The Cost of Website Development in 2017

When it comes to any services in IT sphere, it is always difficult if not impossible to say for sure what the final cost of this particular service will be. There are too many variables that have to be considered. No matter whether it is a mobile app or a full-scale website, developers rarely fix a price before they begin working.

At the same time, customers want to estimate their future expenditures in advance, and it is quite normal. Though it is difficult to determine an exact price for every particular case, an approximate e-commerce website cost can be predicted. Read further to know what a website building cost depends on and how you may optimize your expenditures.

Types of Websites

Even non-specialists understand that websites are different, and a small one-pager or promo-site cannot be compared to major web portals. Of course, an average cost of website development will depend on its type to a large extent.

Business site

The main goal of a business site is to tell about the brand, promote its services and reach out the target audience in order to enhance brand loyalty. The cost of the business website depends on the number of pages and time needed for its development. As a rule, customers want to see from six to ten pages. The basic ones are the standard “About us”, “Contact us” and “Our services”. The “Blog” page and “Press” are also in demand. The number and content of the remaining pages can vary depending on the type of the business.

As for the time consumed, it commonly takes from 190 to 260 hours to develop a site from A to Z. Knowing the cost per hour offered by a developer, you will easily calculate the final price.

E-commerce site

Online stores are gaining popularity, and e-commerce websites are ordered nearly as often as informational business sites. The basic structure of an e-commerce site is similar to that of a business site, but there are some differences too. For example, the design is of particular importance for any e-commerce platform. An online store has a lot of special features that need to be taken into account. In average, its development takes more time – from 350 to 750 hours. Of course, this influences an e-commerce website development costs to a large extent.

Landing page

A website that has only one page is known as a landing page site. As a rule, it resolves one particular task – for example, sells one service or tells one piece of information. In terms of developing a landing page is much simpler than other types of sites, though it can be long. It usually takes from 20 to 40 hours to create it, depending on the complexity.

Average cost of a website

Development Process

The process of developing a website includes several stages. To understand how much it costs to build a website, it is necessary to consider how much time and efforts each stage requires.

Website design

The design is one of the crucial components of the overall success of the site. In most cases, it is design that makes users stay on the site or leave it immediately. Design developing can be more or less time-consuming depending on the particular customer requirements. In average, it takes from 15 to 80 hours.

Fashion Website Design concept by Cleveroad

Front-end

Front-end is a visible part of the interface; everything that the customer will interact to. It is developed after the website design is completed. It is one of the most important stages of the entire development process and the one that influences the final price greatly. The time required varies from 20 to 250 hours.

Back-end

If front-end is a shell, then back-end is a “filling”, something that makes the entire site function as it should. This stage of development contributes to the time expenditures and the total cost of the project greatly. In average, it takes from 80 to 250 hours. The most time-consuming tasks include attracting third-party companies, using non-typical methods of data processing and other complex tasks.

Example of a back-end

CMS

A content management system is a tool that enables a site owner to add, change or remove all types of content – texts, photos, videos and so on without developers’ help. There are a lot of ready-made solutions (WordPress, Shopify, and other engines), the use of which is cheaper than developing a new CMS. However, in practice, custom CMSs are more flexible and hack-resistant. Developing a CMS takes from 60 to 80 hours.

Website promotion

The cost of making a website is just a part of overall amount expenditures. You may have the best site in the world, but it costs nothing if people do not know about it. There are a lot of tools of site promotion. Here are some key methods:

• Google AdWords – the most popular tool for conducting advertising campaigns with Pay per Click advertising campaigns. The cost depends on many variables.
• Copywriting – from $50 to 500 for an article from a specialist.
• SMM – promotion via social media tools will cost you from $400 to 20 000

Extra Costs

Apart from all the expenditures enlisted, every site owner will have to pay for a technical side of his site registering, launching and maintaining.

• domain name – from $5 to 15 per year;
• hosting – from $75 to 200 per year;
• website maintaining – from $500 to 12,000 per year.

As you see, an answer to the question “How much does it cost to make a website” is not absolute. The final price is always made up of numerous components, first of all, on the developers’ time expenditures and complexity of the site.