What it Costs to Build a Website

Or maybe you’re a web developer considering branching out on your own and REALLY want to know what the going rate for website development costs are. Regardless of who you are, having a baseline to work with is always a good idea. Dabwire is always upfront about pricing and believe everyone needs to be too (although honestly many in the Internet marketing field are not – charging clients different amount based on their situation and income). Before we get to the pricing, I want to ask you… do you think you need a website?

This is important… and let’s just get this out of the way…

You need a website.

Period.

And not just any ol’ website, but a great website with a clear, crisp easy to navigate design, with superb usability and functionality. Furthermore, YOU need to be able to easily update that website.  It doesn’t matter if you are a national corporate brand, a smaller brick and mortar with ‘plenty of business’, a brick and mortar with only local business, or an ice cream shop that only sells to people between 5’10 and 5’11 wearing baseball hats before 3 pm… you still need a website!

Your business can be broad or niche, it can be large or small, and despite what you may believe… you need a website!

Recently a local furniture company spent nearly a $million dollar!!. $ renovating their retail space in order to attract new business. But an investment in a great website  and internet marketing plan costs a TINY FRACTION, but brought in MORE BUSINESS!

Now, what does a website cost?

Like the businesses they represent, websites are not all created equal and serve various purposes, therefore they can vary greatly in cost as the level of design and functionality increases and becomes more complex to suit your company’s needs.

Basic Website – $2000

$2000 A basic designed website, acts primarily as an online brochure, establishing a necessary presence online to answer your customers’ questions “do you exist?”, “are you professional?” and “what do you do?” A basic website can be done for a mere market average of $2000. This website will not allow you to interact with your audience (social networking, blog), transact business directly through your site (eCommerce), or enable you to manipulate and update the pages and content within your site without hiring a web programmer/designer to do it for you (Content Management System does enable this for more $$$). A basic website site will serve to help brand and market your company, showcase your products and services and inspire sales as a lead generating tool.  Unfortunately, the design of your website will be tempted at such low costs. This means that your site probably mirrors that of other sites on the web.  With our firm, these sites will be CSS and XHTML Coded to allow your site to look the same on nearly every computer/device and will be Search Engine Optimized (SEO) for greater natural search engine ranking success. But not all firms code the same and have SEO as a top priority. Also, web analytics are provided with every site we build to track and ensure your web success.

Custom Website – $2500-$7500

$2500-$7500 Custom designed websites, with all the aesthetic beauty that you can possibly envision, cost a market average of $2500 – $7500.

These sites are still not quite as functional as other sites, but are extraordinarily pretty and all design elements are created and designed specifically for your site and tailored to your market needs. These sites will still not enable audience interactivity, eCommerce, or content management. The sites cost is due in part to the number of hours it takes to create your company’s custom design.  The site will serve the same necessary purposes that a basic designed website will but will be far more aesthetically pleasing and custom to your business desires.  Again, with our firm, these sites will be CSS and XHTML Coded to allow your site to look the same on nearly every computer and will also be Search Engine Optimized (SEO) for greater natural search engine ranking success. Web analytics are provided with every site we build to track and ensure your web success.

Content Management System (update it yourself) – $3000- $8,500

$3000- $8,500 Depending on the level of aesthetic design that is requested Content Management System (CMS) websites will run at a market average of $5,750. These websites are created with both functionality and design in mind, as you will receive both custom art design and mid level functionality including the ability to manage and update all content, images, and text contained within the pages of your site (infinite number of pages possible). With a CMS capable website, your site will have endless possibilities as a pluggable, flexible web application capable of adding additional features as you desire.

These websites are built with the idea that you will have a significant number of changes, additions or updates to be made to your site in the near future. Instead of being charged hourly rates to make such changes, a CMS system enables you to do a majority of the basic additions without prior coding or web designing knowledge.  Social interactivity with your site visitors is possible with a site of this caliber, as a BLOG will be present within your site enabling you to place posts of content that you believe is relevant and desired by your audience. Your audience can choose to respond to your blog posts and each others comments allowing for 2 dimensional interaction between you, your audience, and within your audience.  Some eCommerce and real state listing sites can be created within this price range depending upon level of functionality and design.  Also, sites of this caliber have varying prices with regard to design elements. These sites do have custom design work, but more expensive elements like Flash Art creation will affect pricing.  Again, with our firm, these sites will be CSS and XHTML Coded to allow your site to look the same on nearly every computer and will also be Search Engine Optimized (SEO) for greater natural search engine ranking success. But not all firms code the same and have SEO as a top priority. Also, web analytics are provided with every site we build to track and ensure your web success.

Anything Additional/Custom – $15,000- $100,000+

$15,000- $100,000+ If you are looking for advance functionality including social networking, blogging,eCommerce, or any other web application topped off with the markets leading design elements, you should expect to pay a bit more. Actually, just looking at more sophisticated projects you’ll incur a higher fee as there are only a limited number of talented people (and reliable companies) that can do this kind of work – and they typically charge a premium.

Like I said before, some eCommerce and web applications can be created for less, while most successful ventures are created for much more.  Sites that have fallen in this price range include Facebook.com,Orkut.com, and BestBuy.com to name only a few.  A site within this price range may be built and hand coded from scratch – and in all cases will require extreme customization – and coordinating various technologies in order to work with your company or infrastructure.

That means your site is unlike any other and requires the attention and expertise of an experienced web application developer(s) and web site designer(s). A site that falls into this category requires months of analysis, research, consulting, database design and implementation, software development and integration, site quality assurance and testing.

This is the mother load and it is priced accordingly.  I know what you are thinking, ‘who knew it was so expensive?’ And the only answer I can give is that web design and creation is like any other craft or trade and requires a high level of knowledge and expertise. Furthermore, with the rapid rate that technology and the internet is constantly changing, the gap is beginning to seriously widen between web amateurs and professionals. Can you still get a website for $500? Sure you can, but it will not display and operate like a professionally designed website will and it will be as ineffective and unsuccessful as the individual who designed it.