Have you recently been given the task of researching how much it costs to redesign your company’s website? This might seem like a pretty daunting task – the more you research, the more questions roll in. How do get all your questions answered and put it all together?
This article covers everything you need to know redesign of your company’s website, including:
- How to choose the best option for your business
- Free web design ($0 – $500) vs.
- Cheap web design ($500 – $2,000) vs.
- Using a professional agency ($5,000 – $20,000)
- Pricing for everything that’s needed design and build a business website
- Our free website cost calculator tool that can be filled out and emailed to your boss when completed
38% of people will leave your website if the content or layout is unattractive... 59% of people will read or browse through your website when it’s beautifully designed
Your Handy Pricing Summary
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Free vs. Cheap vs. Professional Website Design
Free Website Builders (Wix, GoDaddy – $0 to $500)
Everyone’s seen those ads for Wix websites or the latest craze with Alf promoting websites on GoDaddy.
Let’s jump in and take a look at what’s really on offer…
Whilst Wix is an ultra easy to use system out of the box. You get a simple template that you like, you enter some words and hey presto! you’ve got a new site. Well, not quite.
Some business owners are surprised to find out that their Wix website can take a lot of work to get right. Unfortunately, whenever you stray outside of the boundaries of the template, e.g. adding an image that’s larger than the template or adding a short paragraph, then the template gets thrown off.
Something you also need to take into consideration is that you will most likely need to find images that are aligned to your brand. Images can make or break a website, so finding the right ones can take time and lead to frustration.
A lot of Wix websites require a design for both a desktop AND mobile versions of your site. If you’ve every hit the publish button on your website – always make sure you check it on mobile to make sure it looks great – after all, over 50% of all website traffic these days is mobile based.
A website is more than looks. Please remember that once a website is up and running then there’s a lot of work to do get a return for your business.
A shortlist of tasks include:
- Getting SEO right, so you show up in search results AND people choose your site over everyone else in the list,
- Reading and interpreting your website’s data to see how it’s performing – you might have a bucket of gold that you haven’t tapped into yet. A great place to start is our article which teaches you how to know if your website is performing.
Pros:
- Super easy and quick to get started
- You don’t need to be an expert to get something up and running
- It’s ultra cheap
- Best suited for startups
Cons:
- It can a lot of work to get right
- It can be frustrating
- You might need a separate mobile version
- There’s normally ongoing monthly costs to keep the site up and running
Cheap Web Designers ($500 to $2,000)
There’s a fantastic business group on Facebook that goes by the name of Business Business Business. It’s a great resource for business owners in Australia to ask questions about anything to do with business and have a multitude of answers from experienced business people.
Unfortunately, every now and then someone asks that question – ‘I’m looking for someone to design our new website – it needs to be cost effective’… What follows is a barrage of ‘we’ll build you one for $500!’ responses.
What rarely follows is a more powerful question – ‘what type of result do you want for the business?’ More on that in the next section of this article.
How to get started with a cheap web design option
- Choose a template for your business. Our article ‘How to choose the new look for your website‘ covers how to do this.
- Find a cost effective web developer to build your website based on the template. Make sure they’ve delivered good quality business websites – ask for a reference list of their happiest clients in Australia.
- Make sure you’ve got a solid commercial agreement signed before you hand over any money or kick off the project.
- Have a bigger plan of updating the site after 12-24 months.
Pros:
- Cost effective
- You choose your design upfront
- Can get up and running pretty quickly
Cons:
- Your website might be the same design as someone else’s (if you’ve used a template).
- Templates can be poorly coded
- Cheap web developers can disappear after they’ve delivered your site
- There’s might be critical components missing off your site like automated backups (in case your site gets hacked), security to deter hackers or Google Analytics (to track how your website is performing)
Professional Web Agency ($5,000 to $20,000)
A professional web agency is normally geared to work with your business for the long term. This automatically infers that they need to deliver a great result when they design and build your new website.
They will normally ask questions like these before they start working with you:
- What sort of return does your business need from the new website?
- Who is your target market, what stage are they at in the buying cycle and what’s your normal sales process when they find your business?
- Where do you see your business in 5 years time?
