Estimating the costs of developing a professional website can be tricky. That is, there are many factors influencing the final price. Pages, resources as well as technology, design. Without knowing these details it is impossible to define an exact cost to build a website.
For example, just defining the scope can range from 10 to 100 hours, depending on the size of the project.
Still, it is possible to figure out the average cost to build a website. This estimate may not be very accurate, but it will at least inform you of approximate prices. So how much does it cost to set up a website? Let's find out.
Average Cost to Build a Professional Website
I prepared an article showing phases that make up a website development price. In a nutshell, custom website development costs can start at $1.500 and go up to $5.000 or more.
UI / UX Design
Tools that can be used: Sketch, InVision, Zepplin, Adobe Creative Cloud
Most users have visual attention. Good design is what catches your attention and calls to action. Bad design is what makes them leave and never come back to your site.
In other words, UI/UX design services are as essential as engineering. This means that design expenses are one of the key points that answer how much it costs to build a website.
There are three main stages that define the cost of custom website design:
- Research. Defining the target audience, their preferences and analyzing competitors.
- Wireframe. Create wireframes to show schematic placement of elements and agree with a customer.
- Prototype. Designing the final user interface to show how the app will look on devices.
The above break allows you to achieve the best efficiency and calm every detail of the project.
Again, the time and cost to create the UI/UX design depends on your requirements. These are number of pages, animation complexity, and so on.
Front-end development of a professional website
Some technologies that can be used: HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, TypeScript, SASS, LESS, Angular, React
Imagine a registration page with three standard fields: name, login and password. You can see shadows they cast, shapes of input fields, but also a button. Click on it and so, see what happens.
That's the front end. It's basically everything your visitors can see and interact with on the site. It usually starts when the UI/UX design is done. So what you've seen in prototypes before, developers would turn into a work product running in any browser.
Front-end professionals start participating in the project from this stage and continue working on it until release.
The main factors influencing the cost of creating the website at this stage are:
- Responsiveness or website adaptability
- Complexity of animations (yes, again)
Front-end development costs can range from $1.000 to $12.500 or more.
Backend development of a professional website
Some technologies that can be used: Node.js, Express.js, Nest.js, .NET
Let's go back to the registry example. Without the back, nothing would happen after clicking the red register button. The backend is then what makes the input data travel to the server and registers you as a new user.
If something is wrong, it returns an error saying you have already registered or another message. In other words, the page itself is just a bunch of code viewed by browsers. It cannot fulfill its ultimate purpose – register users.
Back-end is at the heart of each site and therefore feeds all of its resources. In other words, back-end development makes up a considerable part of the website creation cost.
The main factors influencing the total development time and the average cost of the site are:
- Integration with third-party services
- Non-standard data processing (eg audio)
- complex queries
Admin Panel Development on a Professional Website
The content management system (also known as admin dashboard) is a solution that allows you to create, manage and edit website content. So if you want to change a word in a paragraph somewhere on the site, you don't need to ask developers to do that.
There are a plethora of ready-made CMS engines like Shopify, WordPress, Drupal and others. They are designed to cut down on development hours and reduce the cost to build a website.
But like any out-of-the-box solution, they can be limited in functionality and security. The latter is because malicious software is usually written to target popular systems rather than custom ones.
Final development cost of all steps
By summarizing the development time and cost of each step described, you will get an approximate website development price.
The cost to create a professional website (by types)
Sites are created for different reasons: from hosting personal blogs and portfolios to maintaining complex corporate solutions. Thus, the development time depends on its complexity which influences the web development costs.
The cost of creating a website for a business
As a general rule, this type of site is informative. It can focus on promoting the brand, increasing customer loyalty, and so on. Again, the cost of making a website like this depends on its complexity.
In our experience, customers who want to learn the cost of business website development often request the following pages:
- About a company
- Services
- Contact us
- Blog / Press Page
- TESTIMONIALS
Each web project is unique and moreover, it can have a different structure. These pages are a kind of base for such sites.
Thus, the cost of creating a website for a small business is usually formed based on the number of pages. But it also depends on which features you would like to fill them.
