'How much does a website cost' is one of the first questions almost every business owner asks. It's also one of the hardest to answer with a single value. This isn't because we are avoiding the question, but because the age-old answer, 'It depends', is the accurate one.
What it depends on is much easier to answer, and going through those points specifically will be far more valuable than a figure plucked from nowhere.
Contents
- Page count doesn't necessarily give you the full picture
- Whether the content for your site already exists or needs creating from scratch
- Ecommerce, booking forms, CRM's and anything the site needs to talk to
- Bespoke design versus working within an existing system
- How clear the brief is before work begins
- How quickly feedback is provided
- The pitfalls of providing a 'rough number'
- Why saying 'it depends' isn't avoiding the question of cost
Page count doesn't necessarily give you the full picture
It feels obvious to say that a five-page brochure site for a sole trader and a fifty-page site that covers multiple service areas and locations are very different builds - however, page count alone doesn't tell you everything. A ten-page site where every page needs a custom layout and detailed content is poles apart from a thirty-page site built from a handful of repeating templates. So it's important to bear in mind that cost is often less about page volume, and more about how bespoke each page is.
Whether the content for your site already exists or needs creating from scratch
Content is a key element that is most overlooked until progress of the site build begins to slow down. Photography, copy and service descriptions all have to come from somewhere, and if it doesn't already exist, someone has to create it (or at least have a good idea of what it will be) before the site can be built around it. A business that arrives with strong photography and ready-to-use copy is starting from a completely different position to one that needs all of that written and produced from scratch - making it one of the biggest project cost drivers. We've written separately about how much this specific factor can hold a build up if it's not planned for early.
Ecommerce, booking forms, CRM's and anything the site needs to talk to
Websites that need to take payments, manage bookings, or sync with a CRM or stock system are very different builds to ones that just need to explain what the business does and generate an enquiry. Every integration is another tool that needs setting up, testing and maintaining - adding real time extra work into a build.
Bespoke design versus working within an existing system
Building a design completely from scratch takes longer than working within an existing, well-built system or theme. Neither approach is automatically the right or wrong choice, it depends on what the business needs. If strong branding and guidelines already exist, the design phase moves faster because there's less to decide on. For businesses starting out without any of that, developing a visual identity alongside the site itself is a much bigger piece of work, so it's worth knowing and being prepared for that before work starts, rather than getting a surprise partway through.
How clear the brief is before work begins
A client who arrives with a clear sense of who the site needs to speak to and what it needs to do will be faster to build for than one who's still working that out. That's not to say there is any problem if you arrive not knowing all of that - plenty of businesses approach a web designer precisely because they need help figuring that out - but it does affect timeline and cost, because shaping a rough idea into a workable brief is a separate task before the website build can begin.
How quickly feedback is provided
This is more to do with project management than building a website specifically, but it's worth remembering that a build can only move as fast as the slowest element feeding into it. Very often that is how quickly decisions can be turned around, feedback can be given or missing images can be provided. Fast, concise, responses keep a project moving. Feedback that is staggered over separate messages across a couple of weeks inevitably increases the length of the project.
The pitfalls of providing a 'rough number'
Providing a rough estimate on the cost of a project without knowing the details tends to end up doing more harm than good, and yet it feels like such a reasonable question to ask.
The difficulty with giving rough estimates is similar to so many other industries. Give a figure that's too low and it sets an expectation that a proper quote (once you have the full picture) can't match - making it seem as though the price has increased, whereas really it was never attached to reality. Give a figure that's too high, and the business rules itself out of a project that may well have been much more modest than assumed. Numbers without context are always guesswork, and it is rarely a true reflection of the real project in hand.
Why saying 'it depends' isn't avoiding the question of cost
As outlined in this piece, there are many factors that determine the cost of a project, so saying 'it depends' isn't a way of keeping people in the dark - in fact, it's quite the opposite. It's about ensuring that an honest conversation takes place about what it is you need, what you might not need and how that can be accommodated within a price range that is affordable to your business. 'It depends' actually gives you the power and opportunity to craft something out that works for you. And if you want to talk through where your own project sits against this list, that's exactly the conversation we look forward to having with you.
