Websites are so much more complex, today, than they were even just a few years ago.
Technology is evolving so rapidly that it’s hard to balance between learning, testing, implementation and optimisation if you’re a small business, let alone as a solopreneur.
There are website providers that range from literally a few dollars to an amount that could probably feed a small country for quite some time, but price doesn’t always reflect the provider’s quality or reliability.
That’s why we’ve made this article available to you. Read it, bookmark it and refer to it when you need to plan for upgrades and updates to any website in the future.
Table of Contents
Website design costs
The design of your website is not only about painting a visually pretty picture. Human beings have behavioural tendencies, which is why User Experience (UX) has grown into a niche of website design on its own.
Here are just a handful of factors we consider in the process of website design:
- Brand identity and branding guidelines, including:
- Colours
- Shapes
- Gradients
- Font families
- Contrast
- Language
- Brand personality
- Information structure
- Information compliance requirements
- Content volume
- Conversion actions and paths — what do people do after landing on your website, that can be determined as a valuable action for your business? Eg.
- Submitting enquiry forms with lead data
- Completing purchases online
- Subscribing to your mailing list
- Human psychology and anomalies
- Your products and services
- How people already behave when trying to find such solutions
- How people want to buy what you’re selling
- How people use what they buy from you
- Your sales processes and what information needs to flow from your website interactions to your sales team.
You’re not just buying a website design that looks pretty: you’re buying a website design that is visually appealing and carefully crafted to align with what is proven to make your business money.
How to budget for website design
Websites like Wix have built some of the world’s largest entrepreneurial communities because they’ve commoditised website design, but of course it’s only to a certain extent. Even the greatest no-code platforms are releasing developer functionality and more advanced tools because they know how much more is now expected in terms of website performance.
You can use a free design theme if you go the DIY route or get a website designer to build you a wireframe preview, for anywhere from R1 000 to upward of R40 000. Naturally, if you’re a solopreneur, you likely want to avoid breaking the bank; if you are procuring a website for a larger company with more complex data regulations and information management processes, the design will require a higher level of expertise and possibly more resources and research, making it more expensive.
It’s important to remember that this is only for the design — development costs cover an entirely different scope of work.
Website development costs
We’re not sugar coating anything today. It’s flat out foolish to develop something without design thinking. There are some providers, like us at Peige 360, that deploy design thinking automatically as a part of every website, so what you see already considers many factors like that mentioned in the previous section.
When it comes to development, you need to understand your industry and digital information needs very clearly to assess a quote.
Context is everything when budgeting to build a website
Please don’t compare your friend’s business to yours, and don’t ask a professional to undercut their rates by an amount you would find disrespectful yourself.
Your website is unique to your business. While there are factors like scale, industry and compliance regulations that inform what you’re building and how long it will take, you can’t look elsewhere for a decision that needs to be made in context.
If you’re in financial services, prepare to pay more for quality assurance, compliance components, security technology and ensure you have a budget for maintenance (we’ll cover this in the next section). If you’re in hospitality, get ready to fork out for a pre-production shoot that’s unique to your business otherwise accept that there are limitations that come with using stock photos.
Website maintenance costs
This is among the most important things about building a website and we see so many entrepreneurs and business leaders ignoring it.
Your website, much like your car, is built to a specification at a point in time. Like the mechanical parts in your car, your website relies on a range of technology products that work together to create the website as an experience for your website users.
If you don’t service your car at the appropriate intervals, you can waive your consumer rights, lose the safety of your insurance policies and potentially further damage it. The same thing happens to your website! If you don’t service it by updating its technology, checking that integrations function as they should, and that everything loads correctly in the right place, you practically invite security risks.
This is probably the most crippling thing for an eCommerce website, so please don’t get started with your website project until you’re sure you can budget sufficiently for taking care of it.
Guide to website pricing
Here are some categories to help you determine the budget you need. These are only guidelines and do not account for your unique website technology needs, or for the right level of maintenance post-launch, to keep your website at peak performance.
| Scale | Industry/Nature of offering | Cost Estimate (Contextualised design & development) | Average monthly maintenance costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solopreneur | Freelancer Influencer Consultant Strategist Coach Author Motivational speaker Tutors | R3 500 - R7 500 | R500 - R1 500 |
| Micro-sized and small businesses | Private medical practice Law firm Accounting firm Engineering/Architecture firm eCommerce (DTC) Agency/Consulting firm Boutiques Independent retailers Creches/Daycare centres Trades and vocations Locksmiths Film & media startups | R8 000 - R25 000 | R2 000 - R5 000 |
| Medium sized businesses | Commercial agencies Compliance and governance consulting firms Independent education entities and training facilities Real estate agencies Franchises with five or more sites Insurance and medical aid providers Independent retailers Media companies | R30 000 - R50 000 | R6 500 - R15 000 |
| Enterprise and multinational corporations | Development entities Construction & infrastructural management Government departments Listed companies | R60 000+ | R20 000+ |
Disclaimer: it’s important to note that the information in this table has been put together based on the experience of our extended team. While verifiable, it is not designed as an absolute quote for your individual project and we strongly recommend speaking to one of our consultants to obtain an accurate cost estimate for your planning purposes.
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