How Much Does Web Design Cost?

If you are a small business and still do not have a website, you are missing out on a large sector of your customer base.

Nearly 97% of all consumers use the Internet first to find local resources, and this number continues to grow.

Web design prices in Australia costs between $300 for a small sole trader site to $60,000 for a large commercial site, but as with most services in Australia the main cost comes down to labor rates so let's break that down first.

How Long does it take/cost ? to get a decent website

Unfortunately this isn't too strait forward either but we will try to break it down a bit further there are 3 basic options for websites each with its pros and cons.

Option 1 Template based (Cheap but often flawed)

These templates/themes are great some having hundreds of hours of design and development poured into them and all for a price range of anywhere from $20 - $200 remarkably good value as the developers make their money from selling them in bulk.

 These pages usually take a developer 1-3 hrs to fill out plus around 2 hrs for initial setup so as an example a typical basic site will have 4 pages (Home|About|Services|Contact) and a developer rate is between $60 and $250 per hour so the site will come on anywhere from $360 to $3500 bear in mind that you probably shouldn't opt for the bottom end of that range this site will represent you business to the world (if you must skimp do so on the hourly rate of the developer you hire not the time put in)

 Sounds good right? Unfortunately here comes the but  generally speaking developers that employ this method of build are less competent than the other 2 methods (not always but be do your homework) this can lead to major problems when you want anything out of the default layout so be sure to have a full idea of the goal of your website and confirm the developer is up to the job

Option 2 CMS Based (Medium cost and flexible)

These sites like template based leverage the thousands of developer hours to create a CMS system and layer your custom content on top the most popular (and thus best availability of developers) is WordPress 

For these sites pages usually take a developer 2-4 hrs to fill out plus around 2 hrs for initial setup so as an example a typical basic site will have 4 pages (Home|About|Services|Contact) and a developer rate is between $80 and $250 per hour so the site will come on anywhere from $800 to $3500 bear in mind that you probably shouldn't opt for the bottom end of that range this site will represent you business to the world (if you must skimp do so on the hourly rate of the developer you hire not the time put in).

As with template based it is important to make sure your developer is capable of doing all the requirements at the start of the job.

Option 3 Coded from scratch (Expensive but sometimes necessary )

Because of the complexity of this style of build it is hard to get a fir comparison.

Think of these more like a web app coding from scratch is expensive and should only be done if specific complicated functionality or processing speed is required because of this these projects start at about 100hrs to a full time role in the business (sometimes even a team).

However if you did want to build the same simple example website this way (not recommended) here it the info:

These pages usually take a developer 3-5 hrs to fill out plus around 2 hrs for initial setup so as an example a typical basic site will have 4 pages (Home|About|Services|Contact) and a developer rate is between $100 and $250 per hour so the site will come on anywhere from $1400 to $5500 not too bad but bear in mind that even the smallest of changes would have to be done by someone who knows what there doing and keep in mind that developers do things differently to each other so hiring someone to take over is a lot harder.

What About Other Cost?

Websites are a living beast that grow both in requirements and complexity over time (hopefully based on proven success) generally you will want to spend at least a quarter of the initial build annually in order to keep your site up to the current trends and security requirements (you don't want it to be hacked)

What can i do to save on website costs?

Generally speaking it is best to leave it to the professionals with years of experience and hundreds of websites under there belt to drive your web presence but if money is tight or you have a lot of time on your hands there are a few things that you can do.

• Draw a site map (a mud map of the pages you would like on your site and how they join together)
• Make sure you branding is clear and you have your logo in a useable format
• Write the content (we recommend that you get it re-written by someone specialised in web copy but your first draft can really speed up the process)
• Provide as many photos as you can in a helpful manner (categories them in folders etc)

The most important thing is to realise its going to change as you and your business changes take the pressure off it being perfect and having all the features you have ever dreamed of deliver something simple but of a calibre that represents your business.