Website Design Prices
Because there are so many website designers and web design companies out there, and because each one has a different pricing structure, it can be difficult to know where to start when establishing a budget for your web design project. First of all, you’ll need to have a good grasp of your requirements – if you don’t know where to start, our Buyers Guide offers useful advice in working out what you need to include in your website. As a general rule, the more complex the website, the more it will cost to design. We can therefore divide websites into a few broad categories and gain some insight into the kinds of prices you can expect to be quoted for each.
Cheaper Website Design Prices for Simple Websites
The most basic kind of website consists of one or more linked web pages with text and images. For a business this can act like a business card or online brochure, giving visitors a useful overview of the company, its services/products and location and contact information. The number of pages doesn’t greatly affect the price as this kind of website will normally use the same design for each page with only the content changing as you move between the pages.
A very basic website of this kind, where you’ll be unable to change the content, is the cheapest to design and will cost anything from £200 upwards. If you want to be able to update the images and text on the website yourself so you can, for instance, keep prices and offers up to date, add new pictures to a gallery of previous work or add recent company news then you’ll need a basic Content Management System (CMS) included in the website. This kind of site will cost at least £500.
The bulk of the work in designing simple or brochure style websites is in the actual designing of graphics and the layout of the website, so prices vary depending on the skills of the designers and how highly valued they are in the marketplace. Companies or web designers who have experience working with large brands at the top end of the market will therefore charge a lot more. By looking at a web designers’ portfolio you’ll get a very good idea of the standard of their work. Most web design companies will have a portfolio on their website.
Website Design Prices for a Content Management System Website
Some companies require a website where you can do more than just change the odd bit of text or the odd picture now and again. Larger, multi-site companies may have product or service information that changes frequently. Companies working in media may need to constantly update their sites to react to a changing news cycle or to blog. If your company is reliant on gaining business through your website you may need to update the site regularly in order to boost search engine performance.
If you need this level of content management, you’ll need a more sophisticated CMS, one which allows you to change pages, create new pages and update the links between different pages without the need to learn coding languages.
These kinds of websites can be designed and delivered, along with training for your staff in how to use them, for anything from £1,000. Again, the more complicated the site, the more you should expect to pay as the web designers will need to tailor existing software for your needs and integrate it into a consistent design - a time consuming affair.
Website Design Prices for E-Commerce Websites
If you’re looking to sell products or services through your website you’ll again need appropriate software integrated into the site by the web designers. For a simple online shop selling a few products and using PayPal as a payment system this software will usually include such features as a shopping cart and a manageable inventory for updating products and prices. Such a site will cost at least £700.
More complex E-Commerce websites may also feature a product search feature, order confirmation emails, customer registration and tracking, multiple delivery options, several pictures for each product with a zoom facility or discount codes. Such sites will also usually use a dedicated merchant account and payment gateway for taking credit/debit card payments. These more professional sites will cost upwards of £1,000.
There’s almost no limit to how complicated such a site can be and how many features you can include for the benefit of your staff or customers. Large e-commerce companies’ websites often have recommendations for returning customers, wish lists, in-depth feedback systems and customer reviews as well as highly complex reporting, stock control and customer relationship management tools which integrate with accounts and marketing software. As you’d expect, the costs for such sites can easily reach into tens of thousands of pounds – and that’s without the cost of paying people to maintain them.
Website Design Prices for Bespoke Development Websites
The site you require may not easily fit into any of the above categories. Visitors to your website may need to interact with your company in a unique way due to the nature of your business and this interaction may require bespoke software tools or databases which need to be built from scratch. Examples of such sites could include: estate agency websites where users need to search a large database of properties using various different criteria; social networking sites where users interact with each other through software; stock trading websites which need to integrate real-time software gathering data from various sources.
Companies which build such websites have highly skilled staff who can code in a variety of different programming languages. As a result, their work is highly sought after and expensive. A website including even a basic database will cost at least £1,000 and costs rise quickly with increasing levels of complexity.
More Detailed Website Design Prices
As explained before, costs vary greatly between companies and so the prices in this guide are a rough estimate at the time of writing. When you know what you require from your website you’ll want to gather several quotes from different website designers or web design companies. Only then will you have a concrete idea of what your project’s going to cost and who the best people are to build it.
