One of the more important questions that we need to ask before developing a website is how much the website should cost. This is the same with asking how much the car cost before we buy it. Like cars, we could choose to get affordable KIA cars or, expensive Mercedes Benz. Websites development could provide us with different levels of performance and quality. In a nutshell, we will get what we pay for. Quality is the more important aspect that defines the price of a website. We should know that quality it a broad factor and it covers all factors related to appeal and functionality.
When we shop for a website, we should look at previous works of the web designers and developers. This will allow us to determine the visual appeal of the website. We could spend time studying their previous works and check all the effects. We may also try to open these websites with multiple major web browsers in PC, Mac OS X and various mobile devices. As an example, some websites don’t work well in lightweight Opera Mini browser in mobile devices. If this happens, we could potentially lose many visitors and customers. It is clear that price is an important factor before we decide to purchase a website.
For some web designers and developers, price can be a rather touchy matter; because it could be determined by different aspects. Low-end websites based on templates and made by less skilled designers could cost up to $250. Skilled, but inexperienced web designers could charge us up to $450 and $750 for experienced designers. Small web design companies could charge us $2,500; medium-based companies could charge us $4,000 and a highly professional, large firm could charge us up to $10,000. A low-end website could be consisted of only a dozen webpage with static HTML code, while the most expensive one could have heavy programming and multiple features.
So, even with the above guideline, it is still difficult to determine the right pricing. However, anything under $1,000 would give us an unpolished and quickly developed website. However, we should know that a website reflects our business effort. In many cases, a website that costs more than $1,000 to build could represent a company properly enough. There could also be various technologies that can be applied to the website. A qualified web developer will develop the website with the most efficient and latest languages. Poor efforts could result in bad user experience and unreliable compliances.
High-end website could also allow better optimization for SEO efforts. The website could have pages that allow search engines to crawl the text and navigation easily. It happens because qualified web developers use a SEO-friendly website structure that allows bots to smoothly move between webpages. Turnaround time is another factor that determines pricing. Slow-rate of completeness will result in lower overall prices. Post-production support is also needed and this will determine the overall pricing. Good supports will cause the overall price to become somewhat higher.
