Darryl King is the founder of Brisvegas Web company 'ireckon' and discusses how much websites might / should cost

Price matters! Yes it does.

I am unaware of any business owner or manager who can totally disregard the costs associated with any form of business spending but particularly marketing.

Websites are one of the hardest items for a business to cost because the range of pricing varies so much.

Let’s face facts; basic web site development is not the hardest thing in the world to accomplish. But in reality neither is plumbing or building. If you can master the fundamental skills anyone can do the work.

But note… having the basic skills does not translate to mastery or a finished end result. Think about the last home DIY project you undertook, how many headaches and hurdles did you have to go through to get the end result, and when you look at it is it the perfect finished piece you wanted?

Web development is pretty much the same. The basics are learnable (just google “learn html fast”) and you can create a site from scratch using some low cost tools within a relatively short space of time.

So obviously if anyone can do it, why do some web sites cost a lot of money?

Like a builder who has refined their skills day in and day out, a web development company should be staying abreast of the best ways to build sites, should be able to do things that might take a novice days, within hours, and should be able to create a finished high quality product at the end.

Experience is a large part of what your website development company should be able to provide.

And yes experience is worth it. Value your time in running your business! Think about how much your time costs not focused on building your business, and then determine what the real cost is of you tinkering with a web site if it isn’t going to end up providing a polished professional image to your customers or potential purchasers.

Your time should be in finalising the copy and /or other materials for your website and managing the process with your development team to accelerate the development process, and then monitoring how well your workhorse is working for you.

So how much should your site cost? Well it should cost enough to help you get the proper result for your site.

If you want a 1 page landing page (like a business card online) a few hundred dollars is more than enough. A 5 page brochure style site might start at $1000 depending on what type of design and layout options you want. A well designed site with organised layout and targeted messages throughout, optimised for both user and google, that has an inbuilt expectation of performance, might start at $4000 depending on size.

But these are indicative of possible costs not exact costs. You can get similar sites from 2 different companies with different overheads that both can do the job and will get you results.

What you need to do is research what you are getting and factor in at least 25% of the initial cost for ongoing updates and improvements, including search optimisation, analytical evaluation and new features so you have a practical working budget.

My real answer to what should my web site cost? is “Whatever it takes to meet your business goals for the web site!”

 You can also view Darryl's ireckon blog or his staff's web help blog.

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