One of the biggest key questions I’m asked on every project, is what does a website cost?
And the reason why it is so difficult to answer without bombarding you with more questions, is simple in terms of, what sort of website are you looking for?
Or you can watch it on Vimeo : What does a website cost? ~ Blueocto Ltd
Uh-oh Caroline has made a video! Go easy, it’s our first one – but we try to answer a very common question, What does as a website cost?
I do apologise I do rattle on for a bit, but I do hope it has been helpful somewhat!
Hello I am Caroline Hagan, I run Blueocto which is a web company in North Tyneside. This is my first video but I felt the topic deserves a personal explanation as opposed to a written one.
I like to use the metaphor of cars, my husband is a vehicle technician, and we love cars, we go to car shows often, we have 2 classic cars, you get the idea.
Imagine walking into a car showroom, in your mind you have maybe a style, a colour, speed or even a price perhaps and only you know what you’re looking for.
As the car salesman I have to extract that information, in order to find the best car that matches your needs and wants.
Like websites, cars come in different shapes and sizes, colours, technical specifications, in fact, a customer was speaking to my husband the other day, and asked “Why don’t they show the prices in the car window anymore?“
And he said, “although you might be looking at a specific car, such as a Corsa, there are so many variants to that car that you car you can have, it wouldn’t make sense to have a-one price in the window.“
You could have heated seats, alloys, advanced parking assist, cruise control… the list goes on. But that price wouldn’t make sense to you, just looking at it.
That’s why you can’t set a figure on a website, without knowing more information.
What goes into a website build?
Often there is a lot more to it than just a visual design, what we need to do is maybe have a few meetings, do some research about your business, learning more about you and how you run things, what you’re trying to meet in terms of goals.
- Why is it you want a website?
- What do you think it might do for your business?
Does it meet accessibility needs? Often we have to cater for others that we don’t really consider often enough.
Also there is things we have to do before we even look at costing design in terms of domain names…
- Do you have a domain?
- Do you need Hosting?
- Do you need email accounts setup?
- Are we going to need databases?
The biggest thing is content – content is king – it is absolutely no good if someone comes to your website, it looks fantastic, but they have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about, or what you’re trying to sell.
- Do you need someone to help you with content?
- Might you need a copywriter?
- Do you have a marketing goal in mind, do you need to speak to someone about that?
Content is really the crux of what we’d need to get sorted first, as well.
Next would be things like, we would create wireframes, to try and establish a structure to the website.
Does it flow right when people are going through your website journey, or process?
Are they finding call-to-actions, are we getting them signing up, are we getting them buying products that you’re selling.
Then these would be the design stage, then onto development – the building of those designs, once you’re happy with those.
Often an integration of a system, whether it be a Content Management System like WordPress, or a shop system like Shopify.
Then after that would be testing – do links work? Can you sign up with an email? Can you go through the shop process and actually order a product? Do you get emails about that?
After that, again, there are ongoing updates, maintenance, there might be security updates you need to apply, especially to these systems that we way integrate.
SEO – are you looking to get on the first page of Google (as often may are)?
Marketing – do you have certain goals you want to do on social media? Do you want to drive blog posts to Facebook? Things like that, the ongoing tasks as well.
So it is very hard to put a price on that, it really does depend on your business, your business needs, and what we can do for you about that.
A few little things that are often … I’ve come across whilst building websites, once of the things is, that I like to give food for thought about, is, your website is like your shop-front.
You do obviously invest a lot of money in shops, getting your insurance sorted and making sure it looks really good from the street, you want to entice those people in and get them to make a purchase or use your services.
That’s often the metaphor I like to use as a well. Think of it as a shop and how much effort and time and maybe money you’d put into that as well.
Another thing I’ve found, people tend to go through a lot of websites, in terms of stages, like you would with a home.
You’d have your starter home, maybe when you first left home, everything’s a little bit cheap, quick and easy, but it get’s you there!
Then your next home is your family home, you spend most of your time there and then your final home is your retirement home, you’ve done everything, you’ve bought everything you probably want, you tend to just sort of, refresh things now and again.
And I find people do this with websites, “let’s get something up online“, “Just put anything up there, don’t care“.
Then you might have a ‘brochure’ website with a bit more information about what they do – about their services and the team.
Then your big bells-and-whistles website, where you might’ve added into things like Shops and Blogs, and all these other things.
How much does all that cost… doing it over and over again?
In such big scale, working with different teams, different designers and the cost and time involved. Wouldn’t it make sense to try and do this once, perhaps? That’s something to think about as well.
Another thing is budgeting, just like anything else, a website isn’t a product, it’s a service. It’s something we have to collaborate with you, to get right and it might be an iterative process, might not get it right first time.
As long as we get it right by the end, and we’re reaching those goals you’ve set, that is the key thing.
Also, the Internet and devices are always changing, so this is also to consider as well. What might’ve worked back in 2000, doesn’t work anymore now, because there is so many things to consider.
Again, that can sometimes affect the cost of building a website – responsive websites are popular in terms of them working on your phone.
Still you’ve got to think about the nuts and bolts as well – are people using Blackberry’s and turning off all the scripts and images, so they only get your content? This is why it’s gotta work with the content.
These are things to consider as well.
In terms of payment options, I like to be very flexible, to me it makes more sense to pay in stages, when things are occurring in the project.
If say, anything comes up, for example, the car needs a service, or you’re moving house, whatever… these things happen in life and I’d like to think that, y’know you’ve paid upto a point and you’ve got something you need and it keeps my cashflow going as well, so works both ways.
We’re both small businesses, I know how it works and you need to keep that money flowing, but you also need money coming into the business as well.
That’s something I like to try and work with, with people as well. I don’t like to just do a website, pay a price, then walk away.
I like there to be a relationship that we can always review things, if things aren’t working 6-months down the line, because things have changed in your business, then fine let’s have another look at it (the website).
I would say just approach it like you would any other thing in your business – you’d carefully consider insurance options, you’d carefully consider maybe getting an accountant, you’d carefully consider buying a shop, vehicle or van for your business as well – so have the same thought for your website.
This is the first impression people get online of you online, it doesn’t take a lot to give them a good or bad impression.
We really want to get them the first time, get them through the website, get them to do what you are looking for, whether it be signing up to an email… we will discuss that with you.
I hope that has explained a few things about this big “what does a website cost” question. Otherwise I’d be happy to sit down over a coffee and go over your project and maybe I’ll meet up with you in the future, so thanks very much.
