Imagine a scenario where you are about to start a business with a new partner and set a meeting to finalize the matters. You end up in a garage in a suburban neighborhood where your potential partner is waiting for you! Next Apple or Google, anyone!!?? Certainly, you will think twice before signing on the dotted line.

In the same line, have you thought about what your potential customers will think about your company when they will visit your website, which looks outdated and unexciting? That’s why you need a website that looks sleek and can get the attention of the visitors with a great impression.

Businesses can spend lavishly on a website to offer a flawless portal to their target audience. But what about the cost? Web design and development costs for high-end business portals can shoot up fast, and you need to be wary of this fact.

Some Benefits of a Good Online Presence for Small Businesses

• Establish trust amongst potential customers and target market
• Offer Accurate and Updated Information about your business
• Get new leads from the landing page
• Part of online presence including social media
• Maintain a regular blog to generate traffic

Estimating the Cost

Estimating the cost of the website can be difficult, as many factors are involved here. Business owners look for an actual dollar figure so that they can manage that amount from their budget. But this can take a little while as it is not a straightforward process. Don’t think that the design aspect is all about designing the page with vivid colors and spectacular graphics. It may include, but not limited to, the following factors, too:

• Business and competitor analysis of website designs
• Initial design
• Adding new features and applications, as and when required
• Testing of the website (bug fixing)

So, how much cost will incur when you need to design a professional ecommerce-based website? I hope my effort in this concern will help aspiring businessmen and established businesses alike.

Web Design Cost

You should expect anywhere between a thousand dollars to 10,000 dollars for the design aspect. This is for a small business/startup. It does not include services that work like a design template and maybe really cheap and as low as 300 dollars.

For custom, a feature-rich website, which is updated daily, the cost can go above 30,000 dollars.

For a full-fledged shopping portal designed on the model of Amazon or other top websites, the cost can go high, and even touch 100,000 dollars.

Website launch and maintenance costs can skyrocket to around 150,000 dollars. Thus includes maintenance costs of around $50 to $5,000 per month.

Web Development Cost

The development cost of a website depends upon a website’s size and functionalities. Again, just like the design, several factors are involved in the development of a website apart from the back-end programming and dealing with the database.

Some of them are:

• Project management costs
• Quality control and assurance
• Aspects related to website architecture and organization
• Any maintenance before or after the launch of the website.
• Hosting
• Training administrators how to use the website and ask for support

Other aspects like digital marketing, either through SEO or paid ads, are costs that are incurred throughout the year and thus are recurring costs.

Phase-Wise Costs of Web Development

Back-end development is where the magic happens in website development. It is like the foundation of a website, and if it is not solid enough, any website will not work properly.

The standard cost for back-end development ranges from 5,000 dollars to 15,000 dollars. The tools and frameworks for the development can be the use of database servers like MySQL, programming languages like PHP and Java, and the use of cloud server platforms like AWS.

Front-end development related to UI/UX and responsiveness of websites with the help of tools and frameworks like CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript. The combined cost of both aspects can be in the range of 2,000 dollars to 20,000 dollars.

Lastly, CMS development is all about the use of content management through tools and frameworks like WordPress, Joomla, and Silver stripe. A good CMS can cost you up to 10,000 dollars with a starting price of 2000-3000 dollars.

Additional Expenses

Additional one-time or recurring costs include a domain name which can be anywhere between 5 dollars to up to 300 dollars. You can get .com for the least expensive price but .restaurant or .biz can cost you a lot. For adding interactive multimedia on your website, you need to shell out anywhere between 500 dollars to 10,000 dollars.

For website hosting, you can choose services like HostNOC and GoDaddy for up to 200 dollars per year. Maintenance cost has been already mentioned as it can be up to 5,000 dollars per month.

Final Word

There is no way that businesses can do without a website. Even if you are operating an offline business, coming up with a website is a necessity. Knowing about the cost upfront is important so that businesses can know how much amount they have to arrange in this concern. For small businesses and startups, this information can be vital so that they don’t face any shortage of funds during or at the end of the web design and development process.

If you think that you can add something valuable to this blog or want to ask a question about anything you haven’t understood, you are more than welcome. For the feedback too, please use the comments section below.