Website Design Pricing Factors Every Business Should Consider

by Jan 9, 2017Marketing, Web design

website design pricing factors

What if I told you that website design pricing is different for every single project?

I am willing to bet you’d be shocked, but it’s true. Every web design project I have been involved in has always come out to be a different price. The thing is, if you understand the different factors that go into website design pricing, you’ll be more prepared for the process of building a website for your business, and the expenses that will go into it.

You’ll also be more prepared, and better equipped to handle these fly-by-night web designers that only care about making a quick buck off of you. I’ll cover the website design pricing factors that affect the overall costs of every website project.

The Main Website Design Pricing Factors

The size of your website

This is the main factor that determines the overall cost of your website. Not only do you have to consider your main pages, like home, about, services, contact, etc., but you have to consider all of the other pages as well. You might have internal pages, such as a page for each service you provide (which is good for SEO, by the way), or individual product pages for your website, if you sell physical products.

Every page adds up, in terms of the time invested in your project. We have to build each one of those pages, crafting them to look good and fit consistently within the rest of your website.

Redesigning or Rebuilding an Existing Site

Believe it or not, it can be more difficult or costly to rebuild or redesign an existing website than it is to build it from scratch. The reason is because every web designer works differently. Sometimes it can be difficult to go in and try to figure out how or why the original designer did something a certain way. It can also be incredibly difficult and time consuming to fix something they did incorrectly.

Extra or Custom Features

I love creating extra or custom features for websites. One example is the custom bracket finder that I built for PTM Edge. The challenge was to take 6000 combinations of years, makes, & models and make it so that you can find the right mirror bracket for your particular boat. Another custom feature they needed was the ability to search for their dealer locations, based on their zipcode. The user can type in their zipcode and a list of the closest retailers will show up, based on their proximity.

Features like this aren’t an everyday occurrence, but they are certainly a big factor into the overall cost of a project. The cost is directly related to the amount of time spent in development and testing.

website coding

This is why WordPress is so popular. You can build a powerful website, packed with features, without breaking the bank. A lot of times you can customize a plugin that does what you want it to do, which can be more cost effective than developing the functionality from scratch. For example, if I customized a plugin to add a directory to a website, it may only add $500 to the overall budget of a project, but if I had to create it from ground zero, it will increase the costs tremendously.

You have to factor in time for coding, testing, designing (structure and CSS), all which takes a lot of time. Not only can it rack up a huge bill, but it can add weeks to the project.

video website media

Custom Media

Another factor that goes into website design pricing is any custom media created for the project. If you need a custom video for your website (which is highly effective and reduces your bounce rate) that video takes time to be created. The video has to be planned, equipment is rented, and a crew is hired. Then, there’s editing and finalizing the video project, which all takes time.

ecommerce website design pricing factor

Ecommerce (Online Shopping Carts)

This is definitely a big factor that greatly affects the cost of a project. A lot of extra work goes into building an eCommerce website. You have to create individual pages for each product. You also have to set up payment gateways to take payments online. You have to factor in shipping, which should be handled automatically by the website. Then you have transactional emails that should be sent throughout the buying process. All of this has to be created and designed for a fluid purchasing experience for the user.

Membership Sites

If you need a membership website, it’s a lot like an eCommerce website. You have to create a member’s area. You also need to set up a way to collect payments for their membership, and lock the content, so that non-paying visitors can’t access it. There’s also transactional emails associated with that, such as welcome emails, member updates, and automatically generated emails notifying the owner of new members.

Website Design Pricing Tips

I know it may seem like you’re ready to take out a second mortgage to build a website for your business, but if you follow these simple tips, it can help you to keep costs down, while getting the website that is right for your business.

  • Focus only on the features you need.
  • Remember, you can always add features later.
  • Hire a web designer that has positive reviews on sites like Thumbtack or Google My Business.
  • Focus on building your site in a CMS like WordPress, to keep costs down.
  • Think about website maintenance packages, to protect your investment.
  • Talk to your web designer about building the site in phases, adding features as you progress.
  • Shop around: Many times a smaller agency will over deliver, while being competitively priced.
  • Look at their web design portfolio to see if they’ve built projects similar to what you need.

These tips and information should help you to make an informed decision about your website project. Your business needs a great website, but that doesn’t mean you should just throw money at it. If you take a systematic approach, understanding the website design pricing factors and how they directly affect the budget of your project, you can focus on what your business really needs. This will make your website project more successful in the long run.

Save

Save

Save

Save