If you are looking to create a website for your business, it is ideal to consider all the factors and additional features to estimate the price.
The general answer to the question, how much does it cost to build a website may be dependent on how much you wish to spend.
Besides, the platform of the website, its complexity, and its features also determine the cost. This is a bit of a tricky question: “How much does a business website cost?” to work on the estimate of the final product.
Let’s roll in.
Moreover, the website will require a landing page for the business even before you launch your campaign. The landing page of the website is the most crucial thing, so you need the best landing page creation tools for maximum conversions.
So, the website development cost may vary from $1000 to $300,000. A simple website may work within a $1000 budget. However, a complex website such as Airbnb may require $300,000 for the development and design of the website.
Therefore, it may seem like a lot depending upon the features you desire in your business website. A website with minimal features may cost around $20,000 to $25,000. It is possible to create a budget-friendly website with some standard features which are not very tech-savvy.
The final price depends upon how much you wish to shell out. Let’s discuss the multiple aspects of the cost to build a website in detail.
Factors That Affect the Price of Website Development
The cost to build a website is more complex as a lot of design features and client requirements go into the whole process. It also depends on the website and features such as landing pages, blog website, eCommerce, SaaS, and marketplace. You may pick a ready-made platform to build a website or choose to create a custom design for your website. The former one is convenient and quicker. But, a custom website will give you more freedom to design.
Moreover, complex features such as integration, UX, UI, and templates may additionally affect the cost. You may choose from a local or a freelancer team to work on the design and development of the website. Furthermore, maintenance, marketing, CRM, SEO, and email marketing will affect the total price. It may seem like a finite list of items; however, it is essential to consider all the elements.
Let’s learn how the type of website affects the creation cost.
Type of Websites
You may be building a website for your blogs, news, or eCommerce business. The type of website will determine the complexity and features required. You may pick a simple blog website, corporate, or landing page brochure website depending upon your purpose. Apart from these, more complex custom cloud websites, including software services and marketplace, may be the deciding factor.
The whole development strategy and specifications are considered on the basis of the website type. These individual websites have different design aspects, so they require variation in the approach. For instance, a landing page displays the services and products of a company in an informative manner. This information is not intended to sell any of these services, making it a simple low-budget website.
A website that has shareable news, blogs, products, and focuses on additional information for potential users may have a simple structure. However, the increase in the number of service pages may add up to the price. On the other hand, Blog websites have a lot of content. A blog website has a lot of content, so it needs integration to manage it all. The minimal design of the blog website is more impactful and saves money too. However, one should not compromise on the features and quality here. Here are the four best website builder software for designing websites that have user-friendly designs.
Now, talking about the complex corporate website, it may have more than fifty pages. Moreover, it may include company information, customers, investors, and pages for regulation. Apart from this, some other heavy internet sites also require a heavy-duty operational system. They may require wireframes, prototypes, and more features to create a sustainable website. Additionally, an eCommerce website contains payment services, security certificates, mobile compatibility, and more to make it work smoothly.
For a SaaS platform such as Slack, you may need cloud systems for one-step sign-in, data application, and subscription model. So they require better infrastructure and more expenditure. Websites such as Amazon and Facebook marketplace may additionally require communication tools, services, and faster processing.
Does the Website Creation Engine Make a Difference?
Yes, the creation engine makes a huge difference in the process of website creation. You may choose from two options, ready-made and custom website creation. Ready-made website constructions include designers like Wix and Zyro, which are easy to use.
Ready-Made Website Builders
These constructors allow the user to edit, add, remove, and manage the landing elements, items, and layouts. The platforms have a DIY approach, which is quick and smooth. You just need to pick up the elements and add relevant content. Moreover, they have an inbuilt SEO feature, which helps in ranking the website quickly. The ease of use, customer support, modification in design, and money value make these ready-made constructors a reliable website building option.
Although they have limited functions, the accessibility of these tools is favorable for blog websites and landing pages. These may range from $1000 to $5000 for subscription and premium features. As 59.9% of the CMS websites are made with WordPress, the ready-made builders are reliable enough as the users can modify the layout and features.
