What should website cost

Fortunately, there are website platforms like B12 that can build your website fast, allow you to make updates anytime or make them for you! B12 designs websites for small- and medium-sized professional services businesses using our knockout combination of artificial intelligence and experienced web designers, SEO experts, and professional copywriters. In weeks, we create a custom website that a design agency typically takes months to provide.

Even better, we do it at a fraction of the cost. B12 takes the pressure off you and your wallet but still allows you control and freedom when you want to make updates or add website content. Our team does everything we can to propel your business growth and help you meet your online goals. With the DIY plan, you get a custom domain, unlimited storage, and a contact manager that helps you organize leads and reach your audience with email marketing. By upgrading to our SEO plan, your site will be optimized for both on-page and off-page search engine optimization SEO.

When you choose the SEO Pro plan, you gain access to all of the above features with the bonus of monthly SEO-oriented blog posts created just for you. With B12, you get control when you need it via our user-friendly Website Editor, along with the ability to work with professional designers and experienced customer support anytime.

We make website maintenance easy by offering proactive recommendations on how to improve your professional website. Our team handles all of your web design, content, and web hosting needs for you and helps you grow over time. See a draft of your B12 website now with no obligation or check out our other web design resources. A comprehensive step-by-step guide on how to design a website that converts. Best practices for your architect website design in , featuring the best design elements of leading real estate websites.

Top 12 portfolio website examples to get your inspiration flowing in Product overview Websites. Client Engagement. Creative Services. Work with designers, copywriters, and SEO specialists. View product overview. View all industries. Website design Website cost calculator: How much does a professional website cost? Who should use a DIY website builder?

Who should use a web design freelancer? Who should use a web design agency? Finding web hosting Web hosting is a mundane piece of website building. How much does it cost to maintain a website? If you have some knack for coding, you can start a blog on WordPress — a hugely open-source web development framework. The cost depends greatly on how much customization you want.

You can easily spend thousands on building and maintaining a corporate blog. SaaS website builders such as Wix, Squarespace, or GoDaddy provide a domain name, hosting plan, website templates, native features, and security for a monthly subscription fee. On top of that, you can access certain add-ons for an extra fee — e. For a personal blog or a small website, a website builder is a good starter-option.

Compared to the previous two steps, hiring a freelance developer to build a blog will cost more and the development process will take longer. The tradeoff of hiring a professional is not needing to learn the facets of web development.

Instead, you pay for getting everything set up, configured, and secured for you. Why such a huge range? Hiring an agency is the most expensive, yet also the most hands-free way to build any type of website.

For a personal blog, this may be a needless cost. But for business owners looking to add a blog to their corporate website or redesign the current one , an agency can be a reasonable expense. A web development agency can deliver a wider range of customization and branding opportunities than one freelancer could pull off.

So that you are getting access to a bunch of services at once. Most agencies also provide ongoing website maintenance services for a fixed retainer. However, all of this convenience comes at a cost. Small business websites usually feature landing pages, a blog, and perhaps some online booking, appointment scheduling, or eCommerce functionality. Of course, your website might be more or less complex, depending on your niche and reliance on search as a channel for attracting customers.

The precise rate will depend on how much customization you need, design- and feature-wise. You can build a small business website on WordPress yourself.

All you need to do is:. Unlike a blog, a business website requires some extra features, and most of them are premium. So factor in the following costs too:. Website builders provide out-of-the-box functionality for building a website without any coding.

Most have graphic page builders that you use to design your website with pre-made elements and native features. Hiring a web development agency is the easiest way to get a professional website. But outsourcing the entire process comes with the highest price tag. Again, the final price quote boils down to your list of requested features, design customizations, and selected tech stack.

An eCommerce website is your gateway to selling online. Generally speaking, the less money you spend, the more time and hassle you can expect to deal with to get the site how you want it — and it likely won't be exactly how you want it to be without the ability to code. New startups with limited budgets and no web developer often have to start small.

Functionality, performance, and ease-of-use from those themes vary widely including the level of customization you can achieve, how easily it is to update the theme, and out of the box templates that are included. Another popular option is a website builder such as Elementor , which is essentially an updated back-end editor for your website that you install on WordPress.

This allows you to create content and edit the visual features of your theme with ease by giving you a variety of modules and widgets to level, each with its own unique formatting and styling options. Once you've installed the framework, you'll be able to select a theme to match the aesthetic you're looking to achieve.

Their framework is a huge step up from the average, lower-priced themes on the market. They look great, are mobile-friendly, optimized for search engines, and easy to use.

Take a look at their themes here — a lot of them will look familiar because tons of websites use them. They have many customizable themes to choose from or you can build one from scratch using their drag-and-drop builder. The next level up from building your own website is hiring a freelance website designer.

Freelancers have various levels of talent and will charge accordingly. They will vary further depending on the experience of your freelancer and your project details. For example, if your freelancer is extremely talented and can build you a custom self-selection tool such as a product configurator, or you opt to go through a branding exercise with them your costs may go even higher than that.

When working with a freelancer , you can likely expect a design that looks good and functions well without any glaring flaws. They will likely take your ideas, come up with a few mock-ups for you to consider, and then they'll build off of the one you like best. In most cases, the freelance designer is primarily focused on delivering the aesthetic appeal you describe to them while suggesting certain features to improve user experience. However, the downsides are that freelancers tend to be more hit-or-miss.

The project might take longer if they are doing everything by themselves or are juggling multiple projects, and they might not offer much insight outside of design and development knowledge. The other option is hiring an agency to handle your website redesign , which gives you access to a team of seasoned experts who likely have experience with goals like yours and designing a website around them. However, as you would expect, a website redesign from an agency costs the most.

This may seem absurd compared to the other options, but working with an agency goes much further than superficial design. Agencies spend equal time on content, user experience, conversion rate optimization , and everything else that makes your website a valuable asset to your company and to actually achieve your goals.

What sets an agency apart from most freelance web designers is the amount of strategy that goes into building a powerful and effective lead-generating machine for your business. A typical agency will work with you to map your sitemap architecture so you can understand the structure of your website and how the users will navigate through it to their goals.

If you have the budget to hire an agency, it's well worth your time to talk with some to see what options you have available. Your website design or redesign launching, while a cause for celebration, doesn't mean you should move on to new projects until you redesign again in three years. Growth-driven design is a website redesign process that helps you build a stronger website month over month using user data to help improve the user journey.

Just like a plant needs water, light, care and attention to grow strong and thrive, so does your website. It needs to be monitored, regularly updated, and re-calibrated both to reflect the changes in your business and to meet the evolving needs of your buyer.

I know what you're thinking, "This sounds expensive" and yes, there is an investment to make to continuously improve your website. At the most basic level, your website exists to connect with your prospects and persuade them to buy what you offer. Unless you're selling some type of design service, no one is going to be persuaded to buy based on your design alone — it's the content that delivers your value proposition. To tackle it, we ideally recommend taking a content-first approach , where you build your website around your content, instead of designing your website and filling in the content afterwards.

If you're doing a website redesign yourself, start by mapping out all of the pages you want your website to include and then write the actual content for each of those pages. That way, when you're comparing website themes, you can pick out one that accommodates your content strategy best. A lot of freelance web designers will either have a copywriter they collaborate with or they'll be happy to work with a copywriter that you hire yourself.

Either way, you want to ensure that both individuals are on the same page because the process requires some back-and-forth communication.

Agencies will vary in how they support your content creation.