What Are The Costs Involved in Building a Website?

One of the first questions people ask when it comes to building a website is: “What are the costs involved in building a website?”

Whether you are setting up a new business, or looking for new revenue streams to your existing business, your website is an important source of income. A good website improves credibility as it gives you the opportunity to tell your potential customers about who you are and why you deserve their trust and confidence. Having an accessible website also ensures that your customers can find the information they need whenever they want.

According to a general website design industry statistics and figures, 88% of website consumers don’t return to a page if they had a bad experience with it and 50% of website visitors use web design as a defining factor when it comes to credibility.

What are some of the costs involved in building a website?

Before we delve deeper into the costs involved in building a website, here is a basic list of website features you’ll need to start your website:

• Website domain
• Website hosting
• SSL certificate
• Website template and theme
• Ecommerce function
• Website content
• Apps and integration
• SEO and marketing

Cost breakdown of the features of a website

Website domain

Your website domain is the name used to identify your website on the Internet. A domain name is the written counterpart of an IP address, which is a string of numbers.

The cost related to buying a domain name varies according to different aspects, with its availability and its Top-Level Domain being the two most important. In fact, unavailable domain names require you to make an offer to the current owner, which isn’t regulated by any maximum price. When it comes to Top-Level Domains, instead, you can expect to pay anything from €1 up to hundreds or thousands of dollars. On average, though, domain names cost from €1 up to €12 per month.

Website hosting

A website hosting refers to the company that rent out their computer/servers to store your website and provide Internet connectivity so that other users can access to the files on your website. A web hosting also provides domain registration so that you can buy and manage your domain from the same provider. Most web hosting companies also provide website builder, email hosting, basic hardware and software support. Examples of web hosting companies include GoDaddy and Hostgator.

Website hosting costs can vary, with prices starting as low as €3,50 per month and escalating all the way up to €700 – or even higher. The cost depends on different factors, such as the type of website you have, how many monthly visitors you expect to have, and whether you need extra services such as automated backups and an email account.

SSL certificate

SSL stands for secure sockets layer. An SSL certificate is a type of digital certificate that provides authentication for a website and enables an encrypted connection. Without an SSL certificate, your site security is at risk without encryption. This leads to a higher risk of your site visitors and customers having their data stolen. A SSL certificate ensures that your site is safe and secure from cyber attacks, and identifies your site as a safe and secure site to your customers, thereby helping you to maintain and increase your traffic.  Websites that use SSL are ranked higher by Google and other search engines’ algorithms. The type of SSL you need will depend on the security needed, the type of website you are running, and your budget. Prices of SSL vary, with some going for as low as 5€ per year to 2,500€ per year.

Website template or theme

Website builders like Wix or WordPress provide website templates and themes that you can use to design your website for free. However, if you are building a website that anyone else is going to see you will need a paid plan instead of a free plan. This is because free plan usually comes with limitations such as low storage and bandwidth allowances, no ecommerce features, basic customer support, and can end up looking unprofessional. The premium themes gives you more flexibility in terms of design, and you can customize your website to properly reflect your product, brand, or service. Most premium themes also include many features that allow you to create landing pages and sale pages. The average price of a premium theme is €48.

Ecommerce plugin

Are you starting an online business? Then you will need an eCommerce plugin. The type of eCommerce plugin you need will depend on the item(s) you will be selling and what kind of features you would need to efficiently run your online store. On top on that, your eCommerce plugin must be able to support your preferred payment gateways by default or through an extension. Some eCommerce plugin comes with integration available for CRM software and email marketing services. If you run an online store, these tools can help you identify your audience and the type of product they are interested in. Shopify is a fully integrated eCommerce platform and starts at USD$29 monthly (and 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction).

Website content

Website content comes in many formats. These can include videos, graphics, images, articles and so on. Quality content helps to attract the right audience to your website, engage them and work towards getting the user to take action on your website. Creating valuable content not only benefits the user but it also benefits your website’s search ranking. The cost involved in creating website content can be, for example, hiring a photographer, videographer, or graphic designer. These cost can easily go up to €3,000 when you start building your website as you might need logo and graphic designs, image licensing, and hiring photographer for images of your products or services.

Apps and integration

Apps and integration are additional plugins that can create an engaging experience for users visiting your site, or help you get more information on your site traffic. For example, a chatbot is an application that can be used to conduct an on-line chat conversation with your customers via text or speech on your website. With this application, your customers skip the hurdle of having to look for the contact form or email address on your website. Google analytics is an integration that can gather information about your site traffic i.e. number of visitors, referral pages, countries where your site visitors are located and so on.

SEO and marketing

SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving your website and online presence, both on-page and off-page to improve your website’s ranking in search engines. This can be done through optimizing your online content so that a search engine prefers to show your website as the top result for searches of a certain keyword. Yoast is a free SEO plugin available on WordPress, Wix, and other website builders. However, one of the drawbacks of the free plugin is that it does not allow you to optimize for more than 1 keyword or keyphrase. There are many SEO plugins and a basic package starts from USD$50 per year.

At Compose Communications, we can take care of all your website features including design, SEO, and marketing.