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

For small businesses, the average professional website build typically falls between £3,000 and £10,000. 

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.

The post How much does a website cost? appeared first on Jeremy Hickman.

You know nothing about website design, and could hire a professional to do the job for you. What if you could do it yourself for a fraction of the price? It sounds attractive and the cost savings look useful.  Why would you want to avoid DIY website builders? If this sounds like you, read on.

What is a DIY website builder?

A DIY website builder is a platform that lets you make a website without any technical or design knowledge. A key feature is drag-and-drop functionality. This allows anyone to easily put together a website by pulling pre-built components onto the page with their mouse.

There are many options including the well-known providers such as WIX, Squarespace and Shopify.  Some hosting providers such as IONOS also now offer this option, too.  If your website runs on WordPress, drag and drop theme builders such as Elementor or WP Bakery offer the same approach. This can look attractive as it gives the impression that anyone can build a website themselves. You don’t need any specific knowledge: Just drag and drop pre-built elements into place and add your own content.  You will see numerous options for colours, fonts, different functions and layouts.

So, what’s the problem with this and why should you be worried? All is not as it seems underneath what appears to be a nice looking website.  There are many reasons why you should not tackle the process of building a website yourself:

1. A DIY website will be generic and won’t stand out
2. Poor performance and slow loading times
3. You (and your content) are tied to your provider
4. Poor SEO support
5. Ineffective content
6. Lack of technical support

Reasons to avoid DIY website builders

1. A DIY website will be generic and won’t stand out

Sites built this way are put together from pre-designed components, and they tend to look formulaic and similar to other sites built in the same way.  You’ll find plenty of scope to alter colours, fonts, images, and add your own text. However, you won’t have any ability to add bespoke design flourishes that will set your brand apart.

As well as finding more customers, one of the most important functions of your website is to build your brand.  This means that you’ll need your site to exactly match your brand. You might want the freedom to place your logo in the most effective place, or need to arrange your content in a way that communicates your brand story.

You will find it very difficult to achieve these factors effectively without the help of an experienced web designer. A professional will bring a wealth of knowledge in areas such as user experience and marketing techniques.

2. Poor performance and slow loading times

You will be impressed by the numerous functions and elements available within the drag-and-drop editor.  However all of these features are included in the code that makes up your site. This is true even if you don’t use all of the features available to you.  Your website code will be bloated, inefficient, and take up huge amounts of space on the server.

Why should I care about this, you ask?  The problem is that all the extra code will slow down your site.  This matters because statistics show that nearly half of all users expect a website to load in less than 2 seconds. Further, over a third of all users will abandon a site completely if it takes too long to load. The average page load speed of sites appearing on Google page 1 search results is 1.65 seconds.  This is what you’re up against, and why you should avoid DIY website builders. A slow loading site just won’t perform for you.

A custom-designed site which has been professionally made will only include the elements you need. This means that the site will load much more quickly using efficient code.  Your users will thank you for this, and are far more likely to engage with your site.

3. You (and your content) is tied to your provider

Once you’ve built your drag-and-drop site you’re tied to the platform you’ve built it in.  You’re also nearly always locked in to their own hosting, too. This can be much more expensive than you initially expected.

A factor that is often overlooked is that you will have to learn a proprietary system when building the site. This knowledge is not transferable to other systems you might use in the future. If you take the time to learn something, you’ll want that knowledge to be useful in the future. This alone is a good reason to avoid DIY website builders. Your knowledge is tied to that one particular platform, which you might never use again.

Furthermore, you won’t be able to easily move your website to a new provider. This is because you’re unlikely to own the underlying code.

If you might decide to cut your losses and move to a website created by a professional designer, you’ll find your content can’t be easily exported from the DIY site. This can complicate the move, and increase your costs.

With a custom website built to your specific requirements you will own the code. If you own the code you will be able to move the site to different hosting providers in the future. This allows you to be agile in response to costs and service provision.

4. Poor SEO support

No matter how good your website looks, it won’t help your business at all if no one can find it.  Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of fine-tuning your website to help it rank more highly in search engines such as Google.  DIY website builders don’t offer great potential with your SEO.

Most DIY builders don’t allow Google to verify your website in their Webmaster Tools. This will harm your ability to rank in search results.  You may also not be able to integrate Google Analytics with your site. Without this information you will be unable to see key statistics that will tell you how your site is being used.  This means that you can’t work out how effective your site is, and what changes you need to make to improve it.

