As you can imagine we get asked this question a lot and quite rightly so giving the current economic climate. Let’s try to give you an answer…
Right-o, assuming you don’t have a website here’s a shopping list of what you’ll need to get:
Domain Name
This is the .co.uk or .com part of the website address. e.g. mycompany.co.uk
Assuming your desired domain name hasn’t already been taken, you purchase a domain name for a year and in some cases (.co.uk) for two years.
Domains names don’t cost very much, generally around £5-£10-ish a year for a .co.uk or a .com.¹ You can link more than one domain name to a hosting plan.
Exclusive domains such as .tv cost more, around £30.¹
If you have already bought a domain and need to transfer it to another company that provides the hosting, this should cost around £10.¹
Hosting Plan
This is the internet server space you’ll need to put (host) the website files your web developer has kindly supplied you with.
The hosting plan also provides you with mail boxes for email addresses @ your domain.
Plans vary according to the space and features your website needs and are usually purchased for 1 year, thereafter annually renewed.
Our lowest priced starter package is £60 and our premium package is £200.¹
Website Design
This part is where you need a web designer/developer to turn your website idea into a real working website.
Costs of course vary depending on the size of the website (number of pages and content) and the features you need, e.g. eCommerce, Google Maps integration, live Twitter feed, CMS etc.
As we don’t use off-the-shelf templates, it’s impossible to put a definitive cost here and it all depends on the hourly rate that developers work to.
In general, however, you would be paying around £100 for a small 1-2 page brochure-ware site and over £1000 for a full eCommerce on-line shop.¹
Marketing
Once your website is up and running, you need people to visit it and this is where a bit of marketing comes in.
Again, prices vary drastically depending on the types and lengths of marketing campaigns you want to use so it’s hard to put a definite price down here.
Substantial marketing campaigns will generally run for no less than 6 months. This is to allow for data to be collected and analysed to see how effective the current marketing strategy is.
A very basic 6-month plan is likely to start around £750.¹
You really ought to include some sort of marketing budget for your new website to kick-start visitors and this can be as simple as sending out an email newsletter to all your friends and business contacts.
In Summary
We hope this little guide has helped you somewhat in figuring out how much a website costs.
We’re sorry that we couldn’t put specific costs in some of the areas but our general cost ideas should offer you a little more information than sticking your finger in the wind.
¹All prices are inclusive of VAT and correct as per the date of this article.
