Table of Contents
Why Should You Pay to Develop a Website for your Company Product Business Service Personal Brand ?
With website builders like Wix and Squarespace, creating your own personal for business website has never been easier! However, many growing businesses do not consider a website development company because of the initial website development costs.
In fact, the limiting factor for most businesses is the initial development price. While DIY websites will save thousands in the development, business owners will inevitably pay in other ways.
Custom features that multiply your online revenue come at a premium. As your website succeeds in drawing larger audiences and revenue, the cost to host your website will also go up. Not to mention the percentages taken off the top of every sale you make until you pay for the most expensive hosting package.
The cost of ecommerce website development and hosting tends to be more expensive given the extra layers of security to protect your customers. Several corporations will increase the cost for website development and design since they expect you to make more money. As you scale your business website to larger audiences, there are several hidden fees you need to be aware of.
When we include the time it will take for you to learn the platform and develop the website yourself, it seems like either approach will have similar website development costs. In this article, we analyze the reasons why you should pay more in website development costs.
In short, we can expect a contractor to deliver a better website than a builder platform, but what if I told you the average cost for website development will save you money in the long run?
Creative Design Control
While there are a wide selection of website builder templates to choose from, your website’s design is limited to whatever styles that are available on their software. This makes it difficult for your business to stand out from the rest and reinforce your branding.
By hiring a designer to create the style for you, the possibilities are endless! Even websites that utilize a Content-Management System (CMS) like WordPress can utilize custom themes. Your design can go hand-in-hand with the unique features of your website.
Pay Once For Features
By increasing the website development costs, you will generally pay less in the long run with the features you use. This is because website development agencies use agency licenses and offer a lower rate to clients to access these services.
Whether you need a delivery service plugin or on-page SEO optimization, there are several readily available solutions for both CMS and web-stack websites that are included in the website development cost. When no solution exists, contracting an agency to develop a custom solution that smoothly integrates to your existing technology will deliver a professional image to your users.
Contracting the expertise of a website development company will also help you to pay for features that you need and avoid paying for those you don’t. For example, investing in the best scheduling software may not be as important as investing in proper cyber security protocols for your website.
The Inevitable Migration
As a website builder site scales, the cost to maintain it will also scale. Many businesses are either forced to keep paying for expensive hosting or migrate to another web hosting service.
This migration can be time-consuming and expensive. Once the hosting becomes too expensive to maintain, your website will have a lot of traffic and potential revenue. Taking your website down for a couple of days or even weeks can be detrimental to your business.
While it’s impossible to predict the future, it’s a good idea to have a sustainable plan for continued growth.
Do you have a website for your business?
Cost for Website Design and Development
At this point, contracting a website development company makes much more sense than doing it all by yourself. Not only will it help save costs in the long run, but it will also offer much more flexibility, features and personalization that website builders simply do not have.
Now let’s talk about website development costs. The cost for website development will depend on the features you need as well as the size of your website. Let’s dive a little deeper into these aspects and see how they factor into the development pricing.
Common Features for Business Websites
There are many features readily available to include in any business website. The only limiting factors is the technology it is built with. If a business uses a website through Wix, for example, they will only be able to add features depending on their hosting plan. On the contrary, using a CMS website or full-stack website will allow you to include practically any feature, however, there may be fees for using existing software.
Ecommerce
Selling products/services online is an important aspect of increasing traffic and expanding your audience space. E commerce is a general term that incorporates all of the facilities necessary to sell online, however, these can generally be broken down into marketing, online checkout and shipping if you have physical items you are mailing to customers.
Delivery Services
Delivery services are typically short-term, like food delivery services. This does not involve printing labels and shipping to a location, rather finding drivers to deliver a package to a location.
Online Scheduling
Online scheduling can include taking reservations for a physical location or booking online consultations. This option is particularly useful for expanding your user base outside of your physical location.
Estimating the Size of a Business Website
Estimating the size of your website will often be defined by how many pages you need to have. The philosophy of less is more generally applies, but sometimes separating content onto individual pages helps establish a better flow for your users.
Ecommerce websites will generally have individual product pages which will also factor into the website development costs. Additionally, the developers will also have to set up the cart page and check out page.
