Cost of a Web Site

A common question asked and often not answered among web designers is: what is the cost of a website. This is a complicated question as there are a lot of factors, custom web design work isn't like the retail industry with clearly defined price points. Below, I'll go through a few of the factors, and then, even go into the hard numbers.

Hard Costs

These costs are pretty fixed, there are certain things you need to host a website that can't be avoided:

• Domain name: from $15-35/year
• Host: from $5 to thousands per month, depending on the traffic and services. For example if you are hosting a direct to drive movie service, with tens of thousands of users, this won't be cheap. For most businesses this cost will be closer to $10-$30/month.

Preproduction

This is the stage before your site itself is made.

• Photography: both the purchase of stock images and hiring a photographer can be expensive. This could be anywhere from $0 to thousands, but I'd recommend setting aside a few hundred dollars if you don't already have high quality images to work with.
• Content writing: some clients save money by creating their own content, otherwise budget $25-$50 a page.
• Copy editing: if you do provide your own text, you'll still want your designer to proof it, and ensure it's "web-ready". Likely only a few hours work, so $50 is another safe budget.
• Video: if you need to shoot video for flash movies on your website, much like photography, the cost varies depending on what you need.
• High fidelity testing and focus groups: The most important part of preproduction is trying to minimize wasted production time. Focus groups and surveys are a great way of ensuring all of the elements you want in your website are desired by your users. Costs can go from $0-$1000 depending availability of participants, space rentals, meals, and of course analysis of the results.

Production

Now is where the real work begins.

• Design: a small site may take 10 hours of work, a large one 100 hours. Designers charge anywhere from $15/hr for inexperienced freelancers to $100/hr or more for industry leading professionals. For a typical small business site, you can budget $600 for this section.
• Image manipulation/optimization: depending on the amount of images, this could be a couple hours to hundreds for large projects. Again, for a small business $100-$200 worth of time should be sufficient.
• Testing: often included in the design component, your site should be tested extensively against many types of browsers, computers, small screen devices (cell phones, etc) to ensure it performs adequately.
  

Post-Production

Websites require a continuing investment of time and money. They lose value if left on their own and even small websites should be updated with some regularity.

• Surveys: once your site is up, solicit feedback to ensure it's effective. Your design studio can manage this campaign, or you can do it informally with your clients.
• Promotion: to get your site noticed on the internet it takes either time, money, or both. You can spend as little or as much as you'd like on this aspect depending on your business needs.
• Maintenance: keeping your site functional is of course important. A well designed site should maintain its look for a few years, but nevertheless it is a good idea to have someone available should any issues arise.
• Content: whenever possible, content should be kept up to date and fresh, otherwise you shouldn't expect much return traffic to your site.
  

Extras

The internet has a huge number of opportunities for businesses. If you want to go above a basic brochure like site, consider budgeting for something extra:

• Flash elements: Flash offers a rich experience to users if done well. It is of course more time consuming to make than a HTML based element, so of course it will add to the design cost of your project.
• Content Management System: If you'd like to be able to update your site yourself, without web programming experience, then consider a CMS. They are often more expensive than a standard site, but they will reduce the cost of maintenance, since you'll be able to post your own information without a developers help.
• E-commerce: from having an Ebay store, to setting up your own merchant account, secure website, online inventory, and payment system, the cost of an e-commerce application can range from a few hundred dollars to set up to many thousands.

Summary

The above might be nice to read, but may not answer your question: how much will my website cost? Here are a couple examples, all hypothetical:

Christminster Church: a local church making a site with monthly updates to post upcoming events for their members. Total: $935

• Domain name and host: $150/year.
• Content and Photography provided by church.
• Copy editing and image optimization: $75.
  
• Design of 5 page website: $300.
• Monthly updates provided to designer: $30/month = $360/year
• Limited web promotion: $50.
  

Sam's Autobody: a small business that wants a basic site to generate leads for real world business. Total: $1175

• Domain name and host: $150/year.
• Content provided by client.
• Photography: $100.
• Copy editing and image optimization: $75.
• Design of 8 page site: $400.
• Web promotion: $200.
• Flash image gallery: $250.

Of course, you can also contact me and I'll write you up a personalized quote.