SEO is a complex area and needs specialist knowledge.  You’re also aiming at a moving target because Google regularly updates its algorithms and parameters that will affect your ranking.  Unless you are experienced in this area it is unlikely that you will be able to effectively master SEO optimisation yourself, especially when you consider how limited the SEO capabilities of DIY website builders are.  Working with an experienced web designer or SEO specialist is essential if you want your website to be found by your target audience.

5. Ineffective content

Following on from the previous point, you need content that is directly informed by your SEO considerations.  There are so many pitfalls you can walk into when working on your own.  Unless you know what you’re doing, you’re unlikely to make the right choices. Your content needs to speak to Google and the other search engines effectively.

There’s a careful balance to be achieved. You need to match your message to potential customers with techniques that will help your site rank.  When you use a DIY website builder you’ll be responsible for making all the content decisions yourself.

Poorly written content can make your website look unprofessional and less likely to engage with your audience.  Consider the most important H1 heading on each of your pages.  How many times do you see ‘Welcome to my website’ in that important position on a homepage. This heading should actually be a keyword-rich statement.  Not knowing this can cost you dear, and is another important reason why you should avoid DIY website builders.

When you work with a professional, they can help you with your content and share their marketing expertise.  They will help you write for both your audience and search engines. This in turn will increase the potential for success of your website.

6. Lack of technical support

If something goes wrong, you might need some technical support or advice.  You’ll need to turn to the customer support team. This is often via online chat before you eventually get to speak to a real person by phone, typically overseas.  In the worst case, you’ll need to open a support ticket and explain everything in a written note. You’ll then need to await an reply that will hopefully address everything you wanted to know.

You will undoubtedly wish you had bought a custom-made site. If you had you’d have the ability to speak directly to the web designer. Any issues can then be resolved by the person who actually built your site.

Watch out for covert drag-and-drop websites

Finally, beware of rogue ‘web designers’ who sell themselves as professionals. They actually don’t know how to write code or make a bespoke website for you.  They will use a drag-and-drop theme editor such as Elementor, Fusion, WP Bakery or similar. Sometimes they may even modify a third-party theme that they’ve downloaded from somewhere else.

The client is often unaware of what they’ve paid for and the web designer will present it as a quality site with a price tag to match. This will lead you to believe you’ve bought a quality piece of work.  The website will look ok, but you will unwittingly fall victim to the disadvantages of a DIY website.

How to detect that you might not be getting a custom site:

• Not being provided with a PDF mock-up and an opportunity to request design changes before the site is built;
• The web designer gives the impression a feature you request could be difficult to make. This probably means it’s not in their drag-and-drop kit-bag;
• All the websites in the web designers portfolio look similar;
• They have only been in the industry for 5 years or less.

Conclusion

A DIY website might sound really attractive if you have a modest budget and you’ve time to tackle it yourself. This approach is often a false economy and you will end up paying for it in the long run.

Talk to an experienced web designer to see what can be achieved within your budget. This is worthwhile even if it means that the site has to be fairly small to start with.

A small site can be expanded later when you have more to spend.  It’s far better to have a concise, well designed, well built, and well optimised website. Your main focus should be for your potential customers to be able to find you!

Get in touch today to talk about your bespoke website project.

The post Why you should avoid DIY website builders appeared first on Jeremy Hickman.

WordPress is a website Content Management System (CMS).  It has evolved from a tool used to publish blogs to become a fully-featured CMS that can be used to create any sort of website.

WordPress is popular with web designers and users because it is versatile and easy to use.  Since its launch in 2003 WordPress has grown to be the most popular CMS in the world. Nearly half of all websites today are built on WordPress.

Since its launch in 2003 it has grown to be the most popular CMS in the world.  Nearly half of all websites today are built on WordPress.

What does WordPress cost?

WordPress is open-source software.  This means that it doesn’t cost anything to download or use it.

There are a number of commercially available additions available for WordPress to add functionality (plugins) or provide styling (themes) for your website.  Whilst many of these are free, some are not. The core functionality of WordPress is always free.

WordPress is open-source

Open-source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify or change, and redistribute without needing any specific permission.  This arrangement encourages people to contribute their ideas to improve the software, adding features or fixing things that don’t work properly.

Contrast this with most software which usually only the person, team or organisation that created it is allowed to alter or distribute.  This type of software is called ‘proprietary’ or ‘closed-source’ software. 

What can I use WordPress for?

