The goal of this article is to give you a much better idea of what you need to know when buying a website. Exact numbers will vary on a case-to-case basis, but this will provide you with an excellent idea on how much it will cost and what the main factors are that drive prices up and down.
The determining factors in how much a website costs are pretty simple but first, you need to know how much work is actually going to be required to complete the website.
This is determined by sitting down and seeing the needs of the customer and the robustness of the website.
The main factors that people have to take into consideration when figuring out how much a website is going to cost are as follows:
1. What Type Of Website Are You Looking For?
The most common types are:
Blogs
Company websites
E-Commerce stores
Purpose built
Online communities
Catalog or Brochure
Bio
There are more, but these are the main types.
There are several different types of websites that most people see regularly that are more common than others.
Finding the reason why you have or need a website is vital to determining how much a website is going to cost.
Figuring out the cost of the website has to start with what you’re doing with it. Goals will vary on a case by case basis, but knowing what you’re using the website for is going to be a great start. The reason why this is important in figuring out how much a website cost relates to the amount of work that is going to go into building a website.
For example, populating a website with products takes a lot of time, and if it’s going to change regularly, that could drive the price of the website up. However, if it is a simple blog, there is not going to be much work done on it and usually, the person buying it will be able to take over maintenance.
Those are some critical characteristics of things that will drive the price in either direction. One of the most significant factors in figuring out how much a website will cost is based on the purpose of the website.
Also Read: Increase Your Lead With a Top SEO Company
2. How Technology Affects The Cost Of A Website
To develop an online store, it is significantly more labor-intensive and challenging to build than it is to develop a personal blog.
Anyone can go on Wix.com and fire up a website for a small blog in just a few minutes with one of their templates they can modify.
That same person can also go to Wix.com and design and develop a website for an e-commerce store.
However, that website might take them significantly longer to develop than just a small little blog. There are also various e-commerce platforms to use. Each one has a specific niche that does something better than others.
If you’re asking yourself, “what the heck does all of this mean?” Let me break it down for you…
There are different website builders that all perform different functions. In the e-commerce space alone, there are websites like Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, ClickFunnels, BigCommerce, and others.
On the other side of things, you can easily make a WordPress account and start a blog that can begin to generate traffic. To get even more advanced, you can build a website inside of HubSpot’s content management system. This can show different versions of a website to a specific person.
Without getting too technical, there are certain things you want your ideal client to see that they may find more attractive than others. When this is the case, you want to make sure you don’t lose the opportunity to gather their information. There is more website development software out there that all do a specific function. Finding the one for you can immediately separate yourself from the competition.
3. Hosting
Hosting should be looked into and kept track of. Sometimes people sign up for a GoDaddy account and completely forget they have it years later.
This is great, but going through leaps and bounds to get the information you need to host a website and domain can be time-consuming.
Hosting for your website can be paid on a monthly basis. Domain hosting is typically on an annual basis.
Baron Media Group’s domain is baronmediagroup.com Each company has its own domain to help separate itself from the competition.
4. Coding Vs. Website Builder
Custom coding is essentially having your website do exactly what you want it to do to your liking.
There are limitations on website building platforms, and each platform has its own unique challenges. This is because software is made for the average consumer and not for each person directly.
Because of this, it takes a while for them to make changes however, most are pretty robust.
Having a coder develop and design a website to look and function exactly how you’d like can be expensive, such as offering you little additional features than a pre-existing website builder.
The typical website developer can charge anywhere from $100 to $250 an hour, and a website can take anywhere between 20 and 200 hours for a basic e-commerce store.
If you do the math, that’s a large spread. Hours vary drastically based on the type of website you’re looking for.
You may be wondering why the amount of hours varies significantly when it comes to websites.
When a website is custom coded, there are significantly more things that need to be considered. On top of that, there are more things to go wrong with it and debugging issues that need to be looked at.
