What Does Web Design Cost?

Web design prices can range anywhere from $299 to $200,000, sometimes even more.  The type of company that offers web design has just as big of a range as the cost.  The style of web design depends on the company that provides it and the price you’re willing to pay.  The price you’re willing to pay depends on the type of business you have and the amount of capital you are willing to invest.   And, if you’re like most businesses, you’re willing to invest as long as you know that there will be some sort of ROI and with web design, that’s hard to measure.

But that’s the bottom line isn’t it?  As a business owner, you’d be willing to pay thousands to get a return of tens-of-thousands just as you’d be willing to pay tens-of-thousands to get a return of hundreds-of thousands.  Isn’t that right?

The first question you should ask yourself is, “What do I want my website to do?”  Do you need an online brochure or a lead generator?  If you’re doing e-commerce, do you have a couple of products or do you have a long line of products?  Maybe you’re a blogger or graphic artist that wants to get a portfolio on line.   The answer to this question is a Fully Managed VPS in Canada that will have a direct relation to the amount you’ll be paying for your website.

The first cost you’ll incur is the web domain and hosting.  There are thousands of companies out there like Siteground, HostGator and Blue Host (to name a few) that all cost around the same amount.  Anywhere from $80-$100 per year for the domain and the hosting.  Who you choose is up to you, but it’s good idea to ask the web design company you go through if they have a preference as they may already having a working relationship with them, or they may do the hosting themselves.

Next, you need to think about how many pages you’ll need.  Pages like “about us”, “contact”, “services”, “why do business with us?”, “portfolio”, etc.  How many pages you want or need will have a direct relation to the cost of the website.  Each page will need to styled with it’s own graphics, images, banners and buttons.  And then there’s the content.

If you don’t already have the content ready for the website, it will reflect in the cost.  Most companies charge around $150-$200 per page for simple copy.  If you need more high impact, marketing driven copy, you can expect to pay more for it.  You shouldn’t count on low-priced freelance writers to provide you with great copy.  It won’t happen.  OK, maybe I shouldn’t say it won’t happen.  Let’s face it, you can get a lot for five bucks these days.  But in my experience good copy comes from a writer with years of marketing experience and good internet copy comes from a writer with years of internet marketing experience.

The next area to think about is graphic design.  Do you need a logo or any other graphic design work done?  If you want one of those nifty looking sliders, do you already have images for it?  Do you have any stock photography you want on your website or do you want the designer to provide it?  Graphic images, logos, banners, icons and buttons are all part of the look and feel of your website.  Whether or not you will be providing it will need to be taken into consideration when adding up the cost of your website.

The next thing to take into consideration when adding up the cost of your website is functionality.  Things like contact forms, social media links, newsletter sign-up forms down to simple “act now!” buttons are all part of the functionality of your website.  Every page can have something different, whether it’s prominent or in a sidebar or in the footer.   Think carefully about how you want to direct your prospects to move around your website, not to mention actually buy something!  Which brings us to shopping carts.

E-commerce is the largest growing trend on the internet besides social media.  Customers today feel more and more comfortable buying online, to the detriment of the store-front business owner.   If you need a shopping cart on your website, you can expect to pay quite a bit for it, especially if you have a lot of  different products.   However, like I mentioned at the beginning of this article, it’s all about ROI.  Having a shopping cart means you’ve got a direct product line to sell, which means you can see a direct return.  When you can see a direct return like that it’s easy to justify the higher cost of an e-commerce website.  That is, of course, as long as web surfers and online shoppers know that your website even exists.

Website optimization for search engines is different than search engine optimization or even internet marketing.  Most web design companies, including Genesis Unlimited, optimize their web designs for the search engines.  There are many tools available, especially for wordpress, that help in the optimization process, but the idea is to get the website ready for the SEO and internet marketing process.  This includes things like adding hyper-targeted keywords to titles and descriptions, alt tags and <H1> tags (to name a few), submitting a site-map to the search engines and adding “follow” or “no-follow” links to your pages and posts.   You can expect to incur an extra charge for your website here since there is quite a bit of work involved in website optimization.

So, what does web design cost?  You get what you pay for.  If you want a simple little online brochure that won’t be found on search engines and will most likely fail to generate any leads, $300 is a good starting point for you.  If you’re looking for a lead generating marketing machine, you should expect to pay anywhere from $1500 and up.  If you’re hosting an online shopping experience, small online businesses can start at $2000 and bigger mega-sites can go up to as high as $100,000 (can you imagine the cost of amazon.com?).

My advice is to plan ahead and do it right the first time.  You can end up spending twice or even three times as much money.  Just ask our clients from Annie’s Healing Hearts who, by the time Genesis Unlimited took over, had gone through three different designers, 2 of which failed to even deliver a finished product.

Call Genesis Unlimited today for a free estimate of your project, big or small.  We’d be happy to discuss your web design cost!  541-419-3206.