Should your business have a website?
Yes
Should you invest in a quality website for your business?
Yes
This is because your website is the face of your business in the online space (Asides from your social media pages). Investing in a quality website means investing in giving a good first impression for your brand.
Each page on your website tells something about your business. Whether it’s your homepage, your product, and services page, your blog and news page, your contact information page, etc.
Having a quality website is having a website that clearly represents what your business is about.
Your site should be beautiful just like your physical store or business location.
You should treat your website building as you would treat your company’s physical structure. Paying attention to aesthetics, structure, and arrangement, the information displayed, the color, etc.
The process of building your website will cost you money, sometimes a lot, depending on the nature of your business.
In the course of this article, you would learn the factors that contributes to your website building cost, how to calculate the cost of your site and how much you should budget.
A range of so many factors affects how your site will look and how much it will cost you.
Factors such as the nature of your business, the size of the website you want, the features it will contain, how complex it would be, and most importantly who is building the site all contributes to the cost of building your website.
Small business site costs depends on a range of factors, from design preferences to must-have features.
How much does building a website cost in 2022?
On average, small businesses will spend $2000 to $10,000 to build a site. The cost to create a site for your small business will depend on your site’s features. Websites with more features or custom-built components generally cost more due to their complexity.
This average includes purchasing your domain name and web hosting plan, as well as designing and building your site. How much your business pays to create your website will depend on its size, features, and complexity.
Factors that contributes to the cost of building a website.
Domain name of the website
Remember that you should treat the building of your website as you’re building your business’s physical structure. Your domain name is like your street address e.g Socialander resides in Socialander.com. You can purchase your domain name from a range of domain name brands like Dreamhost, Godaddy, Hostage, etc.
A domain name would cost you from $0.95 to $12 depending on what you want and how competitive it is.
If your domain is not available, you choose another option. You can also negotiate with the owner of your domain name, this would cost you more.
Hosting:
Imagine your web hosting as the company that powers your land(Domain house). It is like a company that provides the things you need in your building.
Web hosting companies make your website available on the net. You can say web hosting makes your house a home.
The prices range from $24 to $24,000 per year depending on what you want.
As a small business, you can use shared hosting, this will cost around $24 to $120 per year. Shared hosting will work well for you if your website requires little content. You can always upgrade your plan whenever you need to add more features.
SSL Certificate:
This means Secure Socket Layer. This protects your website and its visitors. It protects your business and brand from the effects of hacking.
Note that a web hosting company may include an SSL certificate as a package for your subscription.
You may also opt to purchase an SSL certificate according to your need.
SSL certificate will cost you from $0 to $1500 per year.
Design complexity of the website
The design you prefer may be simple or complex. You would need multiple designs and templates to accommodate all the pages on your website.
The cost of design can vary from $2000 to $15000. This depends on whether you hire a UI/UX designer or you buy online.
Number of pages:
The number of pages on your website determines the cost. More pages on your website mean more money. This is because it takes time and energy to build these pages.
Pages are something your website cannot do without. Each area and section of your business should have a separate page on your website. This will make navigation very easy for customers.
As a small business, your website will contain fewer pages which will cost you less.
The cost for building pages will range from $1000 to $5000
Functionality:
Adding functionalities like payment, reviews, and comments, booking a session, photo speaks, etc would cost you more.
Small businesses would require fewer functionalities on their website at the onset, but as time goes on, more functionalities should be added.
The cost of adding functionalities ranges from $2000 to 25000.
CMS:
This is the content management system. This software lets your business create, manage and update your content without coding. An example of this software is WordPress.
WordPress is without doubt the most used content management system in the world. Top organizations and businesses are moving their websites to WordPress. This is due to the ease and functionality of the content management system.
With a good content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, you can easily log in to your site and change things like pricing, service, news, etc. Without having to need a developer.
On average, CMS will cost you from $2000 to $24000 depending on your preferences and the level of customization needed.
Other reliable content management system includes; Joomla and Drupal
The developer:
This involves whether you’re doing it yourself or contacting a professional. Building your business website yourself will take your time and energy.
You have to take your time to learn how a website is developed after buying everything you need. But it’s going to cost you less money because you’re only going to pay for the things you need for the website.
Doing it yourself will cost you around $0 to $300.
But if you hire a professional, you have to pay for the services and save yourself time and energy.
Hiring a professional would cost you around $2000 to $10000, depending on what you want.
When you weigh these two options, you can either do it yourself or hire a professional. This depends on your budget.
In conclusion, having a small business, you would not need to pay so high for building or taking your business online. You can do it yourself or you can hire a reputable design company.
Although, you need to budget for continuous maintenance to keep your website up and running. The following factors determine the reoccurring maintenance cost; domain name, Web hosting, SSL certificate, functionality, CMS, and general web maintenance.
You should budget like $2 to $40,00 for all your website’s maintenance.
Do you need a web design agency to build a website for your business?
You can hire socialander just by clicking on “I need your web design services”
