Web Site Costs
By Stephen Spry : Filed under Featured, OnLine Business
What Price for a Web Site?
Talk to people about the Internet, and you’ll hear how some web sites can cost thousands… while others cost next to nothing. Confusing to say the least!
This article summarises most of the real “costs” involved in developing a web site and getting (and keeping) your business online.
If you want to jump to the chase, and find out what we reckon an average small business might pay, then click here for the summary of costs.
Domain Name Registration
To have YourOwnChosenDomainName.com (or .org or .com.au etc) involves paying a Domain registration fee to a Domain Registrar.
These fees range from around $40 - $165 every two years for Australian domains, down to around $10 - $30 a year for global domain names (.com, .org, .info etc) depending on the registrar used and the number of years you register for. The newer “specialty” domains are a lot pricier!
Once you register a domain in your name, it is your property - until you don’t renew the registration.
Domain Name Parking
This is a fee paid to “park” your domain with an ISP - i.e. if you want to “store” it until you are ready to use it.
Some ISP’s charge nothing for this service, while others charge $100+ a year. You should expect to pay a median amount to park a domain name with an ISP which should include some sort of email forwarding service as well. Considering you can get full blown “hosting” for multiple domains (see next section) for around $15 a month, it would be better to use one of those services for “parking” purposes.
Web Server Rental
Once you are ready to use your domain name, you set up a web server to promote your business. Now, you need to find an ISP to host your web pages for you.
Web Server rental prices vary quite significantly.
You can get totally “free” services which may show ads on or behind your pages. These can often be slow to serve pages, and low on features. And are a very poor choice for business, considering how little the paid services cost.
Paid web hosting services go from $10 a month to $thousands a year, depending on the type and size of server you really need.
The “average” small business should expect to pay around $180 a year - and certainly no more than $600 a year - to rent a web server that is appropriate to their needs - and such a server would include the ability to host more than one domain/web site on it. At the dearer end of the scale ($600pa) would get you a pretty good server like the one used to host OzSmallBiz and a collection of some of my other web sites.
For a business web site that involves some serious database work, or programming, or secure e-commerce capability, then you can expect the rental to be more. In these cases, a figure of $250+ a month is realistic for a full featured server that can handle lots of intensive work… or when you expect to get an enormous amount of traffic to your site.
Web Site Design
Initially, this can be an expensive part of getting your business onto the Internet… and that’s because it’s the most crucial part.
In most cases, a poorly designed web site will not work well (if at all) for you! Getting someone to design a “site” for a couple hundred dollars is NOT the way to go if you are serious about doing business online.
However, if you do have a good understanding of design principles and copywriting, and have the time, then have a go at it yourself. If you don’t, leave it to a person with skills in those areas.
The average small business can expect to invest between $500 and $1000 to get a web developer to create a site that (* Edit 10 Sept 08 - see a more detailed explanation of these in the comments section below):
- provides all the essential information users expect
- is unique to your business
- has your “look and feel”
- is easy for your users to work through
- encourages your visitors to want to deal with you
- makes it easy for them to deal with you
- works for you - attempts to achieve your objectives, and
- is search engine friendly
Obviously, if you need fancy programming to create interactive elements, or database interaction, or e-commerce capabilities, then you’re looking at a lot more.
For example, SSL certificates (to carry out secure e-commerce transactions) can cost from $700 to $2500 a year. Remote gateways to banks to collect “real-time” credit card information can also be costly to implement. Throw in a “shopping cart” program if you really need it (these can vary considerably in price from $500 to $50,000+) and your costs can begin to sky rocket.
Web Site Promotion
Once your site is going, you’ve got to get people there.
The cheapest way to do that is the one people most often forget about, and it’s also the simplest! Make sure that you include your URL (web address) in absolutely everything you send out from your business - your email, letterheads, “With Compliments” slips, invoices, statements, business cards, advertising materials, brochures, etc - everything! (but NOT your email address - bad idea)
The next step is to “register” your site with search engines - Google, MSN, Yahoo are the big three, but there are literally thousands of other search engines and directories you can register with.
Over time, this “organic traffic” (i.e. free traffic) will account for about 80+ percent of the visitors to your site.
While many of these search engines are free, quite a few are moving to “pay-per-click” or “pay-for-inclusion” business models.
With pay-per-click engines, you “bid” on certain key words, and pay that amount every time someone clicks through to your site… You may also have to pay a minimum fee (say $20+ USD a month) even if no-one clicks through.
The bigger “pay-per-listing” engines - eg Yahoo - are now charging 100’s of dollars on an annual basis to review your site for possible inclusion in their directories.
Hundreds of other sites will include a link to your site for nothing, or you can choose to pay from $5 upwards to list your site details with them. The key here is to be selective about the sites you approach. Make sure they have the target audience you are after, and aren’t indulging in any unsavoury practices which could have an effect on you.
