So the larger and more complex the project, the more it’s gonna cost. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. But in this article we’re going to break it down in more detail to describe the factors that go in the price of a website. If you are looking to get a new website designed yourself, this will help you know approximately how much a new website will cost and if you’re looking to reduce that cost, it will allow you know exactly how you do that by providing the content needed for the website. Below is a summary of the main factors that determine the price of a website.

The Size of the Website

The size of the website is pretty straight forward and basically refers to the number of pages that are required to achieved the needed result. Some websites function fine with just one page containing all the content and others might need hundreds of pages or anywhere in between. As the number of pages increase, it becomes more and more important to have these pages organized in an efficient and easily understandable way. Therefor creating an optimized sitemap is more important and takes more time and attention.

Website Content – The Meat and Potatoes that determine the price of a website

One of the largest factors in determining the price of a website is who will be providing the content of the website. By content, we generally mean the website copy (the text of the website) as well as the media (the images and video).

Writing the website content is one of the biggest jobs in designing a new website and it’s also one of the most important. In fact, the whole website will be designed around the content so it’s extremely important to have this as early as possible in the process. If you are looking to save money on the cost of a new website, providing this content yourself is one of the easiest ways to do that.

That being said, most people aren’t comfortable and experienced enough to provide clear, concise, SEO optimized copy that has the marketing messages already figured out so as to entice the reader to take action on your CTAs.

“One of the most common scenarios is for clients to provide the basic copy for each page and for me to improve it with better, more optimized copy that elucidates the marketing headlines that will encourage the reader to take action.”

The Needed Functionality for the Website

The functionality that’s needed for a website can range from quite simple and straight forward to very complex, it depends on the specific needs of the business. It’s quite helpful if you take a look at the blog that outlines ‘Every website comes standard with these features’.

The more functionality that’s needed for a website, the more complicated the design and development of the site and therefor the higher the price of a website. And not all added functionality has the same level of complexity. For example, adding e-commerce is much more complicated than most other features because you’re dealing with financial transactions, customers accounts, automated emails and so much more.

Here are some example of functionality that can be added to your website:

• Custom Contact forms – if you need more than the basic form fields like name, phone, email and message, then you a custom contact form.
• Pop ups and other marketing features – There are a wide variety of marketing features you can add to your website such as pop ups, exit intent messages, etc.
• E-commerce – Selling items through your website is very common though it does require much more complexity and expertise to achieve than most other website features.
• Custom Dashboard and Login pages – When you login to your website, if you need a specific backend design to facilitate the unique functions of your website, then you need a custom dashboard.
• Calendar/Event functionality – If you need to display a custom event calendars that will increase the price of a website.