Having a website is essential if you want to establish credibility and reach your target audience. If you’re interested in getting a website for your business, one question may be top-of-mind: how much does it cost to build a website? Naturally, you won’t want to spend more than you have to. However, the cheapest site is rarely the best.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the factors that influence the cost of a website built by a top web development agency. Often, when people talk about the cost of web development, they focus on things like domain registration, hosting costs, and SSL certification.
However, what you really have to pay for is the expertise of the development team and the company as a whole. Building a quality website requires a specific skill set.
What Influences the Cost of a Website
So how much does it cost to make a website? A lot depends on the size and complexity of your site. A site with just 10 pages is likely to cost less than one with 50 pages. If you need e-commerce functionality, you’ll have to pay more than someone who doesn’t need to accept payments. You’ll also need to factor in the cost of content. Unless all your content is being produced in-house, you may need to hire a copywriter, photographer, and/or videographer. Many businesses spend around $1,500 to $2,000 on the initial content for their sites.
The final cost of your website will also reflect the pay of the development team which will include:
- The sales executive
- The project manager
- The web designer
- The web programmer
- The website tester
Title | Function | Pay |
Sales exec | The person who sells you the website | Up to $2000 |
Project manager | The liaison between you and the rest of the development team | Up to $1,500 |
Web designer | The team member who creates the beautiful, responsive design you expect | Up to $5,000 |
Web programmer | The individual who takes on the non-design aspects such as coding and markup. | Up to $8,000 |
Website tester | A professional who uses the site on different platforms and browsers to look for bugs. | Up to $1,000 |
The price you’ll be charged for a website will also reflect:
- The agency’s overhead costs
- Taxes
- The salaries of the management team
Why It’s Important to Invest in a Quality Website
You no longer have to ask “how much does it cost to create a website?”. As a financially-responsible business owner, you’ll probably want to know if you have to spend that much. The truth is that if you get the cheapest website possible, it won’t be a custom design and even worse, it may slow to a crawl with just a couple hundred visitors. You also may not have access to technical support when the website is completed. If you want a quality website, you need to invest in expert web development.