How much does a website cost?

How much does a website cost? If you have thought about this, you are not alone: Google is asked this question many thousand times each month.  The trouble is, it isn’t as straightforward as you might expect.

Think about choosing a new kitchen for your home.  The cost will depend not only on how many cabinets you need, but also on the finish you’d like.  You could choose a budget DIY store flatpack kitchen or a high-end hand-built solid wood kitchen.  Then you’ll need to consider worktop material, the number and type of appliances, and so on.  You’ll face a similar number of choices when planning your website.

Website prices can range from free to thousands of pounds. In this article we explore the factors that will affect the cost of your website.  How much a website costs will depend on who’s designing and building it, what you want it to achieve, and the technology used to create it.

Typical costs for a WordPress website in the UK

So how much does a WordPress website generally cost in the UK today?

The average cost will typically fall within the range £1,000 to £20,000.  But as we have already established, the cost will depend on many factors, such as:

• The scale of the website – how many sections and pages
• The complexity of the design
• The amount of customisation needed in order to add the functionality you need

The table below sets out a very rough guide to website costs, depending on the type of website you need:

Don’t forget, if you need specific functionality for your website this will affect the price. You should treat the prices in the table above as a very approximate guide.

What are the factors affecting the cost of a website?

1. Project approach

DIY drag-and-drop websites

You could consider a DIY website.  There are now many providers that offer platforms allowing you to drag-and-drop pre-designed components onto a webpage.  This means that anyone can build a website even if they’re never written a line of code in their life.  There are many reasons why you should avoid DIY website builders. This type of website tends to perform very poorly and you will undoubtedly regret taking this approach.

Template-based websites

Alternatively you could use either a free or paid-for ‘off-the-shelf’ template into which you enter your images and text.  The good news is that these are less compromised technically than the DIY drag-and-drop style websites. However you will still end up with a generic website that might look similar to thousands of others.

Bespoke websites

If you have the budget it is always better to hire a professional to create a bespoke website, tailored to your specific needs.  It will have been designed from a clean-sheet and carefully considered to meet your business goals. It will have been hand-coded with care, and optimised for speed.  This approach will undoubtedly give you a result you will be more pleased with. More importantly it will give you a website that performs better with search engines – and your customers.

2. Hiring a professional web designer

The cost of hiring a professional to design and build your website will make up the largest proportion of the total cost of the project.

There are usually two stages in the process of making a website: Design and build.  If you can find someone with experience in both areas, you may find this easier as they will be able to handle the entire project for you from end-to-end.

It is always best to ask for a recommendation if you can.  If you can’t, search for a web designer that has many years’ experience. Also, check out their previous work to examine the quality of the design and user experience.

Avoid online services such as Upwork where you can connect with freelancers (typically overseas).  You will find they offer very competitive prices, but you must exercise caution or you may end up with poor quality work. You could be buying a DIY drag-and-drop website presented as a quality piece of bespoke work.

3. Functionality

Whilst there are some elements that are common across most websites, beyond this no two sites will be the same.  This is because your business goals will dictate that you need specific functions or technology to ensure the site is effective.

Examples of functionality that will increase your costs, are:

• Dynamic filtering or sorting of content such as your products or services
• Integration with third-party services
• A mailing list registration form that connects to your CRM

These are just a few examples, and you’re only limited by your imagination.  Most features that you can think of can be achieved if you have sufficient budget.

4. Hosting, domain name and SSL certificate

Aside from paying your web designer, you will also need to consider some ongoing costs to third parties.  You’ll need to keep paying these in order to keep your site working after it has been built.

• Hosting
  Hosting is space that you rent to house your site in order for it to appear on the web.
• Domain name
  Your domain name is your unique web address, which your customers will type into their browsers to find your site.
• SSL certificate
  An SSL certificate secures the connection between your customer and your website. This is now essential as most browsers mark websites without this as unsafe.

Hosting can cost around £10 – £20 per month.  A domain name is often around £20 per year, but can sometimes be bundled with your hosting for no extra cost.  An SSL certificate might cost you around £60 – £80 per year, but again some providers bundle this with the hosting for no extra cost.

Always ask your web designer about their recommendations for hosting, domain and SSL certificate providers.  They will have a wealth of experience and be able to advise you about reliability and customer service as well as price.

5. Search engine research and optimisation

Your website will only perform if people can find it on Google and the other search engines.  Having an SEO professional provide data-backed research that can inform both the design and structure of your site will pay dividends in the long term.  Whilst this work can be done retrospectively this is often more difficult. Reverse-engineering the recommendations into a completed website will take longer and be more expensive as it may require design changes.  It is far more effective to factor SEO into your project from the beginning.

How to minimise your costs

Ideally, ask your web designer to give you a fixed cost for your project, rather than simply paying them an hourly rate until the site is completed.  Hourly-rate projects can very easily spiral beyond initial expectations if you get carried away with design changes and feature requests that weren’t part of the original plan.

Even with a fixed price project, costs can escalate if you don’t work with your web designer in an organised way.  The fixed price will include a defined number of designs and design revisions.  If you can’t decide what you want or keep requesting changes to completed work, you will be asked to provide additional budget for this extra work which wasn’t part of the original cost.

Website maintenance and support costs

Finally, once you have completed your website, don’t forget to look after it.  It is vital to keep your website updated with the security patches and bug fixes.  Whilst you can attempt these yourself, if something goes wrong it can be tricky to get your website working again.  It is better to leave these updates to a professional.

Regular maintenance will ensure that your website will last for many years, and will help you get the best value from your initial investment.

The cost of website support and maintenance can vary.  Having the person that built your site deliver this support makes sense. No-one will know your site better than they do.  Running the regular software updates will only take an hour or two every month, but you may want additional time available each month for technical support with any issues that arise.

Conclusion

When considering the cost of your new website, always remember what the website can achieve for your business. A £5,000 bespoke website will quickly pay for itself if it brings 5 new clients each spending £1,000 within the first few months. Obviously this will depend on what you charge for your products or services, but the return on investment can be relatively speedy.

Contrast this with a DIY website that might only cost a few hundred pounds but which performs so poorly you need to scrap it and hire a professional web designer and pay for a new site. You will be surprised how many times this happens.

Rather than being focussed on what the website costs, pay more attention to the process of selecting the right web designer. Make sure that all the factors you need are included in your quotation, so that there are no unexpected extra costs later.