These types of questions help them get really clear on what your business is all about, how hungry you are for growth and how to design a website that your sales leads are going to love. The end result:
- Better leads for your sales team
- A much better quality of client (your operations / delivery team will love working with them)
- It opens the door to referrals from other businesses
Pros:
- A unique, high quality website that looks great and is built to grow your business
- Your staff are happier
- Everyone feels proud when they hand out a business card
Cons:
- It’s more expensive in the short term
- It normally takes longer – 3-6 months to build the website
- There’s a bigger risk of investing in something that might not deliver the results you expected
Putting together a budget for a website
Now that you’ve chosen the approach you’re going for, we’ll share what types of costs to expect when designing a new website. We’ll focus on the Agency approach as this gives you complete flexibility when building your budget:
- Website design – how the website will look on desktop, tablet and mobile devices
- Website development – converting the design into a live website
- Project management – the management layer that includes communication, managing the budget, functionality, timeline and risks.
- Content writing – words on the site that do the selling for you
- Imagery – stock photography versus using a photographer
- SEO – helping search engines promote your website
- Hosting – where the website will reside on the internet
- Maintenance – keeping the website up to date and running regular health checks
Website Design ($500 to $5,000+)
- $500 – use a third party provider like https://99designs.com.au and choose the best design.
- $2,500 is a mid tier design where the designer will hand over PDF with the designs on it. Our advice is to go that step further and request designs for both desktop and mobile versions of the site.
- $5,000 and above involves a lot more processes such as user experience mapping, wireframing and storyboarding. Multiple meetings would normally take place with many hours of research to get the website design to
Website Development ($500 to $5,000+)
As soon as you’re happy with the design of your website it will need to be converted into a live functioning website.
- $500 – will give you the bare minimum for a website. This level of development is fine if your website uses a theme. It should give you the basics to then be able to add your own content (words) to the site. Be prepared to come up against issues such as the website not looking great on mobile, not being tested properly or the site requiring extra budget for additional functionality.
- $3,000 – this is a great starting point for a professional website. Development with this budget will give you a well built website that will look great on multiple devices, it’s thoroughly tested and it’s easy for your business to keep up to date.
- $5,000+ – this level of web development will normally involve a level of complexity such as integration with your business systems, development of multiple design templates or custom functionality for the front-end of your website.
Project Management
The level of management required to make a project a success. This will normally include face to face meetings, status reports, emails back and forth and phone calls. Most projects will require a percentage of around 10% of the rest of the budget for project management.
Content Writing
A website with well written content will generally get way more sales enquiries than one that’s been written in-house. Content is normally calculated on a per-page basis with a maximum number of words on each page. Factor in around $300 to $500 per page for content writing.
This service can be offered in these ways:
- Content review – you write the content and the content writer puts their spin on it.
- Partial writing of content – the content writer creates a couple of pages on your site to set the tone, give a basic structure and get the ball rolling. You write the rest of the content.
- Write all the content – the content writer creates the content for your whole website. This is the most expensive option but it gives you the best results.
Imagery
The imagery can lift a website up or drop it to the ground. There are two main options when putting together images for the site:
- Using stock photography – this is the cheapest option but the risk is your website is not true to your brand.
- Using a photographer – this option allows you to use imagery that is specific to your business.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
SEO includes all the services and strategies that help you rank better on search engines such as Google. The budget required to do this well will depend on you type of business, how competitive your industry is and much you niche. As an example, it will be easier to rank for ‘mountain bike repairs crows nest’ compared to ‘bike shop sydney’.
- $500 per 6 months – this level of budget includes a health check of your SEO rankings
- $2000 per month – this will give you website some ongoing love such as backlinks and competitor analysis
Hosting
This is where your website lives once it’s up and running. As a rule of thumb, it’s better to choose hosting that’s in Australia and that has an Australian support team. We recommend Ventra IP as your first port of call.
- Entry level: $8.95 / month
- Mid tier (WP Engine): USD$45 / month
- High end (AWS online shop): $200 / month
Maintenance
This is required to make sure your website is up to date with the latest security patches and your website is kept in a healthy state.
- From $77 / month
Website Cost Calculator
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