Having the best suited website to your company is a massively important aspect to any modern business, you want your website to reflect your company’s values, beliefs & aesthetic whilst also providing excellent information and quick functionality. Finding the right design agency is a key factor for business owners when contemplating design costs and development costs of a professional website design.
With the increase in online sales during 2022, it’s likely that many retailers will not be returning to the high-streets and that they intend to focus solely on the online trade of their goods through getting to the top of search engines results. With this in mind, it’s important to consider what functionalities your website will need to perform, and how much to except the average cost to be.
There is no set price for a website, as each is unique it’s entirely up to you what you want your website to be able to do. With more pages, images, content & functionalities usually comes a higher price, although this is not always the case. You’ll also need to consider the designer and their software & programming used to produce the website. Some more popular agencies or freelance web designers may advertise an upfront cost, however it’s important to note that these are often subject to change depending on the overall content creation, timing of project and all additional services.
The following article will discuss the types of websites available, how much they cost, the overall price of individual features & plugins that may increase your end-bill & everything you need to know regarding website prices in the UK, 2022.
What Type Of Websites Are Available?
Usually when confronting a web-designer you’ll be presented with different website packages, roughly based on what you want from the site, Web-designers may package these as different sized websites, or different functionality websites. Individual designers may have their own design cost calculator or design pricing guide, and it’s always important to hear each option from your chosen design company, as you may want a simple design right now, but a more elaborate design may fit your 5 year plan better, and could potential be your cheapest options in the long run!
1) The Basic Website
A basic website is usually the same across all designer platforms, it typically offers 3 pages, home, about us and contact. Additional pages could be added for additional costs, but typically this is not a website that sells online, basic websites are best suited to local service providers such as tattoo artists & hairdressers that can only provide a service in person, and thus the website is used as a means of communication with customers & also a way to showcase their recent work. Whilst there are no flat rates for a basic website, you would not expect to spend more than £500-£700 for a basic website of 3 pages, however at SGOR you will be able to gain a standard site for anything between £250- £500.
2) A Standard Website
The standard website packages put forward by web-designers typically offer something a little more, this is where you begin to see online shopping services appearing, social media integration, several and more pages including landing pages, service pages & informational pages such as a blog or vlog section. There are many other uses and ideas for websites, whether its a basic package, standard or ecommerce, you’ll surely find many different ways to create a unique website that draws attention to your business.
A standard website is often more personalised also, with advanced features, security features and often complex functionality settings with custom themes. You’ll likely need an experienced development team or at very least two freelance designers working side by side to ensure you have a seamless experience and receive constant updating in regards to your website build.
Whilst it is possible to have a standard website created on a tight budget, having a budget that has no flex can often be difficult, as websites are known for having ongoing costs, or unexpected costs you don’t want to limit yourself too much. However some web designers may offer the complete package and provide bespoke quotes which are tailored to your business.
3) An Ecommerce Website
Ecommerce websites are known as large online sale shops, E-commerce facilitate the purchase of multiple products or goods from different parties. This can be from B2B or B2C. There’s never a limit of pages Ecommerce websites have, typically because their product pages are often endless, E Commerce typically have an online shopping Plugin such as WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento etc. Ecommerce websites can be anything from an online Jewellery to a multi-platform such as Amazon.
The bigger the site, the larger the cost, however if you’re considering have an ecoomerce website built you may already have dedicated teams to preform each aspect of the site, with custom quotes for the content aspect, the functionality aspect and all other additional features provided by independent graphic designers or software providers.
A Basic Website: Purpose, Plug-ins & Prices
Basic websites are useful for smaller businesses looking to offer their services locally, it’s a very simple online presence that reminds customers of your local business, it can help you to rank and appear in Google and compete with your competitors. With smaller basic websites you may not necessarily need a professional designer, you could be looking to build it yourself or pay monthly rates to a larger company as you won’t likely need the complex features that larger sites require.
There are multiple ways of using a basic website to help gain visibility for your business, this can be through using it as an online booking form with a Home page, a contact page and a booking page. Alternatively it could be a basic gallery website that uses the homepage, contact page and a gallery of recent work and images.
A basic website is the easiest to build on your own, as a lot of page-building websites cater for this type of design, such as Wix.com & Squarespace. These types of website building software’s are designed to help non-web designers create and build a website easily, it does not require coding or HTML knowledge.
You’ll also need to consider the cost of plugins and what they can do for your website.