Custom Website Development Process and Cost
With custom website development, you start from scratch with every single step. It includes layouts, prototypes, wireframes, mockups, test runs, and launching. As corporate sites and eCommerce websites require complex features, this may be ideal for required integrations. The cost of a website with a custom building is on the higher end and takes a lot of time. Therefore, you need a bigger and experienced team to carry out such advanced tasks.
Complexity of a Website
The complexity of a site depends on the number of features and the number of roles. There may be additional features; however, these two play the biggest role in each sphere of website development. Additionally, the purpose, objectives, and size of the website directly impact the complexity of the website. The number of features essential for a website depends on its purpose and objectives.
If you consider a simple blog website and a telemedicine website with video consultation, the latter is more complex in features. Moreover, it has complex features such as real-time consultation, doctor’s catalog, registration, and cloud storage. This increases the cost of the website creation along with the maintenance that will be required.
Design Complexity
The design complexity determines the cost and user experience. A simple design with easy to use features will be impressive to the users. As more people are on their phones all the time, they prefer websites that are psychologically easy to use and are intuitive. The less work on the site implies they will spend more time as it has better visibility.
The design of the website can be customized or pulled from templates. Creating the design from templates is easy for the designer and your pocket. If you create a design from scratch, it will cost you more and take a long time. The UX design of the website includes its elements and interaction with the visitors.
To ensure a good experience, the designer focuses on wireframes and a practical layout for informational hierarchy. Features to keep the user engaged are added to enhance the experience and save time. The custom UI is essential if you require special features and designs. It is a time-consuming process to create mockups but results in a better end product.
Besides, you may create a component library with the framework and add multiple elements to it. The answer to reducing the cost of website development is to use templates and ready-made themes. However, this downloadable theme will not provide exclusivity as anyone can use it. The cost of building the website is entirely up to your perspective and how you wish to offer a unique experience.
Timeline, Team Configuration, and Executor’s Cost
If you use ready-made templates, you may not require a team to work on the development. However, you may hire a professional for more technical work. When you build a website from scratch, you may need a team with a different set of skills to navigate the design process. For a corporate website, you require professionals to create something unique from a business perspective.
Moreover, it will contain more number of pages, data, and features which are catering to current and potential users. You may have a project manager, designer, marketer, and developer in the team. A good team will help you achieve performance, target audience, good UX and UI, and functionality.
The salary of various team members will depend on the roles they play in the team and their experience. Their areas of expertise such as team handling, market analysis, design, front-end, and back-end development may vary. Your scope of the project may help you determine the skills that you require in a developer. Similarly, the tech lead of the team should be equipped with all technical task knowledge.
Additional Costs
The additional cost may include the maintenance and the marketing of the website. Without considering these two factors, you may not be able to set the right estimate for creating a website. The maintenance cost of the site includes the domain name, SSL, 3rd party integrations, hosting, and site configuration. Your website requires reliable, affordable, and best web hosting services.
For the maintenance part, you may require website protection, speed, uptime, and infrastructure cost. Additionally, cloud maintenance, servers, and storage clouds are necessary add-ons. It may also depend on the specific technical issues that may add up to the cost. The website hosting is crucial to the website as it may not run on the internet without it. So, pick one, which is pocket friendly.
Also, the domain name of the website averagely requires $10 to $30 per year depending upon your choice from .com, .org, .net, .io, and .store. The SSL certificate of the website prevents any unwanted threats and attacks on your customers and data. It may add up to $10 to $300. Also, third-party integrations may enhance website functionality. The number of integrations will impact the final price of the website.
Finally, your website requires adequate marketing in the form of email marketing, social media landing pages, and accounts to grab user’s attention. Moreover, it includes SEO, content, and link building to ensure your website grows organically. The SEO strategies for the website may depend on Google requirements. You may focus on multiple keywords at a time to get a better rank on the search engine. All these activities and strategies contribute to the website development cost.
This guest post was contributed by Max Babych.