BBH Feature: How Much Should You Pay for a Website?
How Much Does It Cost to Get a Website Designed?
Erick Jonsson, who was the founder of Texas Instruments, always told his employees…
“Look, we want to pay you better than our competition pays their employees. But to afford that, we have to ask you to produce something of more quality, perhaps, or do it more quickly; in all do the best you know how.”
We all want to be paid more, but we don’t all want to work harder (or better) for it.
I don’t claim to be a web design specialist, but I’ve recently realized that I’ve picked up some valuable information over the years when it comes to getting a website designed.
It’s information that can help you, like Erick Jonsson, to make sure that you are paying for quality work that deserves the amount you are paying for it.
Just to be clear, I am NOT going to tell you how to design a website.
Instead I want to give you four tips that can help you to know how much to pay for a website…
4 Important Tips to Save You Money When Choosing a Website Design
1. Avoid free website hosts
It’s tempting to use these, but I would advise against doing this. Why? I have two reasons.
First of all, it looks unprofessional. And secondly, you get what you pay for. Free websites can look cheap, have slower load times, etc.
2. You don’t have to spend a lot to get a website online.
You might be worried that since I said to avoid using free websites that you will have to spend a lot of money to get a decent website online. That’s NOT true!
If you use WordPress to design and run your website, which I recommend, then you can get a decent website online for free and then just pay approximately $3 a month to host it.
How? By using a webhost like Hostgator.com and Bluehost.com.
After you purchase your website’s domain name, these web hosts will enable you to host your website for $2.78 a month (for Hostgator) and $3.95 a month(Bluehost).
Once you use begin using one of these hosts then, usually with just one-click, you can install WordPress and use it to make your website.
The great thing about WordPress is that they have a ton of free templates that you can use and just as many low-cost templates that you can use and tweak to your liking. (Paid templates can be as cheap as $20 or less.)
These videos explains how you can easily make a website using Bluehost or Hostgator…
How to Make a Website with WordPress Using Bluehost
How to Make a Website with WordPress Using Hostgator
But what if you would prefer to have someone else design your website for you?
That’s fine and could be a great idea, if you have the money.
And that leads me to my two last tips.
These last two tips will help you to have a better idea of how much you should pay for a website.
3. Pay attention to whether the person designing your website is using a template.
Having your web designer use a template to design your website is fine, and will save you money, but make sure to ask what exactly they are changing for the price you are paying.
I heard of one web design company who was charging way over $10,000 for a website designed using a template and they were only offering to create a logo, change the color scheme, and font.
That is way too expensive in my mind!
You can get a logo create for $200 (max!) and you can change the color scheme and font in WordPress for free.
So having your designer use a template to design your website is fine, but just make sure that they price they are charging matches the amount of changes they are going to do.
What’s a good price to pay for a website that’s designed using a template?
It’s hard to give an exact amount, but I’d say most website designs using templates have a starting point around $7,500. (You might be able to find one for less. It just depends.)
4. You should probably expect to pay at least $10,000 to have your website designed from scratch.
It’s not unusual for some web design companies to charge $10,000 to $50,000 to design a website from scratch. That’s why I am saying you probably should budget for $10,000 on the low end.
Not knowing your budget and your website needs, I can’t tell you an exact price you can expect to pay.
But I can tell you that you shouldn’t be surprised if the bids come in at the $20,000-$35,000 range depending on what you want done, what type of work that they are proposing to do for you (i.e. sitemaps, personas, UX design, etc.) and how good of a designer the website developer is. (Again, you get what you pay for.)
Final Advice on How Much You Should Pay for a Website
My final advice is true with any and all purchases.
- Always shop around.
It’s good to get at least a couple bids. The best deal might not really be the best deal. And the cheapest might not be worth the price when you see what others can do for a little more. - And always negotiate.
It’s always best to see if you can get a slightly lower price or get more for the price you’re paying. It never hurts to at least ask!
What is your advice on how much you should pay for a website? Leave your comments below!
