So, you’re looking for a website to promote and take your business to the next level? Maybe you’re a new business owner looking to launch your products or services to the digital world? Perhaps you realized your old website wasn’t quite cutting it anymore in terms of performance? Or maybe you happened to read the blog How a Good Website Leads to More Clients from SALVé, and realized you weren’t in 2022 yet and needed to do something about this?
Whoever you are, and whatever your situation, the purpose of this blog (if you hadn’t guessed from the title…) is to break down the costs of developing a website in 2022.
DISCLAIMER: your website costs are specific to your own business, so don’t come crying to us if yours is more expensive than what the blog may suggest.
Before diving into the finer details surrounding website development and the associated costs, it’s first important to lay out a very basic framework of how the costs are often allocated through the development process. Planning, designing, developing, and maintenance are the four elements which build this general framework.
Each of these elements are different for everyone, so where design may be more costly for you, the maintenance might be cheaper compared to another website. This is the importance of having a good website developer in your court who is able to break down costs specifically to you — shout out Juan at SALVé. I repeat, this is the importance of having a good website developer in your court.
Planning
This goes a long way to helping you and your chosen website developer best understand your requirements which assist with cutting development costs. If you know the purpose and type of website that you require, you can create clear goals that you want the website to achieve, which better guides you to know which features you do and do not need.
Is your website for eCommerce? Will it be corporate? Educational? In the same way you don’t need a crisp three-piece suit to work on a farm, you don’t need a web portal if you’re simply promoting a blog, so know what you need and you will cut costs.
Planning Cost Estimate: $500 — $2,000
Design
The design element is where the real costs of developing a website start to become clear. The design of your website is imperative for its success, so coughing up a little extra cash here will be beneficial for you.
There are many resources available for creating stock websites using templates that can be relatively cheap and serve a purpose — Squarespace, for example. However, we strongly encourage you to stay away from these options as enticing as a 20% discount you found online may sound. Seriously, don’t use them. Ever. Unless you want your website to look just like everyone else’s.
Custom websites will naturally cost you more, especially during the planning phase. These costs are predominantly run up by designers creating wireframes and user flows (UX) — an illustration of your page(s) content and behaviors — and mockups (UI) — the visual elements of a website with no functionality. While it’s difficult to put a specific price on this aspect of design, figures can be based on an hourly rate or fixed costs depending on who you work with. An average hourly rate may come in around ~$70/hour, and fixed prices can be anywhere between $750 — $4000, and sometimes more.
Another large aspect to consider within the design of your website is what graphics and illustrations you are going to have present for clients and potential clients to see. The more you want to include, the more you should expect to pay. The same goes for more intricate or dynamic illustrations that you want included. Having an awareness of what you want will enable your developer to put a price more accurately to your website, and you will have more of an idea of the overall costs.
As a general rule of thumb, the more customization you want, the more money you will be paying.
Design Cost Estimate: $1,000 — $5,000
Development
The single largest costs that come with building a website come from the development element of our framework, and this relates to… well… development… and can be split into two different categories: front end and back end.
Front end development is everything that website traffic will see and interact with on your website. Dumbing this down, this would be video playback, scroll bars and sliders, the aesthetic of the drop-down menus, login in protocols and everything in between that you, as a user, may see and use on any given website. While there is a heavy emphasis on the visuals within front end development, some of the processes which allow these website features to work effectively are also found here.
Front end development can be difficult if you have limited design experience, however. Getting a website to look the part and work quickly and efficiently shouldn’t be skimped on, so pay a little more here and you’ll ensure a positive user experience on your website.
Back end development relates to the mechanisms that help keep your website alive and operating smoothly. This is essentially the foundation of your website, where developers build all of the mechanisms that process data to allow actions to be performed on your website.
To compare to a real-world example, the foundations of your house, and the supporting structures which hold up the roof, walls, and windows would be the back end development of the actual construction industry — the color you paint the walls and what you hang on the walls would be the front end, if you were wondering…
Both of these processes are incredibly important for your website and to get them right can set you back a hefty chunk of change. Trust us though, it’ll be worth it.
Development Price Estimate: $2,500 — $20,000
Maintenance
Maintenance costs for a well designed and constructed website will vary depending on your website. If your website follows a more basic framework, then maintenance costs will typically be lower than those of a more complex and deeper website.
You should expect anything that you include on your original website to need maintaining, including the content, which can become outdated and less accurate over time. The same can be applied to the software and development, alongside the overall design, so be prepared to review and invest on maintenance regularly.
Maintenance Price Estimate: $500 — $2000 per month
Conclusion
Finding the true cost of what a website will set you back is intricate and highly personalized to your own business (unless you’re STILL using a template you found online — we’ve already warned you of this today…).
A truly flawless website will set you back thousands of dollars, which may seem like an extortionate sum of money, especially when you could spend a few hundred dollars for a cheap looking website. But you could also spend many thousands of dollars on a Ferrari, even though an old sedan can set you back only a few hundred, but, I know which you’d prefer.
Reach out to SALVé for a free consultation on getting the best website for your business today.
