How much should a website cost?
The old saying of “how long is a piece of string” is a good answer however I will attempt to break down you needs.
Ask Yourself:
What is the sole purpose of my website?
Is it just to have a website presence or do you want to sell online?
Try and envision the end result and work backwards from there
- Navigation – Do you need to have capabilities on your website for the customer to search or can they simply find out the information they need by visiting the FAQ page?
- These days for websites to improve their natural rankings in Google they need to be updated and maintained regularly. Gone are the days where you get a website developed and just let it sit there. It is imperative that you can make these changes yourself, as this will save you time and money. So therefore I would suggest getting a website built with a content management system (cms) and again depending on how the cms has been created will depend on the price. Some people are still charging outrageous prices to build a cms from scratch, this is not necessary these days either.
- However a database driven content management system, that provides the customer with secure login details, search etc can be moe expensive than an information based website built for a plumber. Don’t be afraid to communicate with you web designer your needs
- Payment Facilities – do you need a full ecommerce shopping cart solution when the customer adds products to their shopping cart, and it will calculate the weight and shipping details or will the free PayPal buttons with fixed shipping suffice?
- Feedback and Contact forms – do you need a simple contact form or do you require that form to do some thinking for you? If you require a more complex form there are many free programs out there to create them for you, once they have been created you should be easily be able to embed or get you web designer to embed it into your website.
- Site Stats – I believe that you should be able to access statistics for all websites. Google analytics is the free program but considering asking your web designer about a more advanced application like awstats.
There are two things you cannot scrimp on:
- High quality design, be sure to look at your designers portfolio. Your website is often your first point of call to the customer, if it looks dodgy what does it say about your business?
- Functionality and the way the customer can move around your website or add products to their shopping cart
For a quote please call 1300 309 379 and we will be glad to help.