Among other frequently requested features for business websites are:
- SSL certificate
- Contact form back
- Integration with live chats
- Onsite Search
- Mobile-ready design
- Admin panel
Things get more complicated with business website costs for companies and midsize businesses. It's hard to even estimate the average cost to build a website for them. They often have specific requirements for security, as well as features and pages that are difficult to highlight.
Cost of the E-сommerce website
E-commerce is a tough industry. Therefore, it can be very difficult to define the average cost to develop a website for this field. There can be hundreds of thousands of pages (Amazon has millions) and complicated functionality.
Let's first take a look at some of the frequently requested pages:
- Página principal
- Shopping cart
- Favorites
- Checkout
- Blog
- category pages
- product pages
And the features:
- Integration with payment systems
- Personalized push notifications
- Recently viewed products
- Leave reviews and rate products
- Search
- Admin panel
Features and pages may vary depending on a project. Just like the final price.
Large e-commerce sites have to be well architected to sustain high loads and thus rank well in search engines. These and many other peculiarities make e-commerce a field requiring considerable investments. So this affects the average cost of a custom website.
As for technology, it can also differ significantly from project to project, that is, depending on its complexity and objectives. The best way to define it is therefore to consult an expert.
Landing Page Cost
There are two definitions for a landing page in terms of web development:
- It is a single page website designed to promote or sell something.
- It is a separate page on existing multi-page website created to promote or sell something.
Typically, these pages are not overloaded with content. It is necessary to keep users focused and, in addition, call for certain actions: from buying something to downloading a file. They are often created to promote apps.
Although this page can be very long, the average cost to build a website of this type is less compared to multipage ones.
Time can vary depending on animation complexity, same as website creation cost.
Additional costs of creating websites
There are several additional website expenses that you will definitely face.
Domain name
The website's domain name is a unique address. That way you can see it in your browser's address bar. To access a specific website, each of them has its own address called a domain name. You can register it on various websites that offer this service. So the domain name should definitely be included in the cost of a website.
Several time-tested domain name registrars:
- Godaddy
- Bluehost
- Interserver
Hosting
Simply put, hosting is a service that keeps your website accessible on the internet. Also, hosting providers affect your website's load time. So, don't forget to include hosting expenses to the monthly cost of the website.
Multiple Reliable Hosting Providers:
- inmotion
- Hostgator
- Ionos
- Godaddy
Maintenance
As with any mechanism, the code has to be maintained. Maintaining the site includes ensuring that everything runs smoothly, but also that users don't run into problems and bugs.
Price: The average cost to maintain a website can range from R$500 to R$2.000 a month, or more.
Marketing Expenses
If nobody knows about your product – then it doesn't exist.
That's why I thought it would be a good idea to include marketing expenses here in addition to professional website development costs.
Advertising Per Click (PPC)
Pay-per-click advertising is one of the ways to tell the public about your product and then convert visitors into buyers. Google Network is the most popular and powerful advertising network.
The company has developed a feature-rich yet incredibly flexible tool for managing its campaigns — Google AdWords. It's a good fit for both PPC professionals and those who want to set up and in addition manage a campaign on their own.
A significant disadvantage of pay-per-click advertising is that prices depend on your industry. As a result, many companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to achieve visible results.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is intended to optimize your website for search engines like Google. That way, with the help of SEO, your customers will be able to find your site using related keywords like: “buy a car”, “rent an apartment”, “best restaurants”.
The bigger your website, the better your website will be optimised.
Copywriting
The more pages your site has, the more content it should have. You've certainly seen a lot of blog posts out there, as well as engaging text on company websites.
Professional writers must create great articles or copies and then optimize them with keywords relevant to their business. In other words, quality content helps to get more quality traffic and therefore generate leads.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social Media Marketing is focused on promoting on social media. That is, it is a great method for small businesses and businesses.
How much does it cost to build a professional website?
So how much does it cost to create a professional website? The price can range from R$1.500 to R$5.000 or more. The exact budget can only be estimated when all requirements are clear. In other words, you should have several meetings with a website development company to find out the exact price.
Na Colors Agency, we guarantee much more than just an attractive look as well as a modern layout for your website and blog.
Our main focus is to offer companies around the world effective solutions, that is, to generate visibility on the internet.
Our agency develops SEO strategies, but also brand positioning for multinational companies, large, medium and small, all projects are important to us.