How much does a new website cost in 2019?

Introduction

A website can be one of the most important elements of any marketing campaign and represents an ideal opportunity to tell people about your business.

Think about when you look to buy something online? Where do you look; Facebook? Google? Bing? The options are endless but in most scenarios you will visit a website, find out about a company or even make a purchase.

There is a reason that brands like Amazon are doing so well, it is because they know the importance of having a great website and promoting it online. Compare this to a shop in your local shopping centre; sure people know about the business and have heard the name but the only way for people to make a purchase is to visit the shop and speak to someone or go there and buy a product. If they had a website it would be much more easy for someone to get in touch with them and buy from them. You wouldn’t be limited by needing to take the time to travel to the shop and you wouldn’t be limited by the opening hours of the shopping centre. That is why a new website is so powerful, it is like having a shop which is open 24 hours and available to everyone.

This article is written for anyone looking to get their first website or upgrade an existing website. It will cover how much you typically pay, the process that will need to be followed and any additional costs you may encounter along the way.

Here at RACER Marketing we are more than happy to offer advice on which option you may need. Contact us via our live chat, contact page or give us a call.

Alternatively, have a read of this article and let us know what you think!

An Overview of Web Design Prices

There are many options available when considering a new website but they can really be categorised into three main options; basic, brochure and bespoke. Here at RACER Marketing we like to offer an additional option in between brochure and bespoke where you get the benefits of our effective website layouts with a semi bespoke element to ensure that your website really captures your brand. The website design cost can be impacted by many different factors but it is usually the level of design, the number of pages and the skills of the person doing the work.

The above options (basic websites, brochure websites and bespoke websites) are great for people who promote their own services online, an ecommerce website can have special factors which are not covered in this article but we will be happy to discuss them separately if you need advice.

Self Build Website Prices

For many start ups a self built website can be a good idea, they are typically free and as you don’t need to employ an agency you can have full control of the design process. If you aren’t very technically skilled there are many free templates on websites such as Wix.com, Squarespace and Google Sites.

Now it can be easy to think that Google Sites and other similar options are the best, with such an established brand and product from Google it is definitely a name you have heard in the past. There are however many disadvantages and advantages which we will explain in the next section. 

What do you get in a self build/ DIY website?

A self build website is essentially a website that you build yourself, you are responsible for choosing the colours, fonts and images for your site. This can mean that you get to add as many pages as you want which is great, but with a self build option it is similar to DIY - if it goes wrong and you make a mistake, will someone be there to help you fix it? In a self build website you typically get a theme which you choose and the ability to create your own pages, you won’t get any photography, images or video included so those will need to be considered separately. 

Self Build Website Examples

As a Full Service Digital Marketing agency we don’t have ‘build your own’ website options that we have created for ourselves. We hope you do take a look at the following examples of self build websites if you would like to explore this option.

• ‍Squarespace
• Wix
• ‍Google Sites
• ‍Shopify

Advantages and Disadvantages of DIY Websites

At RACER Marketing we tend to find one of the most obvious benefits of a self build website is the price - like DIY if you want to paint your own house or retile your bathroom it will be much cheaper than hiring a professional. This is where the disadvantage lies, similar to your tiling your bathroom you need to consider if you have the skills to do the job to the same standard as a professional.

Now usually the answer is no and you understand that by doing the job yourself you are compromising to some standard on the quality of the work. This unfortunately is the same for websites and you may end up with a website which doesn’t effectively capture your requirements or doesn’t work in the way you want it too.

You do get the benefit that self build options offer many templates so you will be able to choose from a range of different colours and fonts - great if you are starting from scratch and aren’t limited by the colours in your logo and brand. These templates can however create a big disadvantage for the customer as they can take a long time to load - for many industries with a majority of people looking to buy on a mobile device, this can discourage people from using your website if it takes a long time to load on a phone using 3G.

We don’t want to put people off self build options though, especially if they are a start up who need a website to generate initial business online. We would always look to ensure that if you do go down this route you have an effective marketing strategy in place to drive people to your website. Without an effective marketing strategy it can be difficult to get people to find your website and get the sales your business needs.

If you are looking for a self build website, ask yourself these questions:

1. What will I do if I need help editing my website?
2. If I am too busy to edit my website, can someone help me?
3. If I break something on my website, who will be able to help me?
4. How will I promote my business online?

