How Much Should a Website Cost for a Small Business?

For twenty-first century businesses, the Internet is everything. Your sales can depend on making the right ad buys and breaking the top 10 results on Google, which means your website can make or break your company. So how much should a website cost for your business?

With the right online presence, even small businesses can compete with bigger players in their market. Given this importance it’s one of the most common questions our clients ask, especially from small businesses looking to maximize their budget. The cost to build a new website can vary widely depending on several factors.

Factors That Contribute to the Cost of a New Website

How much you should spend on your new website depends on what percentage of your business is conducted online and the percentage of your customers that come from online referrals. On average you can expect to spend at least half of your marketing budget on your website. For most small businesses this can range between $2,500 and $10,000.

You should also take into account what you’d like your website to do and how it will help you conduct business with your customers.

• Will you need ecommerce functionality?
• Do you require copywriting services, and if so, for how many pages?
• Does your site need social media or database integration, custom animation or imagery? Can you go with an out of the box website theme or do you need customization for your brand?

These additional features can add to your total website cost, which can be as much as $20,000 depending on the number of pages and amount of customization required.

Post Website Launch Promotion

An investment in your website can help make the most competitive businesses more successful. Even if your business is conducted primarily offline, you can still benefit from having a professional online presence. In fact, 22% of small businesses say they use their website to legitimize their organization as an authority in their industry. A survey of small business owners, however, found that low traffic and strong competition are challenges for 19% of these companies. And this can be a major hurdle to growing your business when, as 30% of respondents show, you rely on your website for sales.

While you can understand the value of a well designed website, it will still need promotion to get found online. This can be achieved by implementing marketing strategies that include Search Engine Marketing such as SEO and pay per click, email marketing, and regular blogging. Regular posting on social media is another way companies can drive traffic to their websites.

Yet 13% of companies cite lack of time or knowledge as their biggest challenge to marketing their websites. This is where your company can really benefit from a web design and marketing agency. About 30% of companies outsource their site construction to an external agency and an even larger percentage outsource their marketing efforts. Whether you outsource your marketing or do in-house, these costs should also be added to your overall website budget.

Don’t Forget Website Maintenance

Once your site is live and you’ve launched a marketing campaign to get more visitors, you will still need to factor in the cost for regular website maintenance. This will include monthly website hosting, domain renewals, technical support and updates, security patches, and 404 fixes and other routine maintenance that keeps your website running smoothly. While some of these items you may be able to do in house, hosting fees and SSL certificates should be factored into your overall website budget.

So when you’re figuring out how much it’s going to cost to build a new website for your business, consider these factors:

• Must-have features you want for your website
• How many pages you need
• Will it have a standard theme or customized
• Post-launch website marketing and promotion
• Regular website maintenance

Thinking about a new website for your small business?

Contact us whether you have a project or want to ask a question, we're happy to help.

Sources: 

https://www.nectafy.com/blog/how-much-should-my-company-spend-on-a-new-webs
https://www.markbrinker.com/website-cost
https://smallbiztrends.com/2019/03/small-business-website-cost.html
https://medium.com/@the_manifest/nearly-half-of-businesses-spend-more-than-500-000-on-digital-marketing-cfff88f1aeb5