By Olivia Diaz
Ever increasing technologies have upgraded the way of the website development processes in the world. And you know one of the most troublesome questions that come to the mind of every business owner is: how much an effective website cost? Well, the cost of developing a website is very subjective, and there is no clear-cut cost blueprint for it.
Do you need a business website?
In the current scenario, you can’t afford not having a website. After all, it provides a great help by generating more clients throughout all aspects of the customer acquisition cycle. However, how you can benefit from having built a business website are endless. Gone are the days when you use to only rely on having your business listed in the Yellow Pages or word-of-mouth. All the “old school” methods are effective but to a certain extent. Whereas building a professional website acts as a perfect solution these days.
Today, websites range in price from $100 “do-it-yourself” projects, to projects that cost well over $100K and, of course, an entire team of highly skilled website developers. Apart from time and expertise, every website requires these components.
1. Good Website Aesthetics
Aesthetics is all about the look and feel, and it’s the first key website cost driver. Right from page structure to layout, font, colors, typography, and other features- aesthetics make your website unique. For better outcome you can choose either of the two:
- Theme-based website design – It’s all about selecting a pre-built website theme that includes page layouts, font and color styling, and basic built-in website features. You can also decide upon how much you need to modify and customize for your end users.
- Custom website design – Have you ever stepped in a haberdashery? Creating a custom website can offer you a pretty similar experience. This is quite a time-consuming and costly, but as a result, you will get a one-of-a-kind website. So if nothing off the rack fits, or if you have specific wants and needs, a custom website is the only way to pursue.
2. Engaging Content
Right from headers, footers, forms, pictures, videos, graphics, words, documents; everything that goes on websites pages is what content creation is all about. Here again, you have two options:
- Repurpose existing content – This is only possible if content currently exists. With the help of existing materials, you can modify it for public viewing, strategically add keywords and links, make it timely for SEO purposes. Being less time consuming makes it more cost-effective option.
- Creating new content – You do not have any established material or it’s like you are starting afresh, creating content from scratch completely makes sense.
Although, it’s pretty time consuming but overall a website content today needs to be optimized for reliable search engines, stimulating in terms of visual impact, and consistent. This applies whether you are creating new content or repurposing content.
3. Programming Functionality
Creating a website today involves everything from social integration to photo galleries, intuitive forms, comment systems, a blog, e-commerce components like a shopping cart and so forth is included in advanced functionality.
Many business owners can save money by keeping website functionality to a minimum, but at the same time, it is very important to know that sometimes these costs are unavoidable. For instance, websites built to capture online sales require e-commerce components that require a skilled programmer which cannot be substituted.
There is no cookie cutter answer for how much it costs to build a website. It all depends on how you design the aesthetics, create the content and program the advanced functionality.