Basic Website Pricing

Basic websites are perfect for startups and small businesses who don’t always have the benefit of investment but still need something a little more superior to a self build option. They can cost around £500-£1000 but generally offer little options for customisation. You may be fixed in terms of which colours you can use and because of this you could end up with a website which looks similar to another small business.

What do you get in a basic website?

A basic website does what it says on the tin, it has very few pages but can be a good place to advertise text about your services or images with your products. We typically find that when someone buys a basic website they are limited by templates. This means that a company can charge a lower price because they spend less time working on your website and copy design elements from other sites that they have built in the past or they have got brought a theme and then chosen to customise the text to your business.

If you do not mind the possibility that your website has elements that look similar to other websites, a basic website might be perfect for you. They are fairly cheap, often have a simple design and are quick to build.

Another added complication of a basic website is that most of the key components are added as ‘plugins’ that are bolted on top of the website to add extra features. Some of these plugins are free, but some have extra costs of up to £300 which can drive the price of your website higher. All of there plugins will need updating, so make sure that the website design price includes updating the site, plugins and adding security patches to keep your information secure.

Examples

As we don’t build basic websites at RACER Marketing it will be hard to show examples of them.

We have taken these examples from Wix, the self build platform mentioned earlier as they may have many similar elements. Similar to the DIY option earlier, you can pay someone to design a website for you on a self build platform, perfect for if you fear you don’t have the technical skills required to build a website.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Basic websites are perfect for startups and small businesses who don’t always have the benefit of large scale investment. They can cost around £500-£1000 but generally offer little options for customisation. You may be fixed in terms of which colours you can use and because of this you could end up with a website which looks similar to another small business.

A basic website could be built by someone who is a freelancer or owns a company with 1 or 2 members of staff. As they often don’t have an office you can visit, they don’t have the overheads that most agencies like RACER Marketing have to pay.

This can be quite risky however as this might mean that you cannot visit them. You may need to book a time to meet them in a local coffee shop to discuss your website requirements.

If someone goes on holiday it might mean that you have no one to discuss your website with, that is because that person is not available and there is not another member of staff with the same skills. Because of this, we feel it can be risky for someone to invest in their marketing and pay a high price to someone who may not always be around to help their business.

We don’t want to say that basic websites are not good, they can often perform well for someone who does not need to update their website regularly. We would recommend though that if you get a basic website built, you should always ask for references or look at their reviews. We often speak to people who have said that they do not want to pay a high price for their website design but then end up disappointed when their website is not built well because that person does not have the skills. That is another reason to speak to a marketing agency, they will have a thorough recruitment process to ensure that the people working on website projects have the skills required to deliver them to a high standard.

If you are looking for a basic website, ask the following:

How many websites have you built in the past?

Have you got examples of websites you can show me?

Who will be responsible for editing my website? What if they are on holiday?

How quickly will changes be made to my website?

Landing Page Website Costs

A landing page is another option which is good for a business if they are not looking to spend a large amount of money. It features one bespoke page which is finely tuned to get across your brand. It is perfect if you are only looking to promote one core service like legal services or office cleaning. We would recommend this to businesses who are looking for something unique to their brand and want to stand out without paying an expensive price for a bespoke website. Our landing pages are priced at £999 but other companies may offer them from around £750 - £1500.

What do you get in a landing page?

In a landing page you really get one main page, there are still places to describe your services, customers and contact details but they are all listed on one page. If you are trialling a new product or a new business idea a landing page can be perfect as it doesn’t involve a high cost.

You can also use URL parameters to cover different areas. This is quite technical but would mean that you can have a website that has one page but the text is swapped out to cover different areas.

Examples of Landing Pages

If you have a site about web design costs, you can build one page and swap out the text. So you can have pages listed like the following;

Web design costs in London

Web design costs in Kent

Web design costs in Surrey

Web design costs in Essex

These URL parameters like the above will mean that you can build one page but cover many different areas. There are no limits to the number of URL parameters you can have but this method will work better for some types of marketing than others.

You don’t need to have a huge technical knowledge to know how to use URL parameters and many tools like Unbounce have this as a built in feature.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Landing Pages

As we just mentioned one of the biggest advantages of landing pages is that you can appear to cover many different areas, the disadvantage of this is that it does not work for search engine optimisation. In a nutshell this means that it is very unlikely that all of the different variations will be listed on Google search. That is because Google knows that you are duplicating your pages.

