea of how much a landing page can cost by using the parameters you are going to be inputting.
Conclusion
Sitting down and trying to figure out and keep track of all these website costs can be quite challenging. Funny enough you cannot do without getting a near accurate estimate of what your website budget will look like before proceeding with the process. If you want to know how much a website would cost and you cannot go scanning the web to know the cost, you could implement our website budget calculator. This tool simply allows you to input the necessary parameters regarding what you want and get a very good estimate at by simply clicking a button. Another important lesson that has been learnt in the course of this post is the fact that you stand to gain a whole lot if you know how to code on WordPress. You probably saw the different rates at which you could get a website up and running with the help of professionals, and the fact is you could save yourself all of that and make your website appear according to your taste if you know how to do stuffs on WordPress. The best thing is to make out time and register with a reputable agency that can handle your website.
