Following on from our article ‘3 steps to setting a website budget’, let’s take a look at some further important considerations.
Important Considerations
Web design is a Service, not a Product
Your website is the product, but web design and development is a service. Requirements change, ideas develop, business progresses etc. Therefore, putting a single price to a website can be extremely difficult.
There is a lot involved in building a Website
Building a professional looking website that services your customers is no easy task. Website projects can often take between 8 and 12 weeks to complete, and that’s with a team of 3 or 4 people working on them. Pricing your website will often depend on the level of detail, as well as the amount of time estimated to accomplish the different features.
Pricing per page never works
Often, you’ll see cheap web design companies quoting ‘1000 euros for a 10 page website.’ Which is absurd. This model gives no consideration to the volume or functionalities that may be required.
The long and short of it, is pricing per page is a long outdated model. There’s more to a website than the number of pages you see. You need to take into account what’s going on behind the scenes too.
Quotes and proposals are subjective
Like we mentioned earlier, quotes or proposals often vary greatly. You’re not always comparing apples to apples. Sometimes you’re comparing two very different things, and you need to be mindful of that.
There is more than one way to pay
Some agencies work on a 50% downpayment, 50% on completion. Pont Bleu breaks things down into manageable chunks. Others will work hourly, others will bill monthly.
The best way to handle this is to have an open and honest discussion with your agency, and see if you can work out a payment plan that works for both parties.
Standards vary
Just like quotes and proposals, standards are not equal. Companies differ in the way they design and build websites. And honestly, some agencies are better than others. Just look at their work. Is it creative? Does it work for you? Do you like the people you’re communicating with?
You have to be comfortable with your agency, your website can be a big financial outlay, and can have a huge impact on your business.
Here are some things to be careful of…
Be careful
The world of web design is fraught with graphic designers that have little or no experience in marketing or web development, just as it has many clever developers that haven’t the first idea of workable design, branding or marketing strategy. And it’s unfortunate but true, that honest designers and developers have been given a bad name by quick-buck scammers and tricksters.
Here are a few things to look out for:
People offering website design packages
“5 or 10-page websites, for X price.” It just doesn’t make sense.
Companies offering these sorts of website design packages don’t have an understanding of the web industry and how things work in this day and age.
They work on a ‘cash grab’ model taking a lot of small projects to cover bills and make a wage, and that’s it. That’s not what you want from your web design agency! At Pont Bleu, whether its for design or development – we like to think and act like an extension of our clients business. This helps them grow, and in turn, helps us grow.
Friends getting their website cheaper
So your friend got a cheap website? Great. But does it do what you want yours to do? How does it look? How does it function? Perhaps your friend’s website has nothing to do with yours.
If they have a recommendation for a good agency or designer, give them a call. But try to leave the costs out of it, because their website and business will have different needs to yours.
As always, cheaper isn’t better. Cheaper is just cheaper. And, you pay for what you get.
And always remember…
Your website is often your biggest selling tool. It’s at work when you’re asleep. Therefore, it needs to represent you perfectly. First impressions matter, and when someone lands on your site, you don’t want to risk losing the chance to convert them into a lead or a sale.
Your website is often your first brand touchpoint, and therefore, you need to make it the best it can be. Make it work for your business, and it will help you grow.
Some actual prices (hooray…)
By now, you’re probably wishing that we’d just jumped to the figures and got on with telling you the cost of a website. But as you’ve probably figured out, it’s really not that straight forward.
So here’s our rough guide to website design pricing:
Building it yourself
If you’re going to build it yourself using something like Wix, here’s how the figures are likely to break down.
Wix’s pricing starts as low as 5 euros per month. However, assuming you don’t want your users to be annoyed with banner adverts and pop-ups, you’ll be paying about 25 euros per month.
That’s 300 euros per year. Plus the cost of your emails.
And one of the main things it doesn’t cover, is the time it’ll take you to figure out the Wix platform and build your site in the first place. Let’s imagine you spend 10-20 hours creating your website, and you normally charge 50 euros per hour. That’s an additional 500-1000 euros straight away.
So in year one, you would be spending a minimum of 775 euros. And that’s without fiddling, tweaking, and updating. If you then go and try to work out how to install Google Analytics, or, you require more than the 20 gigabytes of storage, the cost will be higher.
Then you need to factor in working out SEO, and how you can use that to your advantage.
Because you don’t have a design agency to hand, you’re in it on your own, with an average looking website, and realistically, you’re left paying for a less than average service.
And a leaving thought: What happens if you want to move your website from Wix in the future? You can’t. You’ll need to pay for the web design agency then anyway.
Hiring a professional design agency
Here’s a very rough guide on how we price websites at Pont Bleu. These figures shouldn’t be taken as definitive, but are here to give you a ballpark figure.
A single page website
There’s less work involved in a single page website design and build, than any of the other types of website. That said, the research, wireframing, design, and build, still needs to be done. And, there’s still a lot of work that goes into a single page website.
On average, we would be looking at a website design cost of 1500 euros, plus hosting starting at 15 euros/month, and your (.com, .fr) domain name at 15 euros per year.
A brochure website
A brochure website requires all elements from the above stage, plus the building out of several additional pages and templates.
There’s a high chance that a brochure website will feature a news, blog, or media section, as well as a gallery, individual service pages and more.
The cost of a brochure website from Pont Bleu is usually somewhere in the 2 500 – 5 000 euros range. Obviously, that’s quite a difference, but it really does depend on the specifications and requirements.
An e-commerce website
An e-Commerce website takes everything from the brochure website, and adds on a shop.
This means there needs to be a shop page, individual product pages, a whole back-end system created, payment gateways integrated and so on.
eCommerce websites are not cheap, and usually cost somewhere between 8 000 and 20 000 euros. Again, it depends upon exact requirements, and how much work is involved surrounding the products.
A more complex website or web app
Web apps can be huge projects, and we partner with an external company to deliver complex websites and apps at Pont Bleu.
We’ve worked on web app projects that started at 15 000 euros – but we’ve also been involved in others that cost up to 100 000 euros.
Conclusion: How much is a Website?
So there you have it, we’ve broken down the complications of website design pricing.
We’ve also tried to answer ‘how much is a website’ by providing some very rough figures.
However, each business has its own set of needs when it comes to its website. Only by correctly defining the scope of the work can you start to expect a corresponding price.
If you want to get an accurate cost for your website design project, then get in touch.
Branding Consultant at Pont Bleu Communication
Daren Birchall’s career spans more than 30 years. He is a graphic designer, writer, analyst and communications strategist, marketing consultant, media buyer, production manager, and for quite some time was an advertising agent. He loves photography but his glasses bother him.
