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How much does it cost to develop a web site?

The more content development, image creation/editing, that is involved - the more expensive the web site. Obviously there is going to be a huge price difference between a web site. designed by an 18 year old student in his bedroom to an internationally renowned design firm which has offices, staff and large marketing campaigns to pay for. Every web site is different. To find out how much a web site will cost, you need to ask the questions

What features do you wish in a web site? What are each of the following?

Once you have done this and have a suitable answer, contact several web designers to obtain some quotes. Beware of web design companies that promote "A 5 page off the shelf web site for £350". Any web designer that can give a price without knowing what you want from your web site should not really be trusted. Some designers you pay by application.

The cost for development.

Basic HTML web site design is quite cheap. The average developer will charge either an hourly rate or as a package rate. Hourly it costs up to £25 / hour. If you buy a package, you get normally 1 - 5 pages for £100 - £500.

If you are want forums, server side scripts, CMS, shopping carts etc... the price jumps up considerably. Since ASP.NET, PHP and ASP are quite a bit more advanced than regular HTML the price jumps quite high. For ASP/PHP design, the charge for a client is in the region of £50/hr. For ASP.NET and php/rdbms design, the charge for a client is in the region of £70/hr.

The Value of Your Time and Experience

Unfortunately, only you and your client can determine your value. What the designer needs to do is to charge what is reasonable to make the business profitable. Projects always take more time than you plan for them. You may need to factor in this extra when you calculate the time per hour it will take to develop the web site. Cost per hour is usually better for the designer and a cost per project is better for the client.

Hosting

Hosting charges jump all over the place. There are places that charge as low as £4.95 / mth and some that charge as low as £25/mth. Domain registration is similar: It's as low as £2/year to £25/year.

Web site optimisation for search engines starts from around £200 per page.

Obeying the Law

There are various Acts that web sites must comply to. Disability Discrimination Act, E-Commerce Regulations 2002, Consumer Protection Distance Selling Regulations, Data Protection Act; Failing to get your web site compliant with these could be costly. Good advice from an experienced web design is essential. Selling online: an overview of the rules.

Why do quotes from various web designers vary so much?

Once you have a good idea of the web site. you require, you will need to obtain some quotations to build the site. It is very important to ensure that any comparisons are 'fair'. Some designers charge a monthly fee (usually with hosting included) instead of a single complete price. With low quotes the designer might be relatively new and looking to improve their portfolio, or they might be creating the site using templates. A more expensive quote might include extras, such as graphic design etc or maybe the designer is famous, or just greedy.

For larger web sites the price system needs to be broken down in a different way.

Sites depending on the functionality cost between £5000 to £75000. Once databases and shopping carts are put into the equation the costs go up dramatically. The visitors to a web site. will instantly equate the quality of the site with the quality of the company, the products and the services. This initial impression can have a tremendous influence on whether or not the visitor becomes a customer. This makes the cost and quality of the graphics of paramount importance. The more complex the sites, the more skills are involved and the greater the number of people involved with those specialist skills, the greater the cost. A 2007 survey from Actinic 'the average price charged by web designers for deploying an e-commerce site was around £3,300' in 2006 the cost was £4,600.

Ongoing Web site. Costs

Hosting

Once you have designed the web site. you will need some form of hosting to get it online. Web site hosting very is cheap and unless you are going to use very high volumes of traffic the cost will be between £50 - £300 a year.

Web site maintenance

The cost of designing a web site is high and a one off cost. Many sites require a few pages to be changed regularly. For a small cost of between £5-£25 per page per month depending on what has to be changed these pages can be updated. These fees do not make much money for the developer but a number of these sites updated on a regular basis can provide a regular income.

Rewriting the web site.

Changing the content over time helps, but a major rewrite or redesign keeps the web site up to date with the latest changes in technology. Changing just the CSS can change the whole look of the web site. This of course can only happen if the web site was written properly in the first place. Rewriting puts the web site. back higher up in the rankings of the search engines. Web log files need to be examined to discover what people are searching for on your site and if necessary rewriting the site to put these items in or changing the layout to make these items easier to access.

Web site Marketing

The marketing of a web site the most important factor. Many companies assume that people will just come and visit their site. Most people use search engines to find what they are looking for. If your web site. isn't on the front page of the search it means that it will not be found. PayPerClick advertising campaigns are becoming more and more popular as they can be a cheap way of marketing and can provide instant results. Writing web sites for search engines is a less popular way because it costs more, but the system is usually far cheaper in the long run. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a very complex topic and is often best to deal with a specialist SEO agency; the charges often run into paying hundreds or even thousands of pounds a month.

So how much does a web site cost then?

The answer is much more than people really think. The 18 year old and the large company will produce the same result. The Quality of the design and implementation will make all the difference in the long run.

Interestingly from the same Actinic report - Dreamweaver continues to lose market share among professional web designers, but Microsoft Expression has also failed to make much impact.
- All the best-known tools seem to be losing ground. Likely reasons include:

You will need to establish relationships with your suppliers;

When you are ready you will need to promote your business, to make potential customers aware of your presence and what you have to offer;

Until you start generating revenues, you will be burning up your initial investment capital;

A business plan will help make these issues clear, so that you can plan your implementation priorities.