There are also paid submission services you can use to get your site listed on search engines. The costs of these vary considerably. A once only $5 can get you listed with 300 search engines. Or you can make monthly investments of $50 USD for regular submissions of your site. Again, it’s up to you to consider the pros and cons of these schemes, and what can fit into your budget.
You can also do it yourself with submission software.
The key with any sort of link building is to keep doing it, and do it regularly! Just DON’T OVER-DO IT! If anything starts to appear unnatural, Google will drop you like a ton of bricks… and you don’t want that to happen!
This is just one aspect of web site promotion… there are many others you can investigate which have NOT been “costed” here.
Web Site Maintenance
An often overlooked component is the regular updating of your site… and probably forgotten due to other demands on your time…
But it IS very important to
- keep the information on your site current in the first place, and then
- update and refresh the information to encourage repeat visits to your site.
In the first case, it’s bad when people discover information that is so-o-o-o obviously out of date… they certainly won’t feel good about dealing with you!
Secondly, apart from giving people a reason to come back to your site at a later date, updating the information also encourages search engines to revisit… and reindex… (It’s been suggested that this alone helps improve your placement in some search engines).
Please remember that the figures shown below are in Australian dollars and are based on Australian conditions.
To summarise then… the costs for each component for an “average” small business to get onto the Internet:
Domain Registration: maximum $50 pa
Server Rental: from $180 to maximum $600 pa
Site Design: average $750-$1000 once only
Promotion: allow $500 pa in your budget
Updating: allow from $250 pa if you can’t do it yourself
And don’t forget your dial-up/ADSL costs - i.e. the regular monthly fee for you to access the Internet from your work/home computer. That can easily add another $300-$600 every year, which you also need to budget for.
All up, in the first year, the “average” small business could expect to pay between $2000 to $3000 to get their business (and themselves) connected to the Internet (and do some serious paid promotion to boot!)
In the second (and subsequent years) this would reduce to around $1200 - $2000.
A website for $500 that achieves that list is remarkably optimistic… more likely ‘irresponsible’. $500 is roughly 4-6 hours of work depending on a company’s rates. Call it 5 hours.
And that 5 hours achieves all this? -
1. “provides all the essential information users expect”… Nebulous, depends on product and service, and accounts for no differentiation
2. “is unique to your business”… fair enough… but unique may not mean attractive or functional
3. “has your ‘look and feel’ “… fair enough if it’s copy and paste, but probably nebulous… the look and feel issue is often a number of hours and needs dialogue with the client, and openness by the developer to alter it, in order to make the client happy… that can be 5 hours alone.
4. “easy for your users to work through” … probably true, because there’s likely to be so little in the website
5. “encourages your visitors to want to deal with you”… nebulous, because those requirements will vary across industries
6. “makes it easy for them to deal with you”… Really? What if they want to transact online?… I thought that was separately treated according to this article
7. “works for you - attempts to achieve your objectives”… Incredibly nebulous… what are those objectives?
8. “is search engine friendly”… I’m relieved you didn’t say ‘optimised’
To be fair Stephen, I also wouldn’t expect too much for $500 - but it should still be better than a lot of the “brochure-ware” sites that some web designers churn out costing a lot more than that, who then leave their “clients” for dead as far as any future direction is concerned.
The point of the article is to make people aware that they MUST expect to spend a reasonable amount to get a half decent result, and that result should aim to achieve some (or even all) of the “nebulous” objectives stated above (and hopefully explained in better detail in the next comment below).
The article also highlights the important ongoing investment that is also needed - something many just don’t understand the need for, nor give any thought to.
Hopefully those who want to do it on the cheap, will begin to realise that the kid-next-door is not going to be able to actually “do it” for them.
The number of times prospective small business customers have scoffed at my (quite reasonable) web design rates is mind blowing! As in… “You’re kidding! That expensive?” in reference to my finely-tuned micro-business “package” for around $1,000. It’s something that, as an experienced web designer of 13+yrs, I have found that I can do for the price AND still achieve those objectives quite well for the segment of the market I deal with.
Maybe your business is not pitching at the “micro” end of the small business market which is why you don’t like what I’ve said above… Look, the people I’ve been talking to for the past 13+ years can’t afford to pay $2k or more for a “site”, so they are inclined to look for the “cheap” ineffective option. Something I am trying to steer them away from so they don’t waste their time and money.
The client examples you cite on your home page with profits of “millions” of dollars are not the people the article is geared at.
Re the “search engine friendly” comment - while i didn’t say “optimised”, I did mean it
Seriously, it is NOT that hard when building a web site to have it friendly / optimised from the start! Much easier than to try to come back in later and patch up the holes. I can’t understand how a whole separate industry has developed from what should essentially be a very simple to implement compulsory basic requirement for any web site!
BTW (and this is offered as cryptic, constructive criticism) I’d like to add that clients should expect that all search engine optimised internal links (i.e. NOT “read more” ones) should work without a 404 error no matter how much they pay.
