HOW MUCH DOES A WEBSITE COST?
Almost everyone asks this straight away, but no web designer can adequately answer this question without more information. While we can give you guidelines, it is always wise to clarify what mix of functions and features you want to have included. So to help you, we have included 'cost factors' in each section to help you get an idea of what to expect.
Browse this page and you will see why. Afterwards, you will probably ask a whole lot of different but informed questions of your web designer. In return they will have the information they need to provide you with an informed quote, and to advise you about the relevant mix of website types, features and functions to support your business.
WEBSITE, SITE
A website is a collection of files including text, images, forums, audio or video downloads and much more. Your web designer (or developer) uses programming languages to bind the files together and enables them to be presented on the World Wide Web as a website.
Cost factors: There is a huge disparity between quality and prices and the industry has no professional body or regulation. So, customers find it difficult to ascertain whether they are getting value for their money. A cheap website for $1,000 or less may easily be the same quality as one bought for $10,000. On the other hand, a cheap website for $1,000 may be just that - cheap - yet an expensive website does not guarantee quality. A website that requires more visitor interaction using say, forums, membership services, access to databases, etc, will generally cost more than a brochure website (see below).
We recommend that you ask your web designer for as much detail as possible about what will be provided, and how much each component costs. That way you can compare your quotes alongside each other.
BROCHURE WEBSITE
A 'brochure' style website acts like a paper brochure. In the main, it provides information, pictures and often a basic contact form. This is the most common type of website and is often a starting point for new businesses. Brochure websites suit businesses such as trades, professional consultants, community organisations and smaller government information sites.
Cost factors: A brochure website is the cheapest of websites, generally ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 depending on features, number of webpages and more. Costs may increase depending on whether the web designer has to write or edit text, locate professional photos or design graphics.
A website based on an existing template that can be customised, rather than a design that is created from scratch, is usually charged at a lower fee. This is because the base cost for the template design can be spread between a number of clients. A template website can be customised so that it hardly looks like other websites that have used the same template.
CMS, CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
A CMS allows customers to regularly update their website on their own. Features include:
* a secure login for staff so they can update specific parts of the website
* authorisation levels for different staff so some can access areas that others cannot
* the ability to add 'modules' (or extras) such as forums, search tools, counters, membership registrations and much more
CMS websites suit organisations that want staff to update the website on a regular basis. They suit businesses or organisations that need to manage large online memberships, collaborative work or online sales (e-commerce). The only downside is that letting staff upload content can sometimes leave your website looking like a dog's breakfast - staff should be good writers and communicators, and follow a set of agreed styles to keep the site looking nice.
Cost factors: CMS's usually cost more than brochure websites because they are technically more difficult to build, maintain and fix. They must be more secure and often take up more space.
Open source: There are many great "open source" CMS's like Joomla! and Drupal for example, that are free, have millions of users and many thousands of technical supporters. The CMS is free and the costs are in hosting, set up and customising only. There are no licence fees.
Off the shelf: On the other hand, buying a CMS off the shelf or from a specific company may not be the best decision. You would get limited support, limited future development and what we call "vendor capture" where the company, and only that company, can service your website.
The lowest priced off the shelf CMS we found was $1,500 but the customer was unhappy that the CMS vendor did not listen and that there were very few options for customising. The highest priced off the shelf CMS we found was $19,000 for a medium sized organisation (less than 10 administrators or editors but potentially hundreds to thousands of staff or members).
E-COMMERCE
E-commerce is a website with a 'shopping cart' or other ways for visitors to buy online. Many businesses sell their goods and services online BUT unless they have a unique product or service they will have a lot of competition. The strength behind an e-commerce website is a database of product listings and the ability for the website owner to setup categories, services, products, pricing, taxes, deliveries and more.
The website owner has two available approaches to secure payment systems. The first, and more costly approach, requires three important things.
