Always consider the value of your time and how it might be more profitably be used. Having your website designed, branded and built by a professional website designer can be far more beneficial and cost-effective.
Optional Extras and additions can help make a website truly bespoke, but they can also, understandably, add to your website design cost.
Most buying decisions have to consider the wealth of possible extras that are available to you, the buyer, as they can also add greater value to your visitors’ user experience and help gain their trust. A bit like ordering the addition of a conservatory or landscaped garden to your new home, or larger alloy wheels and sat-nav to your new car, optional extras require us to think about the rewards and benefits of such optional extras versus the cost.
It can be hard to equate but it might be that spending £500 more on extras can result in more leads being generated through your website, making that £500 investment result in possible double or even quadruple the profile. Equally, if not done properly, it can be a waste of money, and in many cases could be added later after a few months.
To keep the website design cost and associated fees down there is plenty you can do yourself. Quite a lot of the additional costs will come down to photography and content. It’s always better if the images and photographs appearing on your website are yours and of your works, workforce, services or product, and are of good quality. If you already have these or know how to get these produced cheaply, that will help enormously. Also, with the content, nobody knows your business better than you, so who else is better at writing about it? Of course, it’s not always easy or even possible to write reams of text by yourself, but if you can sit down and bulletize the main salient points of your business and each service, this will also save you considerably in the long run (as you won’t have to pay for a copywriter to research and write content about your website from scratch).
Lastly, look out for training events like a WordPress workshop. There is a wealth of information online but you can also receive a 1-to-1 workshop on how to administrate your website yourself, and with confidence.
It’s also only fair to tell you right now that there is no point investing time and money in a new website if no one can find it, and therefore no one is going to be looking at it. When embarking on the road of online marketing and setting up your website as the hub of that plan you should, by at least equal measure, consider the time, effort and money it may take to get visitors to view your website in the first place. That said, there would be no point driving visitors to a website that is poorly set up and with poor information. But how to drive visitors to your website is another article for another day and for now we will continue to consider the costs of a new website.
Even when investing in a website with a CMS or Content Managed System, that allows you to add and amend content on your website without any coding knowledge, it is still important to keep your website up to date.
The CMS websites like WordPress and Drupal, for example, can allow you greater freedom to add content, change price information, insert images and videos, change the menu structure, etc, without having to call a web developer, and thus saving you money. You can also update the software of these systems in much the same way as you can update the apps on your smartphone. However, it is still possible to download or update a plug-in (app) to your website that can break it somehow. For this reason, it’s a good idea to keep a good relationship with our website provider in case of such events. You should also look to factor in the Website Hosting cost.
If you’re a small business and, for example, in the growing market of home services, like home laundry, dog walking, cleaning services, it is important to consider your best route to market, just like any large business might.
Similar businesses in the good old days may have left service cards in the local post office window (and that may still be an excellent option for many people), but the modern alternative would be to have a well thought out Social Media presence and make good use of this free resource.
Certainly, before shelling out for a dream website there are many types of online and offline Networking (networking being the keyword here) that can really help you establish a very nice customer base.
Website Price: N/A – but think about getting some training on Social Media for Business to get you going – (approx. £195+VAT).
Depending on how you are planning your new business and when the future launch date is set, you may well consider some of the excellent ‘build your own website’ options. There are plenty of these options available from Wix and Squarespace to the Hosting and Domain providers offerings from the likes of GoDaddy and IONOS.
However, even these website builders that require no coding knowledge can be a bit awkward for some and do have a learning curve with them. But if you have more time than money, or have an organisation with someone who can find their way around a PC quite well, then they are a great place to start. Alternatively, employing the online services of a junior developer from someone like Fivver to help get you started, approx. £100+.
Website Price: Free to £30 per month (plus the cost of your time and online assistance).
There are many ways you can keep those costs down and avoid those ‘optional extras’ we mentioned earlier.
The costs of a professionally designed website may start at around £2,480 can be a significant part of your business’s sales and marketing budget. For many that have had a website for many years and not really seen a benefit, it’s hard to visualise how a new website can do any better.
The benefits are not only that you have a website to be proud of and happy to show off to all your customers and prospects, and has been designed to convert as many visitors as possible to becoming a genuine lead, but that it can also be easily updated by you so it is always current.
Website price: From £2,480 upwards – depending on how many ‘optional extras’ you may need it is possible to double this figure.
Remember that you can significantly keep costs down by having a well-prepared plan of what you need when requiring extras like an online shop, content creation, professional photography, etc.
Large businesses can greatly benefit from the services of a professional website design and inbound marketing company. The continual improvement required will be at the centre of such an organisation and the idea of a ‘new website’ perhaps doesn’t apply here as much.
The website should be an organic part of the business that is constantly being updated and optimised by the PR and marketing of the services and products themselves. In this case, the design ‘assets’ of the website will be critical to develop a perfect User Experience (UX) and enhance as good a conversion rate as possible through better content as well as regular optimising of such things as font, colours, icons, sliders, videos, etc.
Website price: From £3,950 upwards – dependant on the number or eCommerce products or interactive tools required, and then also normally requiring continuous maintenance and support, with additional digital marketing boosts and campaigns ranging between £8,000 to £20,000 per annum as part of an ongoing 12-month support and marketing campaign, dependant on the reach and engagement targets set.
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