How Much Should a Website Cost in 2020
Asking “how much should a website cost in 2020?” is a lot like asking “how much should a car cost in 2020?” Cars come in various shapes and sizes with an array of different features and can be found anywhere on the spectrum of quality, user-friendliness, and durability.
When you look at a website, it might appear to be simple, but that doesn’t mean that what’s “under the hood” is simple. The value of truly good website designers and developers goes far beyond the surface design of a website.
It’s vital to avoid technical and financial pitfalls when looking to build a website. Today’s guide will empower you to choose the right solutions for your budget.
What Goes into Building a Website?
The cost of building your website depends on two main things:
- Your Budget
- Your Goals
Building a website is not as simple as building a sandwich. There are a few things you’ll want to consider:
What Tools Will You Need?
It’s important to figure out what tools you will need to build your website. While you can build a website yourself, it may end up becoming more expensive than hiring an expert to complete it properly from the very beginning. When trying to do it yourself, you may also end up spending money on things you don’t need due to all the misinformation on this topic.
No matter who builds your website, you will need three things:
- A Domain
- A Content Management System (CMS) – WordPress, Shopify, Magento, etc.
- Please consult with us about your business before choosing a CMS as choosing the wrong CMS is one of the top and most costly mistakes that business owners make.
- WordPress is the most popular website builder for developers and designers and it currently powers approximately 26% of all websites.
- A Host
Consider all of these factors when assessing how much a website should cost in 2020.
Related: How to Get Traffic to Your Website
Typical Website Cost
A simple website costs anywhere between $500-$800 while a feature-rich, custom-built website can cost anywhere up to $30,000, sometimes even more.
You’ll also want to take into consideration the cost of:
- Your domain (this can vary based on the popularity of the name among other factors)
- CMS (some are even free)
- Hosting (usually a low monthly payment)
- SSL (varies)
- Plugins (depends on the needs of your business)
Estimating Website Cost Based on Your Goals
It will be important, first and foremost, to establish your goals. Once you understand what your goals are with the website, it’s essential to set a realistic budget for yourself. Attempting to build a website that you can’t quite afford will be a disaster.
Figure out if your website will need to be custom-built. Installing a pre-built WordPress theme is the easiest way to roll out a new website.
Another important thing to figure out is what features you will need on your website. You can keep your costs down by minimizing your website’s features.
Since we are attempting to figure out how much a website should cost in 2020, understand that building an advanced website will cost you more. The more features you add, the more it will cost. However, some plugins and features are worth it to optimize your website.
For example, here are some categories and advanced plugins we might recommend:
- Essentials
- Appearance
- Marketing
- Security
Each of these plugins add features that can be extremely useful for your business’ success in the long run. We can help you figure out which ones are best for you.
Will you be building an online store?
While building an online store will cost more, there are many advantages to building an online store in 2020. Here are just a few:
- Low cost to start
- Potentially make money 24/7
- Easy to target and market to customers
- Process many orders
- Business is scalable
- Use content to organically grow your business
We recommend WooCommerce. It’s free, has a professional and familiar look, and offers a ton of flexibility and customization options.
How to Avoid Overspending When Building a Website
There are many ways to be smart about website building and avoid incurring extra, unnecessary costs. Fortunately, nowadays there are all kinds of free plugins that you can explore.
It also helps to be attentive and keep an eye out for sales and discounts. Finally, optimize your server frequently to make sure it maintains high speed.
The Cost of Building a Website Yourself
Although it might seem like it, building a website yourself will probably not save you money. The cost of building your website boils down to 4 resources:
- Time: Not only does it take up your time to build a website, but it will probably take a lot more time if you don’t have the expertise to do it efficiently.
- Technical Knowledge: It takes a lot of technical knowledge to really get a website running properly. There are simply too many glitches and errors in website software that could cause you many problems down the road. If you love coding, you’ll have an advantage if you take the time to learn it well.
- Design Skills: Everybody thinks they can design until they get in front of a blank canvas. If you love design and end up learning to become proficient at design, you’ll have an advantage.
- Money: Yes, it will cost money no matter what, but if you aren’t familiar with the industry and the many options within web design, you will end up costing yourself a lot more than necessary in the long run.
While each of these resources are essential to building your website, it’s important to do a self assessment to see which ones you have and which ones you lack. You may be able to compensate for lacking one thing if you have another. For example, if you don’t have the design skills, but you have time, then you can use that time to study design.
However, keep in mind that this can cause a lot of distraction and frustration in the long run.
The 5 Phases of Website Design
We pride ourselves on our processes. We document everything we do, and we do it in a specific sequence of steps to ensure that we are doing it correctly every single time.
There are 5 main phases you need to deal with:
- Website setup (this is before you even get to design or content creation)
- Learn how to use a website builder (not fun if you’ve never done it before)
- Designing the layout (the aesthetic and user experience for your customers)
- Content creation (building content that hooks your audience and keeps them on your website)
- Troubleshooting and ongoing maintenance (not fun for anyone)
For each of the phases, you have to determine if you have the time, technical or design skills to accomplish them successfully.
Conclusion
We’ve established that how much a website should cost is similar to how much a car should cost in the sense that it depends on various factors, including quality. Now, you understand the main cost factors along with the primary processes involved at a high level. Use this information to empower yourself and make the best choices for your business’ specific goals.
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