1. A merchant account with their bank and a merchant agreement saying they will protect their payment page with secure socket layer (SSL) technology and that credit card data will be encrypted.
2. A SSL certificate
3. Documentation
The second approach is to use third party services like Paypal or DPS. These services take care of all of the merchant requirements for the website owner.
An e-commerce web design can be simple or extremely complex, depending on your needs. Some website owners choose a brochure website with straight-forward "buy" buttons. This is a good option if the product and price tend to stay the same for a long time, or if there are a low number of products for sale.
Website owners that need to sell many products and update products and prices often, may choose a full CMS e-commerce website. However, they still have a choice about whether to use a third party merchant service or to see their bank about a merchant account, agreement and their website designer about incorporating the secure services.
Cost factors: An e-commerce website can be significantly more expensive than a brochure website particularly if the website owner chooses to incorporate merchant services themselves. The cost range can be between $1,500 for a very basic e-commerce site to many tens of thousands of dollars.
DOMAIN, DOMAIN NAME, URL, WEBSITE ADDRESS
A domain name is how visitors find your website, much like a street number, street, suburb, city and country address is used to find your house. It uses a distinct name such as http://www.yourname.co.nz so that when people type it into their Internet browser or click it, they will be taken directly to your website.
You can purchase a domain name yourself (assuming it is available) BUT we recommend you ask your web designer to do this for you. This is because if they Host your website there will be no need to transfer the domain name or the domain registrar later - it will be consolidated and they can look after your annual registrations, emails and hosting for your website together.
A domain name has extensions. In New Zealand, the domain name extensions are:
.co.nz - Organisations pursuing commercial aims and purposes
.net.nz - Organisations and service providers directly related to the NZ Internet
.org.nz - Not-for-profit organisations
.geek.nz - Geeks! (Technical enthusiasts)
.govt.nz -National, regional and local government operating with statutory powers
.school.nz - Primary, secondary and pre-schools and related organisations
.ac.nz - Tertiary educational institutions and related organisations
.mil.nz - Military organisations of the NZ Government
.maori.nz - Maori people, groups and organisations
.iwi.nz - Iwi organisations
.cri.nz - Crown Research Institutes
.gen.nz - Any group not covered by other domain extensions
When you have a domain name registered you have the right to use it for the timeframe you registered it for. The shortest timeframe is 1 year but you can often register a domain name for up to 10 years.
The most effective domain names are short, easy to guess and easy to spell.
NZ businesses should register using a .co.nz or .com domain name extension and community or non-profit organisations should register using a .org.nz domain name extension.
Cost factors: The most common and expensive New Zealand domain name is one that ends in .co.nz and generally costs up to $45 per year. Most Registrars reduce the annual fee if you buy more than one year.
HOST, HOSTING, SERVERS, SPACE
Your website needs to be stored on a computer that is connected to the Internet so that it can be found by others 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Computers that do this are called Hosts (or Servers).
They have 'space' available for your website files. They have to stay on all of the time, otherwise people may type in your domain name and get "page not found".
Your web designer will arrange to have your domain name (www.yourname.co.nz) pointing to a host computer (called a DNS or Domain Name Server) where your website files reside.
Hosts can be anywhere in the world. It makes little difference where a website is hosted. However, some web designers say that using offshore hosts means you will not get a good service. We have found that this is generally not true. The quality of the service is not determined by whether the host is in NZ or off shore, but by the quality of the Host's company that you have to deal with.
You can purchase hosting services before selecting a web designer BUT we recommend you ask your web designer to do this for you. This is useful because if they register your domain name and build your website there will be no need to transfer the domain name or hosting service later - it will be consolidated.
Cost factors: The prices for hosting an average website in NZ generally range from around $25 +gst to $45 +gst per month. Off shore hosting is often the cheaper and under $10 per month purely because they have huge markets and can spread their costs. Zero cost hosting is provided by some overseas companies but this usually means you must show their advertising (including pop up advertising sometimes) on your website.