It is however perfect for if you are running social media campaigns or paid adverts on Google. You can run a campaign on Facebook specifically for people in London interested in websites, then you can show them an advert based on website design costs in London. This is very relevant to what they are searching for so they will likely click on it and then as a result go to a page on website design costs in London. You could do this even if you are based in another place. It is really about appearing as relevant to what your ideal customer is searching.

Another disadvantage of a landing page is that it only covers one main service. This can make it unsuitable for an established company that has a wide range of products that they need to promote. It might not replace a website but can act as a good component of a marketing campaign. For someone who is looking for more pages and more elaborate website, continue reading the next sections.

If you are looking for a landing page, ask the below questions:

What kind of marketing methods is this suitable for?

How easy is it to edit my landing page?

How will I add additional pages?

Brochure Website Design Price

A brochure website is a simple website for people who only need 5-6 pages. They have a similar amount of pages compared to a basic website and many people think they will be the same price at £500-£1000.  We like to think that someone who really wants to promote their business online needs to stand out a little more and look different to the competition. That is why we would not recommend a brochure website to a business if they were established more than 1-2 years.

What do you get in a brochure web design price?

A brochure style website is a website that only has 5-6 pages and is used to promote multiple services. The pages could include; home, services, about us, case studies and contact us. These websites usually don’t have much functionality or complicated features and can be designed and built in 4-6 weeks. A brochure style website is perfect for a company who have been around for a few years and need to update a previous more basic website.

Examples of Brochure Website Design

We like to offer our customers a brochure style website with more focus on the design. That is because we have found that if the design of the website is not right, people will be unlikely to find the information they need quickly. If your customers can’t find the information they need quickly,  this can cause them to ‘bounce’ and visit another website, losing you the enquiry.

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Brochure Website Design

One of the main advantages of a brochure style website is that they can be built fairly quickly and allow you to start promoting your business without waiting a long period of time. A disadvantage of this is that it may not cover all of the functionality you need on your website. Websites that need bespoke quoting tools or need to sell products will not usually fall under the category of a brochure website.

They are for the most part very suitable for SEO so can be used well alongside a marketing campaign. The biggest and most risky disadvantage of a brochure style website is that people often use WordPress which can mean they are built poorly and do not deliver a good experience to users.

If you are looking for a brochure style website, make sure you ask the following key questions when considering what you get for the web design cost:

• Which tool will you use to build my website?
• Will my website use a template?
• How much control do I have over the design?
• Will my website be secure?
  

Bespoke Website

Think of the bespoke website as the Ferrari of all websites. You will need a bespoke website if you really want to drive your business forward and get great results online. Bespoke websites can cost from £5000-£30,000 depending on if you need any new functionality like a quote builder specific to your business. Bespoke websites are perfect for businesses who have been around 5 years or more and need something more substantial to get enquiries.

What do you get in a bespoke website?

As with the nature of bespoke websites, you really can get whatever you want. This means that for an established business they can get something specific to their business needs.

This could be a tool which gives you a price of a product or service or it could work with other tools like manufacturing to send product information directly in to a system.

For many large businesses a bespoke website is essentially in helping their business to function, but for most small to medium sized businesses it is not required.

Examples of Bespoke Websites

It can be hard sometimes to tell if a website has bespoke functionality, but usually you can tell by knowing if there is particular functionality that you wouldn’t typically see on other websites. 

Photo4Me is a bespoke website that we built nearly 10 years ago by our director Jon. The main reason they needed a bespoke website is to allow photographers to upload their own photographs. This requires a login function where people add their personal details and set how much commission they want from a product sale. Once a product is sold they required the ability to send product information to a specialist manufacturer depending on the product type. Additional information will be sent to the courier so they know where to ship the products once they have been manufactured.

With over 2.5 million product combinations it would be very complex to manage by hand and probably require a large team completing admin work. This is why it was so important that this information was passed automatically between each group of people. As a result there is very little work for the store themselves as they don’t need to send any emails with order information to other parties.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Bespoke Websites

One of the biggest and most obvious benefits of a bespoke website is that the range of customisation options are endless. The downfall of that however is that it can increase the web design cost as someone will have to hand build this functionality for you. In the UK many agencies charge at least £100 per hour so even for a day’s work you could be looking at £1000.

For this reason alone many companies choose to outsource the build of their websites to foreign countries where the cost of labour is much lower. This can work in your favour as countries such as India, Poland and the Ukraine are fast becoming leaders in IT. This can however make communication difficult as english will often be the second language of your developer which may mean things are misunderstood.

If you are looking for a bespoke website, make sure you ask these questions:

What country are your developers based in?

