You know you need a website, after all everyone who is looking for you is looking for you online. Or perhaps your current website is outdated and you feel a little embarrassed when they do actually find you online 🙂 Perhaps all your competitors are upgrading and you don’t want to be left dragging the chain.
A fresh new website can help you grow your online business, establish your brand and reputation and bring in new revenue.
But what does a good websites cost these days?  When making a decision about how much to invest in your website, it's handy to know the steps, skills and resources it takes to build one.
What Goes Into Building A Website?
The process of building a website requires similar attention to fitting out a physical shop front. The project needs to be planned and managed from start to finish, it' needs a developer who knows how to build it out on a solid foundation, and then it needs content and design to bring your vision to life.
These are the activities that contribute to the cost of building your website.
Planning
Before building begins we will work with you to plan your website layout. We will discuss things like your domain name, hosting, your business, your ideal client that you are aiming to reach and the functionality you need, how many pages you require, the overall look and feel of your website and of course your budget.
Project management
A website requires a project manager to plan the website and ensure that timelines are met and the project stays on track. This is of higher importance for larger websites where developers, designers and writers may be coming together to build a website.
As part of project management you will be provided with updates and contacted to discuss key decisions. Contact may be made by either phone, emails, video conferencing if required or in person where possible.
Site structure
Before begining to build your website, the structure of the site needs to be planned out. Site structure refers to how your pages will link together to bring an easy, seamless and sensible navigation experience for your client as they explore your site for the information they are looking for.
Site architecture is also a key aspect of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEO relates to content that is recognisable by search engines like Google allowing your website to appear when clients search for your services. Optimising your website for search engines requires some reseach into to key terms and some competitor analysis.
SEO also overlaps into content writing helping clients find relevant and useful content.
Content writing
Obviously, we need to fill up your website with content to educate your visitors about your services, taking them on a journey from the problem that you solve for them to the transformation they can expect from working with you.
Well-written content will engage your potential clients, educate them, and encourage them to take the action you want them to take, such as join your newsletter, purchase a product or service or contact you.
Content is a significant part of the cost of building a website as it is time consuming and requires knowledge to write in a way that persuades your client while also optimising for search engines. The good news is, you can hire us to work with you to write your content professionally or choose to write the content yourself.
Web media
Web media refers to graphics, videos and images for your website.
High-quality media is a very important part of capturing your client's attention and creating curiosity around your services.
The web media you choose to use will also be part of expressing your brand identity.
As part of your website package we will source stock images for you to approve or you can provide us with the images you have available. Using your own images can make your website look more authentic.
For those who want to get even more professional with their website images you can consider hiring a photographer or videographer to take photos or videos for you, Graphic designers can also come in to help you produce high-quality video and graphics for your website.
Website Design
Website design pulls it all together by combining the content and media into the site structure. Good web design will capture your visitors' attention and use the psychology of design to better persuade your visitors to convert into clients. Your website visitors should also be able to clearly understand the benefits of your service at a glance.
Website Development
Website development turns your website design into a fully functioning website making sure that your website has fast loading speeds and looks good on all devices including smartphones and tablets.
Developers may also build custom functionality for your website to help it stand out from your competitor’s websites or integrate your website with your systems so you can automate some of your business processes.
Testing
Your developer will test your website thoroughly to make sure there are no bugs and pages with errors. This is essential to ensure smooth experience for visitors and you won’t risk losing prospects who didn’t contact you because they were taken to a broken link!
Hosting & Maintenance
Every website needs hosting, which is a place for your website to “live” so that people can visit it. Hosting providers charge a monthly fee depending on your bandwidth and storage requirements and it is recommended that you get dedicated hosting from a reputable and local (Australia) provider. We can organise this for you.
If you use cheaper shared hosting, your site is usually competing with other websites for bandwidth and resources and things are likely to either perform badly or break down more regularly.
There will also be ongoing maintenance including domain name renewal, SSL certificate renewal, monthly backups, website security and any plugins or themes your website uses.
Why Cheap Website Design May Not Be Worth It
We have set out the work that goes into into a good quality website to make sure it positions your business brand as a market leader, brings in your target audience and converts them to paying customers. A high-quality website is an investment in your business' current and future growth. It is a sales asset that will generate revenue for you. Cheap websites are not optimised for SEO to bring in visitors and do not have professional content nor design that convinces your target market to work with you.
Furthermore, a cheap website may require more work down the line to clean up the code, resolve errors and refresh the design so that you can get customers through the door. You’re probably not investing in a website for it to sit there and not generate any business for you.
Wrap up
At the end of the day a website for your business is not a cost, it’s an investment. And as usually is the case, ‘you get what you pay for'. Absolutely you can have something built super cheap, you can find cheap hosting with off-shore providers but expect the communication, project management, support and end quality of your project to be of low quality.
Some website builders use cheaper third party platforms which mean you will never actually own your website, potentially resulting in complications down the track like not being able to move your website to another platform should your business needs change.
If your business is just getting started then we encourage you to think long term… and start on the right foundation for your website to be able to grow with you.
