We get asked regularly how much does a website cost – and the answer is quite simple. it costs as much as it costs.

Like many things, websites have many factors that contribute to how much the final bill will be, depending on the following:

1. What sort of website are you looking for
2. What features do you want on the website (media, voice, payment gateway)
3. Did you want the site to be optimized?
4. What sort of website designer are you wanting?
5. Did you want to pay for marketing of the website?
6. How many pages did you want
7. Is there any design work involved or brand design?

Lets look at the above points in order, as these will play heavily on the costs involved in getting a website designed.

There are a few different types of websites available:

1. Part A

A static website or template website

This is a website that only has a small number of pages, and does not really need to be updated or changed very often. Typically HOME, About Us, Services, Contact Us. These are sites generally for hair salons, restaurants, tanning salons – businesses that just need a visual presence on the internet and a web image.

Static Websites can cost anything from £ 500 up to around £ 2000.

1. Part B

AA CMS Style Site (content managed site)

This is a website that will allow you to be able to upload your own information and change pages from time to time. This could be for late offers, new products, mew machines etc. These sites are typically for engineering companies, medical firms, banks etc.

CMS websites can cost anything from £ 5000 up to £ 20.000 upwards.

1. Part C

E-commerce websites (online shops).

These are websites that have the facility to take online payments and sell products on-line. Typically shops like Argos, Amazon, Confused.com etc. will have e-commerce style shops.

E-commerce websites can cost anything from around £ 10,000 up to £ 100,000 upwards.

2. Additional features often play a big part of upping the cost on a website (if you want the site to be interactive, have music playing in the background or have multimedia running for demonstrations). The multimedia will be available to load on, or would it need to be recorded. An example would be hotels, very often they have live cameras showing the entrance of the hotel or shots of the dining room that can be seen on the website – which would need to be recorded).

3. Optimizing a website can push up the costs depending on how competitive your industry is. Optimization is also an on-going process, so would need to be a monthly agreement to keep you appearing at the top of search engines for your chosen keywords (such as 'pet insurance' or 'mobile disco' or 'water jet cutting') . Different industries have different numbers of businesses in them all competing to appear on the first page of the search engine, in order to compete you will need to get your website optimized to appear at the top – and then enter the arms race that is optimization.

4. Different website design companies have different costs, depending on their size, location, cost of staff. Remember we all need holidays, cars, clothes, so their profit margins will factor in what sort of car the boss drives, how many staff they have working for them, are they a new agency or a top Myrtle Beach agency etc.

5. Paying for links kind of links into point 4 – in that certain links that are 'bought' can make you appear higher on the search engines. This could be a monthly charge (say for around £ 40) or an annual charge.

6. Website Design Companies tend to charge per page and generally the more pages you want on your website the more the website will cost. A website that has 5 pages will cost less than a website that has 1,600 pages (such as a directory website or an on-line shop).

7. If you already have designs available or a band. logo available then this can be incorporated into the website; if not then you will need to pay the website designer to come up with ideas and options for you to select.

In the UK there are around 10,000 website design companies. Finding one can be difficult as you will need to get different options and prices from each one. As all companies are busy, this may require chasing them and then negotiating – more time.

An option is to compare website designers via an on-line price comparison website such as Marketing Quotes. Quick, free and easy to get quotes from local website designers.

Web Design

Web Design