We get this question often, and I like to respond with another question: How much does it cost to buy a car?
The answer varies… you can get a car for a few hundred dollars. And I’m pretty sure it’ll get you from point A to point B. But there are luxury cars that run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The same is true for websites. A very simple site, based on an existing template (either in WordPress or in Shopify) will take just a few hundred dollars to implement. In fact, both WordPress and Shopify makes it easy to build sites without the need for a developer. But advanced websites with hundreds of pages, eCommerce, online video galleries, interactive forms and other elements can potentially cost hundreds of thousands of dollars as well.
So we first establish the scope of the project: how many pages and what content is displayed on those pages? And it’s important to know the type and amount of content. We have build “about us” pages that consist of a photo and a paragraph of text. And we have also build “about us” pages that consist of teams of directors and employees, each with multiple photos and paragraphs of text.
Then, we follow our checklist to figure out the features and functionalities required for the project at hand. Remember, each feature can have multiple options. A slideshow is not always a slideshow… Sometimes we even need to specifications that outline the logic of functionality and flow of information – especially when it an interactive element.
And let’s not forget the design. As a good friend used to say, You can’t put a price on design. We work with a select few designers that won’t even pick up the phone unless the design budget is at least $2500. That can easily grow if there different types of content that require different layouts and presentation views.
Building a website is a multi-step process, starting with concept and design, going into development and testing and finally to launch and maintenance. Most of our projects end up around a $5,000 to $10,000 range but we’re happy to figure out a proper estimate for your website project if you reach out. Because website costs do vary.