Storing images and video on the server will also increase the size of the website. Using resources like YouTube can decrease the storage size, but may not be suitable if you want to serve private videos to users.
Calculating Website Development Costs
Putting it all together, the average cost for website development usually falls between $4,000 and $9,000. The cost of ecommerce website development will start at $5,000 and can go up to $15,000. The cost of e commerce website development is generally more expensive since there are more pages that need to be created.
However, we believe in offering affordable solutions to growing businesses and individuals. We offer competitive website development costs as well as hosting solutions for existing websites. When you develop and host your website with R U Coding Me LLC, we can bundle our agency licenses into the hosting costs to save your business even more money!
FAQ
What is website design and development?
Website design and development describes the stages of creating a customized website for a personal brand, business or organization. The design aspect will illustrate a general picture of what the website will look like, whereas the development stage is where the web development team creates the website.
How much does website development cost?
This will ultimately depend on the technology stack, required features, time period and resources used to host the website. Prices usually start at $2,000 and increase to accommodate all of the features.
Website development costs can quickly enter the five figure range for extravagant designs and features.
The average cost for website development falls in the ballpark of $4,000 to $9,000.
What is ecommerce website development
Ecommerce website development is a focused development effort to sell online products/services on the website. The process follows the same principles of standard website development, and the cost of ecommerce website development usually starts at $5,000-$6,000.
The average cost of e commerce website development falls between $5,000 and $17,000.
What is CMS website development
CMS website development employs a Content-Management System (CMS) like WordPress to handle much of the heavy lifting while still offering a flexible system to develop a custom website.
CMS/WordPress development is a popular strategies brands and businesses use to create custom applications without spending thousands of dollars for a custom website development team to create an application from scratch.
What are the phases of website development?
Website development can be broken into three main stages:
1. Prototyping
In the prototyping stage, the developer(s) will consult with the client to get a general idea of how the website should function and what it should look like.
Once the prototype is created, there is an agreement signed by both parties to continue developing the website.
2. Development
In the development stage, the developers will implement the website for the client while maintaining a similar image to the initial prototype.
Frequent updates will be provided to the client, and any minor changes to the design are generally accepted. Massive changes and new features are generally not accepted, as this breaches the original agreement. Be sure to communicate all of your features before leaving the prototyping stage.
3. Deployment
Once the development is complete, the developers will present a final version of the website to the client. At this stage, the client can make requests to polish the website before deploying it.
How to choose a website design and development company
Start by analyzing their home website and any portfolio websites they have developed (if available).
If you like how they created their own website, send them an email or fill out a contact form with your project details. During this interaction, pay attention to how they respond and gauge how excited they are to work on your project.
Remember, this is an expensive investment you are making for yourself or business! Be sure to pick a team that will deliver more than what you pay for.
How to host a website?
Web hosting is a service where a dedicated server hosts your website continuously. You can purchase a personal/business server or pay for space on someone else's server.
Web hosting is generally included with website building subscriptions. If you contract a website development team, you can either use your existing hosting, pay for their hosting plan or they'll give you an estimate to host on a reliable platform.
How much does it cost to maintain a website?
Maintenance can start at $500, however, this price increases depending on the size of the website and features. It is not unheard of to see annual maintenance fees upwards of five figures.
Closing Thoughts
Creating a website is easy. Making a website that will boost sales and drive traffic is difficult. Managing a stellar website in addition to a business is not something anyone should have to do.
Expanding online will dramatically increase audience scope of any business, however, it can become overwhelming for business owners to manage a website all on their own.
Many business owners make the mistake of only analyzing the website development costs and completely ignore the time, energy and continued investment required to make a website successful. Contracting a dedicated website development team will alleviate this burden and provide a strong platform for the business to invest in itself.
Working within the average cost of website development and employing a powerful business strategy online is a recipe for success in many industries. In most cases, the cost for website development will pay for itself and much more! Don’t be intimidated by website development costs, rather, think of it as a long term investment for your business.
Founder and CEO of R U Coding Me LLC. Jacob obtained his Bachelor’s of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida. He likes to go to the gym and teach people about technology.
