Finally, you are all set to start a website and take your business online, but before this, it's essential to know how to manage the process and how much it costs to build a corporate website. And the truth is that it is not dependent on one factor. There are a plethora of aspects that you need to keep in check!
If you are a businessman and are all set to start your corporate website, this guide will help you get a brief insight into the cost involved in making a website. You will get a brief idea about the aspects of small business website design costs in this guide.
So, without any further delay, let's know briefly about how much a business website cost.
How much does a business website cost?
Whether you are operating your business offline or online, it is crucial to build and maintain a website in this digital era. At present, the average upfront cost of a website, which includes launching and designing, ranges between $10,000 to $150,000
Additional Resource: Build A Website for Free
Factors that affect the price
Building a website is not an easy assignment. It takes time, and a great website always needs keen attention. You also have to understand about website accessibility, like why having a website that is accessible or in ADA compliance matters. Many factors affect the price; here, we will introduce you to the two main ones:
- Design
- Complexity
Design: How website design affects the price?
Your website is your most important marketing asset. It is one of the most notable sources to generate potential customers, or you can say that it's the hub of your inbound marketing strategy.
Design is the sole of any website, and the complex will be the design, the more it will cost. As time has passed,web designers have improved their techniques based on customer feedback, and they have access to much better tools. More complex will be the design, more time will take for website designers to make it, and due to this, cost always varies.
Complexity
Addressing complexity in the process is essential because the cost of a website is directly proportional to its complexity.
The Complexity of a website generally depends on the two significant factors:
- 3rd party integrations
- The complexity of the design
3rd Party Integrations
Business websites integrate third-party applications by inserting code to improve functionality, measure performance, and gather the data that support future marketing efforts.
The number of third-party applications used by businesses continues to grow. These applications help them create interactive websites that increase customer engagement and conversions.
Third-party integrations enhance the user experience, which supports your rankings in the search engines and makes it simple for visitors to walk through your sales process.
It will help the users if you have integrations like email, live chat outsourcing, payment gateways, QR Code Generator, and other functionalities.
Many 3rd party integrations, especially in eCommerce website, require customizations of arcane settings to function smoothly for the user. To make it easy, you can also use CRM for ecommerce.
However, understand that the more integration you add more will be the complexity, functionality, and cost of the app.
Design Complexity
To help with the design complexity, cost of a small business website, we primarily look at four significant parameters.
- Ready-made templates
- Component libraries
- Customer user interface
- Branding
Ready-made templates
Templates work as first impressions. Some reports show that 94% of users stick to your website after seeing the design for the first time. According to the Google algorithm, if your website takes more than 3 seconds to open up, there will be a considerable bouncing probability. So you have to make sure that the template you use should be simple yet attractive at the same time. Fixed elements, such as sticky menu can have real benefits. This can provide a seamless customer user experience. PikWizard's free background design images are also helpful to creating an effective first impression.
Component Libraries
Component libraries differ or depend upon the programming language and design software that you use to utilize. Component libraries are like the building blocks of your website and mobile application. Choosing a diversified and less variety will increase the complexity of the design.
Customer user Interface
There are many pre-built UI kits at your disposal. You can use them to start the design process. It is easy, but if you choose a customized way, you will collaborate between design and development, design and strategy, and design and consistency. Considering all these factors, the cost of a good website for small business can rise. You can also try using an exit intent popup which will help you keep your visitors on your site.
Branding
Branding is just like a long term investment. It stays for a long time and is best represented by user experience, usability, and visual design. Branding helps you retain customers for a longer time.
If you have more budget, you can put more effort into branding by placing ads. try a free adwords tool like Cleverads. You can create, optimize, and manage your Google Ads Campaigns fast and easily.
Required team and timeline
If you are looking to hire programmers to build your business website, use an online coding assessment (for example this java online test) to assess their coding skills to make better-informed hiring decisions
For a great website, you need a professional team that includes:
- Project Manager
- Project Architect
- UI/UX designers
- Web developers
- QA and testing specialists
By entrusting each stage of a website development project to a respective experienced specialist, you improve the chances of justifying your expenses and getting a website that lives up to all your expectations.
Nevertheless, it might be still recommended for you to learn at least the basics of web development to make sure you and your future team are on the same landing page.
Cost Spreadsheet
Till now, you get an idea about website cost and what factors affect the price. For building a corporate website, you have three options to choose from:-
1) Hire Freelancers
2) Hire a local Agency
3) Outsource the work
Freelancers
You can hire freelancers, and their prices vary depending on their experience. Freelancers will charge somewhere between $10 to $30 per hour. In most cases, freelancers are easy to find and cheaper to engage, but the cheaper the freelancer lowers the quality you get.
local Agency
Hire local agencies, and here in America, a web design and development agency costs you more than $ 80 per hour. The overall website set up can cost you around $40,000, and more than this.
If you ignore the cost factor for some time, then work delivered by US agencies is extraordinary, and with an agency, you can build a long-term relationship. At the same time, local agencies are slightly more expensive than freelancers; cheapest isn't the best choice.
Outsource to an Agency
If you hire an overseas agency, it will bring down the cost of small business website building by $33/hr. So for a complete website, an overseas agency will charge you around $ 13,200.
From outsourcing, you can expect certain things: High quality at a lower cost, but you can face a time gap.
Additional costs
Now your website is almost complete to be live, but this is not the end. There are some additional costs that you have to take care of in the small business website building.
Additional costs are maintenance costs of your website, including Hosting, domain name, an SSL certificate.
Hosting
Without getting a hosting plan, you can not run your website on the web. Hosting a small business website costs around $24 to $10,000 per year. Hosting depends upon many factors like size, bandwidth requirements, and the number of users coming to your website.
Of course, you can always get a Black Friday deal that some affiliate bloggers promote and get your hosting for much cheaper.
For example, this HostGator Black Friday page let’s you buy HostGator at ridiculous prices, and it’s a long term solution.
Other hosting companies are the same as they all offer insane discounts during Cyber week.
Plenty of options to choose from!In fact, because it’s such a big upfront investment, it might be worthwhile to take the time to try out the host before you buy it. HostGator free trial is a thing (our preferred choice) So is Bluehost; so is Interserver...
Additional Resource: Best SSD Web Hosting
Domain Name
A domain name is essential because it will be the first thing you contribute to your website's branding. And for this, you will get a yearly plan, and it will cost you $2 -$20 per year.
Additional Resource: Fixmyhomecomputer-Easy Ways to Come Up with a Good Domain Name
SSL Certificate
SSL certificates ensure the security of your website. The primary purpose of an SSL certificate is to protect your website data from data breaching. SSL certificates for small business websites will cost you $15 to $ 15000.
These are all the things you need to know to build a website for your small business. There are lots of things that play an indispensable role behind the curtain.