Seems some further explanation of what I meant is needed… Hopefully this will help you better understand my “nebulous” objectives.
1. “provides all the essential information users expect” - what is the minimum you would expect as a user? For starters, full contact/address details which is easy to find, and not hiding behind a contact form. Some useful information about the company - i.e. NOT just a three page web version of your printed brochure, and not written in the “we can do this” style.
2. ” is unique to your business” - a design that you won’t see on another site tomorrow, and again the day after that!
3. “has your “look and feel” - it reflects your corporate “image”. For example, if your colours are red white and blue, then it would NOT be appropriate to develop a site which used green, purple and blue. If your corporate style is bland and boring, then the site cannot be hip-hop and up-market!
4. “is easy for your users to work through” - simple, easy to find, site/section navigation. Ensuring that any processes - e.g. ordering or enquiry - flow properly and don’t cause people to “X” out from confusion.
5. ” encourages your visitors to want to deal with you” - first up - make it look professional! Then, don’t “preach” about “you” or the “features” of your products. Make your copy about the benefits for your customers. I want to see that you care about me, and not just your wallet.
6. “makes it easy for them to deal with you” - don’t HIDE your call to action and force people to go searching for it. They won’t!
7. “works for you - attempts to achieve your objectives” - What did you REALISTICALLY expect to achieve with your web site? Was it collect names and addresses? Generate some enquiries? Give stuff away? Make $x worth of sales every week? Hows that going for you? Is it working? How realistic are your targets?
8. ” is search engine friendly” - SEO is something I regard as an essential basic requirement for any web site! The entire structure of the site, the content on the individual pages, and how they all link together, has GOT to be done properly from the start, or the search engines won’t have a clue about the great stuff you’ve got!
As a designer I can’t say that I would ever make a website for $500 dollars that would actually cover all of the criteria you listed and still look great and be fully functional. In all honesty the $500 just barely covers the graphic design aspect of it (the actual numerous spent in photoshop creating, tweaking, and fine tuning a great design).
I’ve seen a lot of really lousy attempts lately at good web design that just falls so short. It seems that as the web industry continues to grow at such rapid rates there are still new-comers jumping in and trying to compete with some of the mainstays and regulars and the quality of work they are turning out is far below what should be acceptable, and yet even they are charging FAR more than $500.
check this website for instance, one that I stumbled upon earlier.
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[URL REMOVED - don't want to link to a junk site
The quality of work in something that you would expect to see out of a book looking back at the early years of the internet. It’s just not very professional and does not yield the kind of image you would want for your company.
Anyway I’m about done with this rambling, the overall idea though is that $500 will not pay for a quality designer… period.
Hi Ethan
Thanks for your comments.
I suppose the main point of the item is to address those small business operators who really have NO clue about what a web site - even a very basic one - is going to cost them.
I’ve had several people say that even $1000 is far too expensive!
But you and I both know the truth - you only get what you pay for! And if you want to pay peanuts, then you will only get monkeys to do the work for you (or at best, teenage web designers with little real world online marketing experience).
But even if you DO pay more, there’s still NO guarantee that you’ll get what you SHOULD get! Which is the “other” point I’m trying to make. There are an awful lot of people in this industry who charge big bucks, and fail to deliver the basics!
Cheers
Stephen
I wouldn’t even turn on my computer for $500.
If a small business wanted a plumber, would they call a baker? No. You call the plumber, and you have to pay because you cant do it yourself.
I would not advise anybody to buy a site for $500. The end.
Thanks for your information. As a person who is about to undergo the formidable task of website development, you have clarified some of the things I need to be aware of to help me in this process. This is what I wanted anyway - how to go about it and to know some of the associated costs and pitfalls before I start.
Thanks again,
Sue
[...] of $750 for a freelancer, which drastically undervalues the effectiveness of freelance designers). The Small Business Support Network writes that a starting cost of a small business web site would be between $750 and $1000 on average, with [...]
Its so annoying and so true everybody thinks that because they’ve had a myspace page that they are all of a sudden designers.
Many of our clients generally have all used cheap options in the past and ended up wasting thousands. Not to mention losing a lot of time (in some cases years) and receiving pissed off customer feedback because their website was simply crap and didn’t work, didn’t have the right information, pages and links didn’t work etc.
The worst thing for us is that even when we provide site maps, detailed creative direction, detailed quotation regarding innovative development (ie made from scratch no template designs and from scratch back end development - guaranteed to work) and even marketing ideas (all for free) that the client still turns around and says “but $15,000″ that’s too expensive sorry - its so frustrating because people don’t understand that there is a lot of work that goes into making a website work from even understanding user experiences and psychology to bug checking your website across every single internet browser (many cheap websites fail big time to work in all browsers = less exposure for the client and bad eWOM).
What I say to clients is this “how much do you value your business. Because your website is fundamentally your business shop front these days.”