How much does a website really cost?

Every web site is different, which makes it impossible to set standard pricing. This being the case, all web developers use different methods to determine the cost for web design. You may be afraid of the cost. You have heard of people who have built web sites themselves and others who have spent tens of thousands of dollars. Some business owners are very pleased with their site, but we all know of others that think it has been a waste of time and money. At a minimum, you need a site with a professional look that reflects the mission of your business. The site should include your logo, key marketing messages, and basic information like your phone number, locations, and products. Or, your business may have more complex needs like collecting customer information or selling products online. Once you lock down exactly what functionality you need from your site, youll be able to choose a web site design vendor who can offer you the best combination of value and results. To have a successful web site you will need: 1. One or more domain names 2. Server space to hold the site 3. Content 4. Web Site Design 5. Professional placement and search engine marketing 6. Website Maintenance Lets look at each element: Domain Names Your domain name is how people will look for you on the web. You can register a unique domain name for abour $30 for two years. (There are some registrants that charge somewhat less). Domain names you might recognize are amazon.com, ibm.com, and surigaodigitalservices.net. A professional web developer can show you how to select and register your name. Every day hundreds of domain names are registered, so the sooner you start the better the chances that the name you want will be available. Server Space You will want your site hosted with a commercial hosting company. For a small business site figure on $20- $30 per month. If you want to use E-Commerce and take credit cards then $50/month is a good estimate. Keyword Rich Content You may already have catalogues and brochures that can serve as the basis for your site. If not then you will need to develop the content. You may need photographs or special art work. Obviously the costs here will vary widely, so we can not give an estimate. If you have the text, photographs, and art work available then the cost should be minimal. Web Site Design A professional web site designer will save you hours of valuable time and produce an original and attractive site. The designer should work with you to capture your vision for the look and feel of the site. Since this is the representation of your company, potentially to millions of people, you should have the site professionally designed. Figure on $250-$500 per page for a basic page, more for an E-commerce page. A top designer will probably not start a project for less than $1000.00. Corporate or commercial site goes beyond the basic on-line brochure. More complex sites feature a greater level of interactivity and database integration. You may need a private intranet for employee communication and document sharing, or an extranet to share information and track vendors and/or customers. Corporate web sites usually start around $5,000 and can go as high as $100,000 depending on the complexity. A complex interactive site has a large amount of back-end programming. More complex sites feature a greater level of interactivity and database integration. Most complex corporate sites consist of data driven content and dynamically generated pages. The amount of pages is not as relevant as the amount of programming involved. The most important aspect to an interactive site is that its easy to navigate, fast, and scalable. These web sites usually start around $15,000 and can go as high as $250,000 depending on the complexity. Back end programming can be done in a variety of different languages, some of the more popular server-side languages are PHP and ASP. Web Interfaces are normally written in CSS and HTML. If you dont know what these languages are, dont worry, let your designer or programmer make a recommendation. Blog and CMS designs start at $1500 in the global market. This price is for a website that has minimal graphical complexity, no customized icons, and no logo production. What you do get at this price is rock-solid, hand-crafted, browser-tested CSS, XHTML, and simple (but striking) graphic design. In most cases, bells and whistles like plugin support, unique page designs, and extra graphics push the price up into the $1800-$2000 range. From there, the price is largely dictated by page-specific CSS/XHTML production and custom graphic design. Its totally conceivable that a pimped out blog could run as much as $3000. Rest assured, though, that it would be totally badass, and the recipient of the design would receive mad props for having such a killer online abode. The major elements of a website/blog design include: * Graphical comps produced in Photoshop * Graphical splicing for optimal CSS/XHTML structure * CSS/XHTML production in standards-compliant fashion * Unique CSS/XHTML adaptation to CMS platform of choice * Bell-and-whistle functionality to meet client requirements All of the steps highlighted above require a certain degree of expertise to be completed in professional fashion. Unfortunately, people who want designs are oftentimes unfamiliar with the amount of knowledge required to pull all this off in seamless fashion. Sometimes I think people see a design and think its all just a matter of applying a look to stuff thats already there. In reality, thats basically whats going on. In practice, however, things are intensely more complicated. And this is why you hire a professional. Professional website/blog designs are a luxury item. Look at it like this: plenty of businesses buy 60? HD TVs for their stores and displays, but only individual consumers who have money and really want a big, bad TV would ever actually kick down and buy one. Other Professional designers and their startup fees: The Blog Studio: $3,000-$5,000 Javier Cabrera: $2,500 Professional Placement and Search Engine Marketing A well chosen domain name and a great looking web site are not enough. Your web site needs to be properly marketed so that potential customers find your site. One goal of the marketing process is to achieve a high ranking with the major search engines. A professional web site marketing firm may make changes, often invisible, to your site in order to achieve a high ranking. The firm should register your site with various search engines and directories. They may recommend special pages called Content Pages for your site. You should get a full report on their activities and your search engine placement. You should figure on several hundred dollars for a small site that does not require additional pages. Web Site Maintenance A web site needs to be maintained, both in content and in positioning. As your business changes, you should be updating your site, just as you would update your advertising brochures. Search engine positioning is a dynamic process. Your site may need to be modified to reflect the latest changes in search engine criteria. You will want reports reflecting your latest search engine ranking. Periodically most of your site will need to be reregistered. You should budget at least $100-$200/month for marketing maintenance, and be prepared to spend $1000/month or more for a large site aggressively marketed and maintained. Content maintenance costs depend on the number and difficulty of the changes requested or required. If youre not familiar with web site design, you may have some misconceptions to overcome. Some tasks wont be as simple as you imagine; other features you may not have considered may be fairly easy to add. The best web site design professionals act like consultants - working to understand your needs, then proposing solutions.