How much should a website cost?
This is probably one of the most frequent answers web developers get. And the one that actually gives them the most hard time. Answering this question is like answering "How much should a house cost?" – impossible without much additional information. Basically, web design has many unique components that add or subtract from the total website cost.
Different web development companies have different approaches to determining the cost of setting up a website: some of them charge based on the number of pages, complexity of design layout, coding, special interactive features; website’s cost in other companies depends on the number of hours spent on its development and hourly rates of the specialists engaged in its development (that can range from $10 to $100 per hour in Europe).
It’s obvious that different web developers provide different sets of services that practically determine the cost of a future website. We at Fresh2L are used to define the price of a website based on several main components: design, content management system, domain name and hosting, SEO-optimization and web promotion.
As for the website’s design – it’s a must. It’s another matter what kind of a design there should be – every client gets to decide what kind of a layout he needs. Exclusive design rich in graphical elements can be the factor that skyrockets the price of a website. Such features as a unique design layout for different website pages, illustrations, images, 3D elements and flash-applications can each add a 3-4 digit number to the overall website cost. On the other hand, web design templates, ready to use or customized, can help the client to significantly cut down on the cost of setting up a website.
A lot of web development companies still produce static websites, regardless of the apparent advantages a content management system brings to website owners (flexibility of website content, possibility to create any amount of pages, add texts and media files). But CMS integration can triple the cost of web development; this is why the prices for CMS-powered websites at European and the US web development companies usually start at $4.000 (calculated by webpagefx).
We at Fresh2L offer high quality and cost-efficient off the shelf solutions that allow our customers to independently manage the contents of their websites. All our websites are CMS-integrated and nevertheless their prices are usually several times lower than those at European/US web studios (check out our prices at "Web development").
SEO and web promotion are relatively new features offered by some companies as a part of a web development package and they can significantly influence the project’s budget. While SEO requires a very specialized knowledge and experience, both given techniques are appreciated only when they bring results. Achieving the results that will benefit the clients’ companies and generate business leads takes a lot of effort and time, and as you know, time is money. This is why ordering a website’s promotion or optimization in Europe or the USA will cost thousands of dollars (for example a calculator at designquote shows that SEO optimization services, apart from any web development services, start at $2.500). Moreover, even providing such services most of the companies almost never include them into web development packages meaning that a client will have to pay extra charge to receive them.
Fresh2L offers SEO optimization and web development as a part of some of its web development packages, and the cost of such services is already included into their prices. Note that the price of an optimized website by Fresh2L will start at $ 1.900.
The bottom line is that because of a huge number of components influencing the price of a website it’s extremely important to first create a set of technical requirements that would take into account the desired functionality. Only a detailed specification can provide the developer with enough information to give a quote. The client on his part should always assess the difference between the number and the level of the provided services - this will help to better understand the pricing and choose a suitable developer.
