You know that you need a website, but how much will it cost? The range of prices for website development is astounding. Starting on the high end — complex corporate transactional sites will run into the millions. That is not what we are focused on here. For small businesses, websites can run from a few thousand and up. It all depends on the complexity of the project.

Understanding the costs

Time is money: that’s pretty straightforward. Whatever takes time in the project will equal more costs. There are components of every site launch, no matter how simple or complex, that must be done by someone:

1. definition (strategy): there needs to be a detailed plan for what the site will do. What is it communicating, what transactions will be processed, who is the audience, etc?
2. site architecture: this defines what pages will exist, how the user will move from page to page, what elements are on each page.
3. site design: the design component brings in the visual elements. It defines things like imagery, fonts, colors, and page style
4. content development: this includes creating all of the content: copywriting, editing, photography and graphical choices.
5. coding & testing: this is where the site is actually built.
6. site registration & hosting: this includes purchasing the domain and hiring an internet service provider (isp) to host the site.
7. extras: brand creation, search engine optimization (seo), flash, custom photography, copywriting, analytics and reporting. There are plenty of additional options that may apply to your project.
8. maintenance: a site is not done when it goes live: it is just beginning. Site maintenance involves keeping the content fresh, responding to email correspondence, monitoring site traffic, transactional processing if applicable.

How do these components add up to a price for development and maintenance? Ask yourself, how complex is my project? Do I have a good definition for what content I want or do I need help with that? The more time that is needed for each of the pieces, the more the project will cost. Large companies usually have many stakeholders involved in a project. That alone can drive the strategy component into five figures.

As each project is unique and the starting points vary greatly (redesign v. new site, e-commerce capabilities, lots of content already written v. starting from scratch, etc) it is impossible to give a quote without knowing the details of a project. We are happy to provide custom quotes and are also currently offering a FREE one hour strategy session.