Having bugs on your website can be a significant problem, sometimes depending on where the bug lives. The comparison between the two should always be looked at when it comes to coding vs. a website builder.
Using a website builder makes developing a website quicker but there are some drawbacks.
There is a a lack of customization. They all have some sort of limited functionality. As time progresses and companies continue to grow, these will be fixed. They are continually working on making websites more available to people.
They also are very robust, and working in them can be a little overwhelming. As easy as they are getting used to, the software can take some time. Knowing how to use it has its own learning curve. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer it is good to know that you can build a website yourself but the learning curve depending on your goal can be rather large.
Let’s compare it to bikes.
Riding a bike for most is pretty easy, but imagine learning when you didn’t know how to ride. The website builders are training wheels that help you ride. After a while, you figure out how to ride.
The website builder can guide you but knowing what to do after it guides you takes time and practice and research.
What Is A Plug-In?
A plug-in is a piece of code or a part of a website that is handled by another company. For example, when you’re checking out on a website, the plug-in could be from paypal.com.
It’s not handled by the website selling the goods, it’s handled by a specific company that’s not directly affiliated with that company.
Some platforms require plug-ins. Others need custom-made applications for integrations you might want as well use integrating with certain phone apps or something of that nature. These are all variable costs.
5. Size
Because we all know size does matter.
Simply how large and robust a website vastly impacts on how much a website is going to cost.
Here’s a great example:
I’m sure you can go out and find a website that has way too many pages. Either they added them over time, or they felt the need just to keep adding more and more pages. That costs money, sometimes a lot.
Website cost changes dramatically based on how many web pages you want. To a media company, that means more photos more content and more work to do. Those all cost money.
Having more web pages isn’t always a good thing either. It’s a balance. We recommend adding them if you need them or if you think they are going to provide value to your customer.
We often get asked how much websites cost or how to know if someone is getting a good deal on a website.
Taking a bird’s-eye view of what you want is a good way to figure out how much your website is going to be. If you see that it’s a simple website that doesn’t really need long-term maintenance, the new website is probably going to be on the cheaper end.
On the other end, if you have ambitious goals and are looking to make it to the top of Google, please understand that it’s not cheap to get there, but is almost always worth the reward.
If you have any further questions on websites feel free to give us a call. We’d be more than happy to educate you further or read one of our other blogs for more information.
Let’s Figure Out The Cost Of Your Website
We’ll start with your goal of the website depending on your goal prices, content, and features may change.
If your goal of your website is to have a simple blog that was built on a website builder, then your website is going to be probably pretty cheap and pretty simple for you to maintain yourself.
On the other hand, if you’re building a full website with various different capabilities, it is going to be a bit more expensive. If the website displays a company image as well as offering an e-commerce store and many other things, your website can easily arrange between $4000 to $5000 all the way up to $10,000 per website.
Some websites do exceed $10,000, and are usually very complicated websites.
You might be thinking, “why is there so much of a gap?”
Various factors can go into that gap, such as creating or generating organic content such as photos, videos, and written text to go into the website.
The other factor that you need to take into consideration is being found online and how aggressive you are looking to be. Getting online is not an easy task and it takes monthly maintenance to keep up with a blog, back-end, SEO (see our blog on SEO), and continual updates.
Google understands what is an active website. All of these factors need to be taken into consideration when pricing out a website.
These factors have their own challenges and costs associated with them.
For example, hiring a photographer is going to be essential when building an original website. That means no stock photos or very little.
Photographers aren’t cheap, and for good reason. Capturing the perfect photos aren’t easy.
Websites are a visual experience. Because of this, not skimping on photos is key when it comes to website development. Websites can have anywhere from half a dozen photos to several dozen photos depending on the size of the website.
SEO Is Another Factor To Consider.
SEO and Blogging are paramount for getting found on google which is paramount for a number of reasons. But at the end of the day, getting found means getting leads and ultimately making money. We have a ton of blogs on SEO and blogging, check them out.
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