SEO, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
Search engine optimisation uses techniques to help increase the chances of your website appearing high in search results - such as the results following a Google search.
SEO can include using both technical and non-technical methods. However, there is a lot of lively debate amongst web designers who disagree about the level of skills and the effectiveness of various methods required to achieve excellent SEO levels.
If a person does a search using keywords, and your website appears high in their search results (say within the first pages) it can increase the numbers of visitors that click through to your website.
The ideal is for your website appear in the first position on the first page (where most visitors click) using keywords that are not dependent on people knowing your company's name.
It is possible to appear at the top BUT (and this is important) no web designer can guarantee a top position using keywords aside from your company name - full stop. If they do promise this, they are lying.
Another important point is that even if your website does achieve the top position in search results or even the first page, it will not stay there without continuous work to keep it there.
To appear in any search results, your website needs to be 'indexed' by search engines such as Google. Otherwise you could type your company's name in a search and even then it will not appear in search results. This is the same for EVERY website. We find that all of our new websites have been indexed by Google within 2-4 weeks without any effort at all (and not up to 6 months as some web designers will say to pressure you into paying them for "search engine submissions" to get your website 'indexed' by Google). Do not pay.
There is also absolutely no way to 'buy' a high position in Google search results from Google or anyone else - despite any claims you may hear.
It takes a lot of work by your web designer and/or you to get your website listed high in search results. You should ask your web designer what they can do for you, and what you can do for yourself. It's your business so we recommend take your web designer's advice about what you can do in your spare time to raise the ranking of your website in search results. [Also, read our related article on SEO and good content tips and tricks]
Cost factors: Some web designers charge SEO as an extra fee and promote it as a technical service. They may have a range of fees depending on how much effort they put in. Some web designers include SEO within their standard costs. In this case, ask the web designer what techniques they use and their opinion about the most effective techniques.
A maintenance plan may be offered to you and this means your web designer intends to 'tweak' your website on a regular basis. Included in this may be SEO tasks to ensure your position in search results, website tasks to take advantage of the way your visitors use the site and other website tasks that keep your website current and marketable.
WARNINGS
We hear stories from people who have not had good experiences with web designers. It is unfair to treat all web designers the same but the following will help keep problems away.
1. A few web designers (more likely sole web designers not companies) claim to have completed websites but on investigation, some customers found that they did not design the website at all. Find out by contacting the website owner or looking for the "website designed by" tag usually at the bottom of the homepage.
2. Some web designers offer domain names with uncommon extensions at very low prices as a way to compete (eg. .net.nz or .gen.nz or .biz ...) They may be cheaper but may be a bad choice of domain name for you. Your visitors are unlikely to find your website purely because the names are almost never used. Ask for prices for the common .co.nz or .com domain names and compare 'same domain name' prices for a better idea of the competition. Choose an uncommon domain name only if it is one of a group that also includes the common domain name extensions. Some people do this to protect their domain names from malicious activity.
3. Some web designers sell more space (hosting) than what your website requires. While there will most likely be a minimum space fee, be wary of paying for much more space that you need. Once your website is built, you can ask your web designer how much space your website files actually take. Use this to determine how much Hosting space to pay for. For example, many of our basic brochure websites are under 10 mb in size so it would be a waste to then pay for 50 mb of space.
4. The most common issue raised by customers is how much a web designer "listens" and responds. Customers become unhappy if they feel they cannot communicate their requirements properly. Web designers will factor the time it takes for customer interaction into their costs. Sometimes they charge low fees because they intend to minimise any communication with the customer. If the customer turns out to need more communication, the web designer may either start charging extra, or may try to make himself unavailable. However, you cannot assume that a low fee means bad communication OR that a high fee means good communication. We suggest that you ask the web designer for references to other customers to find out what they think.
Still have an unanswered question? Contact us here and we will email you back and add new information for others to read.
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