Blog, Websites, 7 min read
What a website actually costs, and what the cheap ones leave out
Templates, freelancers, studios and agencies quote very different numbers for what sounds like the same thing.
Ask four people for a website and get four numbers an order of magnitude apart. They are not quoting the same thing, and the difference is rarely the design.
The four tiers
- A template you fill in yourself. Cheap, fast, and it looks like the template until you spend real time on it.
- A freelancer on a template. Better, because someone is making choices for you. Usually the best value for a small business site.
- A studio building custom. More expensive, and the difference is in the parts you cannot see: structure, speed, the ability to change it later.
- An agency with a strategy phase. Right when the site is the business. Overkill when it is a brochure.
What the cheap quotes leave out
Look for these before comparing numbers, because they are where projects go over.
- Content. Someone has to write the words and get the photographs. If it is not in the quote, it is your job, and it is the most common reason a site sits unfinished for three months.
- Mobile. Everyone says responsive. Ask to see two of their sites on your own phone before you decide.
- Speed. A site with uncompressed images is slow, and slow costs you traffic. Ask what their last build scores.
- The handover. Who owns the domain, the hosting account, the code. If the answer is the agency, you are renting.
- Changes. Can you edit text yourself, or does every typo become a support ticket?
The question that saves the most money
"What happens when I want to change something?" The answer tells you what you are really buying. If small edits need a developer, factor that into the price for the next three years, because that is the real cost.
Where to spend and where not to
Spend on the first screen, the thing you are selling, and the path to contacting you. Do not spend on animation nobody will watch twice, a custom icon set, or a blog you will not write. You can add those later, and usually you will not want to.
One rule of thumb
If the site is there so people can check you are real, buy the cheapest thing that looks credible and move on. If the site is how you get customers, it deserves the budget of a salesperson, because that is the job it is doing.