How will I pay for my website? Hourly? Monthly? If hourly, how long do you think my website will take to build?

Will other web developers be able to edit my website in the future?

Where can I go to find details on my project specification?

Ongoing Costs

After your have decided which website you need, there can be additional ongoing costs you need to consider. These are listed below, and can be covered in the three topics hosting, security and maintenance.

Hosting

Think of a phone number, you need to pay for a phone and the ongoing costs of a phone number. This is similar to a website, once you have built the website you need someone to host it so it is available for customers to use and contact you.

Hosting charges can vary greatly according to your needs, but usually cheaper packages involve sharing a server with other companies. Similar to shared internet in your house, the more people added the slower the internet will become for the user. That is why it is so important that your website is hosted correctly, if you use a shared server with often hundreds of people, your website will become slow and this may mean that your customers do not enjoy using it.

Cheaper hosting packages can be a few pounds a month but this usually indicates you are not getting a premium service. Our hosting costs only £15 per month but uses Microsoft Azure which means that you are getting a premium product used by many huge companies like Adobe, ASOS and HP.

Security

A key element in sites now is security, and with poor security your website may get hacked or your customers personal details could be stolen. It is very important for businesses in the UK to look at the security of their website and failing to have a secure website could mean that you are breaking the law. If you speak to a website design company, make sure that the website design cost includes security such as an SSL certificate which will mean that the information on your site is encrypted.

Maintenance

Once your website is built you may need ongoing changes to keep it updated. This could be adding new projects, new services or product images. For many websites these may be things you can edit yourself but sometimes people prefer to get a company to do this for them.

If you would prefer a company to do any changes, make sure you ask them “In the website design price, how much maintenance do I get? It could be as little as 30 minutes per month but in an emergency if your website isn’t working or a phone number needs changing, you will need someone to help you get it done quickly.

Other Things to Consider

Copywriting

If you are getting a website built, one thing to consider is who will be writing the words on the page. Do you have the text already written? Will you be writing the text? Or will you need someone to help you? Unfortunately if you need text written it can make the price much more expensive. Usually a company in England may charge around £500 for a small site but if you look abroad it can be much cheaper. If you get copywriting included in your website design  cost, check to see who is writing the text? Is english their first language? Do they have experience in writing copy? Can they provide references? These are all things you should consider when looking at what is included in your website design price.

Photography

One of the key elements in a successful website is photography. If you have outdated or blurry pictures people won’t really want to buy from you. How would people feel if they went on your website and saw poor quality pictures of your staff? Generally they might be quite disappointed and think that your staff don’t seem friendly or trusted.

Photography generally speaking isn’t  very expensive and we charge around £650 per day for photography. This can include team photography, project photography from a couple of your sites and some photos around the office. These don’t just have to be used on the website and can be reused for social media or any other marketing method you need.

Video

Similar to photography, video is a great element in promoting your business. If you take a look at the following video, would it encourage you to enquire with their company?

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Video is priced slightly more expensive than photography but can be much more effective at encouraging people to enquire with your business.

Statistics show that by adding video to your website you are 80% more likely to enquire. This means that for many businesses the initial cost of video is quickly paid off in the number of enquiries you get in return. Another really interesting statistic is that with video you are 50% more likely to get on the first page of Google. Great if you are also running marketing as part of your campaign.

Marketing

Now you have a website, the next thing to consider is how will you tell people about your business? This is the main reason behind marketing - you need to tell people who you are or they just will not know.

Some industries are very competitive and many of your customers could have been running marketing campaigns for many years, that is why you need to ensure that your campaigns are as successful as possible.

Marketing has extremely varying costs but we have a minimum charge of £1,000 per month as we find that for the amount of work needed to be successful we need to cover a wide range of different methods. This can be social media, search engine optimisation, paid advertising or print. From our experience we usually find a company only charging a few hundred pounds will not pay close enough attention to your account for it to be successful.

Summary

To wrap up this Knowledge Hub article there are many different factors which can affect the cost of a new website in 2019. That is why it is so important to look for a company with good reviews who you know can provide a high quality product. At RACER Marketing we have been offering web design in London for nearly 4 years and we have built over 70 bespoke websites.

When you speak to a website designer in London or Kent, make sure you ask them the advantages and disadvantages of each type of website and for a full breakdown of the costs, that way you won’t find that there are hidden extras further down the line.

At RACER Marketing we are always happy to answer your questions, however big or small and if you need advice on how much you should pay for a website, get in touch with our team.