Plug-ins are essentially additional downloads that can be used to add an extra functionality to your website, this can be anything from increasing security to your site, optimising images, adding shopping facilities or taking stock orders, there are endless amounts of plugins some of which are free to use with ‘pro’ features which can typically be a one time or monthly payment, more prestigious and sought after plugins can come with a base charge.
The typical plugins you might use when running a basic website would depend on the platform you are using, if you’re using wix.com you may not require many plugins, possibly an image optimisation plugin such as Imagify to ensure high-quality fast loading images, and any other additional features required such as a ‘downloadable menu’ if you are a restaurant Or a ‘booking form’ for tattoo artists, hairdressers, beauticians or barbers.
When considering the price of a basic website package there can be many different costs depending on the functionalities. Although typically a basic website can cost around £200-500, including the cost of a web designer & domain name, hosting might vary depending on your provider.
A Standard Website: Purpose, Plug-ins & Prices
Moving on to the Standard package of websites, these websites are typically built for small-medium sized businesses who are looking to provide products or services outside of their local area. Having a rough idea of how many pages you’d like can help with the idea of price when it comes to average website development cost. To provide an accurate estimate your web design team would likely need the business model plan for your website and your essential factors to determine your website cost estimate.
Ways of using the standard website include selling or exchanging of goods, display of information such as blogging, or an e-learning or online training website (such as offering Yoga classes online).
When considering a standard website plugins can begin to vary, it’s important to remember that the more plugins installed means the more potential for a slower website you may have, this way you need to ensure that all the plugins are beneficial to your website and offer something to the customer. A standard website design is where user experience really comes into place. You need to consider things such as types of hosting, original content, front end development and back end development which allows business sites such as this one to maintain their business requirements when dealing with online transactions.
Including the basic plugins such as an SEOpress Plugin which can help you manage your SEO of the website is vital for a website like this, alongside image optimisation plugins, contact form or booking forms if none of these are available on your website building platform. (It’s likely that your web designers may have ways of using these without installing
Plugins, E.G. Elementor).
A standard website’s price can usually be expected to be between the £500-£1,250 range, again you may consider that hosting & alternative plugins can cost more than the standard price, a web- designer may be able to include all 3 in the overall price for your website, but you may be looking at more expense.
An Ecommerce Website: Purpose, Plug-ins & Prices
Ecommerce websites are probably the most likely to vary, you’ll hardly ever find two of the same ecommerce websites, as they’re often completely bespoke and designed based around the company. Ecommerce websites are also considered the hardest to build as functionalities become 10X more and also more difficult to manage. It’s typically easier to employ a professional web designer to create your ecommerce website to the highest standard, as a low-quality or page builder website on ecommerce platform may cost you sales.
Ecommerce websites will typically have plugins that coincide with their shopping functionalities such as delivery tracking, order management systems, online review systems, possibly plugins such as Klarna (buy now pay later) the more named plugins, which typically lead to a more expensive cost.
Ecommerce website prices are usually influenced by the amount of product stock you intend to sell and display, the functionalities on the website, and whether or not a CRM is required and stock management tools etc, all these additional features can typically determine the overall price of an Ecommerce website, alongside the fact of regular maintenance and essential a ‘web admin’ role might be required of your designers. You can expect to pay anything between £1,300 to £3,000 for an Ecommerce website, although a £3000 website would typically come with fully customized designs, multiple functionalities, CRM, Stock management, Social media tools and much more.
Additional hosting , content update and ongoing web admin and web support costs may apply more to an ecommerce website than a standard or basic website package, just as they typically require more regular review and maintenance than others.
To Sum Up…
To summarise, yes, it would be cheaper to build your own website, however if you’re looking to build your own website with high-quality design elements you may be spending out a lot of money on tools and softwares that a web designer may already have the functionalities for, saving yourself time and money on tools you may never need to use again.
There are countless alternatives to web-designers when considering basic website packages, and we advise you to explore all your options. If you have the time to put into creating a solid well working website exploring your options of helpful website building softwares are definitely worthwhile! and lets not forget it’s always important to explore all your options when it comes to choosing whether or not you’ll actually benefit and profit from a website! in many cases some websites simply aren’t needed, so before you begin your web-design process it’s important to evaluate how a website will benefit your small/medium or large business and why you might need a website in the first place.
However if you feel like you’re after a smooth and quick process where the content will be developed on your behalf, images & design will be completed by an agreed-upon deadline then employing a web-designer may be the best way forward.
