How much should a website cost?

I need a website. How much will it cost and how much time do you need to make it?

• I opened my business, and we need a website.

• My old website is good, but I need to make it look more modern.

• Hi there. Any web designers here who can make a website? How much does it cost and how fast can you deliver?

• How much should I pay for a new website?

These questions pop up on a daily basis on at least one of the Facebook groups I’m in. Mostly on Digital Nomads, solopreneurs/entrepreneurs groups or in business-related topics.

There are several issues with any kind of variation of the questions above, and I’m here to hopefully save you some time and guide you through

the real costs behind making a website and

what you are actually paying for.

Hiring a freelancer to make your website should be cheaper and faster than you trying to make it by yourself. Freelancers are experts, so it will take them less time, right?

Please take a paper and a pen and start writing down some questions before you go anywhere and type in How much does a website cost.

This will lower the cost of your website.

1. What will the website do for you?

It’s strongly related to the business you’re in or want to build up. If you need it for your business it will be your home, your store open 24h.

“Your website is the smartest and cheapest salesperson you'll ever hire. Treat it right.”

2. Presentation website or e-commerce?

Are you using it to introduce yourself and your services?

Or will you actually sell products with a shopping cart and payment?

“Just a simple website with some text and images.”

So, it’s a presentation website.

Now, in order to make it clear for you and easier for the person who will work with you, think about what’s important to put on the website.

From the information you have and know you want to showcase, can you make a structure? Homepage, About Page, Services Page.

Do you have enough information to fill these pages, or a paragraph or two will be enough?

If you only have a few sentences, we might be talking about a “one-pager” and that will be cheaper and faster!

So when you just need something simple, cheap and fast - start with this main information, with the keywords: I need a one-pager website, we have all the information, you just need to implement it.

If you will sell products and will need payments, you can still work on a basic structure, but please mention this in your request. If you plan adding a shopping cart in the future, also inform the person before starting anything! It will again save you time and money.

3. What do you already know and where do you need guidance?

If you need more than one scroll down page, it can also be simple.

Mention you need more pages, details to be discussed. It is important to know if you need the web designer to help you with this or not. If you have other people helping you specifically with this, you should mention it because it will be a team work.

This opens a Pandora box:

• most developers don’t design necessarily pretty stuff, nor do they write catchy sentences.

• most designers don’t code/develop, so they might not be able to make more technical stuff and they're also not very talented with wording.

But, long live generalists - there are web designers who are very passionate about UX & UI and understand that the website will be for the users and some of them can give you good advice about how to structure the information.

You hit the jackpot if they also are good at writing.

If any of these people have some marketing experience, you are lucky, and you can trust them with helping.

This is what you will pay extra for.

The experience comes with years invested into learning, researching, keeping up with trends and working with many clients.

If you want a website that will help you look good on the world wide web, and not only for boosting your ego, but for actually bringing you clients, you have to give this point a bit more thought.

I didn't put this as a first question because it might scare you, it might make you procrastinate and not start working on your idea. Try sorting out those first questions out on THE PAPER, and see where your ideas take you once they're out of your mind.

Need an update for your existing/old website? Must say that and tell them on what platform it is. It's always messier to work on something old than creating something new.

Get your website!

If you posted your questions with the details suggested, you will see who replies and what kind of questions they will ask.

Web designers should ASK QUESTIONS before quoting you a price.

If they are very fast in giving you a price without asking further questions, you will probably get a website, but not the best one you could get. They probably need another client and finish another project, so you'll get a basic template, and it will be... fine.

Here's the last question. Is fine, fine enough for you? #goodenough

Or do you want a website that:

• represents you

• sells

• helps you and your business grow?

Other technicalities

that you should definitely think about and write them down on that piece of paper.

These will increase the price accordingly and get you further away from just fine.

Branding - do you already have a brand and guidelines? If you also need that, you might get a package deal.

Competition - you obviously have competition. Do you know it, can you find them and see how they do it? Make it an exercise for you in order to get closer to how you would like your website to look and feel. The webdesigner you hire can also do that for you, but as you guess it takes time, so it will cost more.

The 2-3 options/variations also take time and cost money. If you don't know what you want and want options to chose from, and want these options executed in order to see it exactly as it would look like, you're getting mock ups. Now, you can even ask for them in your post.

Platforms - Wordpress, Wix, Squarespace or custom made? This is a long story. It involves themes too, free themes or customizable ones that cost more. And the story around domains and hosting.

We skipped the step in which you could do your own website with tutorials and platforms that are so easy to use. Once you decided to ask someone else for a price, hopefully, you realized it’s not that easy to do it. Which platform to choose from the many out there? And where do you get those themes everybody talks about?

I can’t believe I haven’t found while Googling a website that explains these steps and makes it clear what is behind making a website. I did find lots of numbers and confusing comparisons.

But, wait! How much should it cost you ask?

Hoping that everything from above made it clearer for you, I haven't given you a number because everyone has different costs, hourly, project wise, based on their location, experience, etc. Depending on your details and who you're talking to it can be from free to...very expensive :)

You should be able to also budget a number based on what it will bring to you in the future.

Found this funny calculator which could maybe guide you.