You can use WordPress to create a variety of websites.  Your imagination is the only thing that limits you.  The following list gives some examples of websites that could be build using WordPress but the options are endless:

• Personal blogs
• Professional portfolios
• Business websites
• Online shops for physical or digital product
• Sites with content that you need to be a member or subscriber to view 

Because it is a CMS WordPress makes it easy to add content. You manage your content with an easy-to-use dashboard.

Managing your content through a CMS makes it much easier to look after your website yourself.  Without a CMS you would need to code your content directly into the HTML of your web pages.  Unless you have technical knowledge you’d have to pay a web designer each time you want to change an image or alter a passage of text.

You will find that WordPress can handle your content requirements with ease.  It supports text, images and videos and makes it easy to insert content into your pages.

A variety of templates, collectively known as a theme, displays your content on your website.  A theme dictates the styling of your website, including the colours, fonts, and layout.

You will find numerous helpful tutorials and guides online due to WordPress’ community-supported ethos.

Is WordPress secure?

Being the most popular CMS today means WordPress can be the unwelcome target of hackers.  Security is a concern for most businesses and a secure website will give you peace of mind. To ensure the safety of your data, hackers and data breaches need to be kept at bay.

WordPress includes a number of features that will help to safeguard your website.  It will log out users that have been idle for a period of time, and provides for two-factor authentication.

The open-source license of WordPress allows for the community to make constant improvements to the software. Through software updates, new features are introduced, bugs are fixed, and security enhancements are delivered periodically.

It is essential that you install the software updates in a timely manner to implement new security features.  Having an effective website support arrangement in place is a good idea. This will relieve you from having to keep an eye on this area yourself.  You’ll avoid exposing your site to risk if you forget to carry out the updates, or carry them out too late.

You may want to consider WordPress-specific hosting for your website. WP Engine provide managed hosting specifically for WordPress sites with the emphasis on security and reliability.

How can I add new functions to a WordPress website?

The core functionality of WordPress is comprehensive, yet there will be times when your specific requirements require something different.  You can add additional functionality via a huge library of plugins.  There is a huge variety of free and open-source plugins to choose from.  You might need to pay for specialist or premium plugins for more specific needs.

Your WordPress web designer will be able to develop custom functionality that isn’t currently available through a plugin.  Their programming knowledge and the approachability of WordPress should mean it is possible to make a bespoke solution for you.

As with everything, you can have too much of a good thing. For the novice with limited coding knowledge there is a temptation to install dozens of plugins to solve even simple requirements. This can make your website less reliable.  A professional web developer will have a better way to give you the functionality you need, without relying on too many plugins.

Popular plugins for WordPress websites

Some popular plugins include:

• Yoast SEO
  Helps you boost your search rankings by allowing you to enter key information in an easy interface in the WordPress dashboard.  A traffic light system will guide you, allowing you to see the impact of your optimizations..
• wooCommerce
  A comprehensive e-Commerce system.  wooCommerce allows you to add physical and digital products to your website, and process payments online. 
• Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)
  ACF allows you additional pieces of information (fields) to website pages, by altering or adding to the standard WordPress interface.
• Contact Form 7
  You may want a form on your website to allow potential customers to contact you.  Contact Form 7 makes it easy for you to build a form for your website containing the fields you want.  You will receive an email with the information the viewer inputs into the form..

WordPress Themes

Whilst you enter the content for your web pages into the WordPress dashboard, the way this is shown to the world on your website is determined by a theme.  A theme is a collection of templates and other assets that make your website look a certain way.

It is possible to download free or paid-for themes.  Using an off-the-shelf theme means that will be limited to predetermined layouts and options available within that theme.  Invariably these options won’t precisely match your requirements, leading to much frustration. There are some very good reasons why you should avoid DIY WordPress themes.

Hiring a professional to make a bespoke WordPress theme for you will always yield a better result.  Your web designer will talk to you about your specific requirements for design and functionality.  You’ll avoid the time and effort of trying (and failing) to force an off-the-shelf theme to look how you want.  You won’t need dozens of plugins to give you the functionality you need.  You’ll end up with a site that looks and works how you want, and will be reliable and secure.

Conclusion

WordPress is a fantastic platform for your website. It is easy to use, and can be reliable and secure if used correctly.  You’ll find it simple to add new or amend existing content on your site yourself.  This means you’ll avoid the overhead of hiring a professional every time you want to make a small change.

If you would like to discuss your website requirements, reach out today for a no-obligation free initial discussion.

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