Pricing
| What does it cost to build a website? |
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If you spend any time researching on the web looking for the price range of what different web designers charge for creating websites, you’ll likely come up short handed. There isn’t really a set range of standard prices across the industry that would allow anyone to publish clear charts and graphs of the average costs of websites. In general, the answer that you’ll find on the web to the the question of how much it costs to build websites is “it depends. ” And for the most part, that’s actually pretty accurate. There are so many variables that go into the cost of building a website that it is difficult to come up with cut and dry averages across the industry. Depending on some of these variables, your site might cost $500 or it might cost $50,000 (or more.) It depends on who you choose to build your site, the kind of functionality you want the site to have, whether or not you want a custom design, how many pages, how many photos or photo galleries, if you want videos, streaming audio, newsletter sign up forms, or a blog built into the site, among many other things. This is why it is necessary for you to have an initial conversation with any web designer about your project. We, as website builders, need to know exactly what you’re looking for with your site, and until we know the details, we can’t accurately estimate how much time it will take to build your site, or what kind of extra software costs could be involved. In general, I create simple websites starting at a price of $2,000. I define a simple website as one that has around 10 pages or less, might include a newsletter sign up form (and integration with list building/newsletter publishing software), under 20 photos (such as stock photos), maybe one or two streaming videos, and a contact page where people can send you emails by using a form on your website. You can almost always find someone like your friend’s brother’s cousin who will build you a simple site like this for $500. While it may seem appealing to be able to get a site up on the web for that price, keep in mind that in a situation like this, the hidden downsides can be unfortunate. First of all, most people who get cheap websites built like this don’t realize that after the site is built, they will most likely want to start changing text on certain pages of the site pretty quickly. It could be, for example, that they want to adjust the tone of the copywriting on the homepage, or they want to change a date for an upcoming teleconference. To make changes like this on a cheap website, you will most likely have to hire the person who built the website, even if it’s just one word, or one sentence. (This is because the text on your site is surrounded by programming code that generates the site.) Often, web designers charge a minimum fee of 15 minutes or 30 minutes at their hourly rate, even if the change you want takes just two minutes. Over the course of a year, hiring the web designer to make these kinds of minor changes on your site can add up. I have several clients who had sites like this before I built their website for them, and they reported that they were spending between $1,500 and $2,500 a year... just on making minor changes to their website. If you have a site built by me, that cost can be avoided. The software platform I use to build websites, called Joomla, allows you to have the control to make these kinds of changes to your website by yourself, even if you don’t know any programming code at all. The second major downside to getting a cheap website built for $500 is that your site will most likely end up not looking or feeling very professional. Usability research done with hundreds of average internet users has consistently shown that people make up their minds about whether or not a website is credible and professional within half a second of arriving to a new site. That means that within half a second, people judge you and your business or practice based on what your site looks and feels like. Your website is an online expression of you and your business, and cheap websites don’t tend to express a very good image. A $500 website might seem like a good idea in the beginning, but choosing this route can cost you a lot of lost revenue in the future... from people coming to your homepage and leaving after a few seconds without even learning what you have to offer. When I build websites, I put a lot of focus on making sure that the site is very good looking, is super easy to use, and in general gives the visitors a clean and clear experience of you and your business. In addition to having a great looking, easy to use website that can save you a great deal of money each year by allowing you to make changes to it yourself, there are a number of other things that you get when you choose to have a website built by me:
I can say with some assurance that you will not find this level of care with someone who builds you a $500 website. The pricing for more complicated sites than the kind of simple site I’ve been discussing can vary greatly. Again, it really depends on many variables and requires a meeting about your needs for the website. In general, however, most of the sites I build tend to be between $2,000 and $7,000 with the higher priced sites involving a great deal more complexity (such as creating a business directory or an online store with ecommerce), than the simple kind of site I described above. If you would like to get an accurate quote from me about your website idea, contact me and we’ll schedule a time to meet. The first meeting usually takes between 30 minutes and one hour. If during this meeting it looks like you would be interested in working with me, I then create a written proposal, send it to you, and we go from there. I hope you find the information on this page helpful, and if you’re interested in talking with me, I look forward to speaking with you! |
