How much does a web design cost? Well the honest answer is that it depends but we’ll try to give you some example costs and what the options are. So much does indeed depend on where you are with your business cycle, your type of business and the type of website that would benefit your business.
Your website costs include the following:
- Domain names
- Logos and branding
- Web designer costs
- Website hosting costs
- Ongoing maintenance
- Cost of promotion
- Staff time to update and manage
This can be a large investment of actual funds, but also the opportunity costs of staff time. You will have to spend time specifying what you need, doing research and coming to final conclusions. Therefore the next question is valid.
What is a website for?
In a previous post we set out the importance of not relying on the vagaries of social media sites for your web presence. Yes social media sites are often important for promoting your business but they change, go out of favour or the demographic of users shifts.
Therefore a website is the bit of your web presence where you have full control. You can use it to explain your products and services, sell online and reinforce your brand.
By having a website you will get indexed by search engines (as long as the website is properly designed and hosted) and it also gives you the chance to expand on your trading record, key attributes, products and services.
If you are talking to a new customer, then they are likely to ‘Google you’ and seek reassurance that you are who and what you say you are.
There are other features that you can add that help with business processes such as buying online, forms for capturing information, invoice payment, private areas for documents etc. Always think ambitiously and talk to your trusted web designers regarding what is possible regarding features. You may be surprised at what can be achieved and the low cost in this day and age.
So let’s consider typical web design costs of important features of your website.
Domain names
There will be one or two main domain names that you will use for your main website and email addresses however you may want to buy up variations of TLDs (top level domain) such as .com, .co.uk etc so no one else can hijack your business name.
The costs depend on what you use as your top level domain. For example .uk names are registered by the UK based authority Nominet and are cheaper than other variations such as .com which is regulated by ICANN.
Costs
| TLD (top level domain) | Example cost per year (exc VAT) |
| .co.uk | £12.99 |
| .org.uk | £12.99 |
| .uk | £12.99 |
| .com | £18.99 |
| .ltd | £33.28 |
| .agency | £33.28 |
| .info | £27.99 |
| .ai | £109.99 |
| .me | £21.99 |
| .net | £19.97 |
These are typical prices based on Go Daddy prices in December 2024. There are often deals that provide saving if you register your domain over a number of years.
Logos and branding
Logos and branding have increased in importance. With the rise of mobile friendly websites that have to work on all devices, sometimes a user will only really see your logo.
Therefore it is worth getting a professional graphic designer involved. Initial logo design usually entails briefing the designer with the text you would like, colour scheme and they will come back with a pre-agreed minimum number of variations that you can choose from for the final logo.
Costs
It depends but expect to pay for around 3 to 5 hours of a professional graphic designer’s time for a finished logo. You should expect
Web designer costs
You are paying for someone for the following
- Design, code and configure your website
- Design layouts for various pages
- Test features and functionality
- Deploy to your domain and web hosting after testing.
Website builders are available from WIX and Go Daddy bypass but you would still need to create the pages yourself, source images etc.
Costs
To get a simple website live from scratch would easily take even a skilled person 10 to 20 hours.
Website hosting costs
Once your website has been coded and setup it needs to transferred to your web hosting so the website can be viewed at your domain name.
Your web designer will be able to advise on web hosting taking these factors into account:
- Size of website
- Expected traffic levels
- Specific technical requirements from web hosting e.g. code and server environment
- Backups
- Emails
- Storage requirements
- SSL certificate so the website shows as secure in browsers
Costs
Our prices for a low traffic, basic website start at £36 per year.
Ongoing maintenance
Once your website is live you will want to keep the content updated, if used the content management system and plugins updated and other optimisation work for better search engine rankings.
Costs
This very much depends on what you want and your budget but think in terms of a number of hours and negotiate from there.
Search Engine Optimisation and Promotion
Once your website is live then it needs to be promoted. This includes Search Engine Optimisation and other methods of promotion.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving a website’s visibility and traffic from search engines. SEO focuses on unpaid traffic, rather than direct or paid traffic. There are still direct and opportunity costs for this type of activity.
- Costs for optimising website content, adding and improving content.
- Analysing website traffic data.
- Analysing Google Search Console data.
- Assessing website performance.
- Using an SEO tool to reveal technical SEO improvements.
- Physical promotion costs – leaflets, giveaways, pay per click advertising.
Costs
Some SEO specialists will charge a minimum of 5 hours per month for SEO work. SEO tools can cost around £50 per month.
Get in touch with Dinesh on 07941 686113 or contact us if you need help on web design, web hosting, SEO services or domain names.
Photo by Leeloo The First: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-mobile-phone-on-black-clipboard-with-white-paper-8970670/
Photo by picjumbo.com: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-printer-paper-196645/
