How Much Does Website Design Cost?

Many people want to sail the great ocean that is the internet, but they need a vessel to do so – a website. Obviously, a website can cost a minimal amount of money, or be a major overhead expense, depending on what kind of sailing you want it to do. It also depends to a large extent on whether or not you already have a basic blog or website already set up, what kind of additional perks and connections you want to include, and how customized you want it to be.

Website Design Pricing

There are four methods that professional website designers use to charge website design prices. These website design rates vary, obviously, to a huge extent, but all four are usually available from any reliable designer.

First, the designer can charge by the hour, an excellent option for an amateur site that looks to have limited sales (because it’s not equipped for more) and perhaps a limited but loyal customer and supporter base. An hourly charge can run from $8 (an overseas consultant, most likely) to $500 (the top of the line professional).

Second, there’s the per page method, which has a $100 to $300 website design costs range, depending on the number of “bells and whistles” the page needs.  Obviously, the more pages needed, the better the discount, but these will not be top of the line web pages at this price.

Package deals are available in every website design price range from $200 to $5000 in website design costs, but the package dealer will usually have a pre-made site which will try to “shoehorn” your information in, at the cost of some content or relevance.

Finally, there is DesignQuote, a website community which will take your project and send out its requirements for designers to present bids. There are some real bargains to be had out there!

Average Cost Of Website Design

Imagine a regular business that wants modest to good sales to start. It’s willing to modify content and copy in order to accommodate the particular designer’s strategies, and is able to make a least a one-time payment. That business should get away with a one page simple website design around $500 to $15,000 maximum, with enough additions and modifications to allow for business expansion (this will be an outsourced website creation).

A corporate website, on the other hand, created in the USA, will start at around $5,000 and go as high as $100,000; in fact, most US web designers do no website designs for less than $3000, and can go as high as $20,000 per designer. A designer firm with multiple artists will usually run between $5,000 and $50,000 in website design price.

For example, a restaurant website design incorporating a menu and interactive connections, slide shows and graphics, would probably fit into the $10,000 to $50,000 price range.  A package design, such as a Joomla website design on the Joomla community gathering place, would begin at $1000 and could go as high as $50,000.

If you want a complex interactive site, such as an ecommerce website design for a site with a great deal of business flow and back-end programming, these will run $15,000 at least and up to $250,000 at the high end website design price.

Custom Website Design Cost

Most agree that the cost of custom website design is exorbitant, even though the online exposure and connections more than pay for themselves in a short time. Usually, custom website designs with newly created applications begin around $10,000, and can go as high as $100,000 for the best designed custom corporate or big business packages.

Professional Website Design Cost

If your site is primarily one that wants the professional touches of vector animation, introductions, various slideshows or other advanced technologies, you are probably looking for a corporate designer who can create either a single webpage with multiple branches and connections to other pages, or an interactive site, such as an ecommerce business.

In any event, professional website design, at its most inexpensive, will probably be found in website design packages which begin around $20,000 for a basic corporate, business or “name” site; they can go up to $200,000 and more depending on the firm, the designers used, the time spent and the regular monthly fees to maintain the site successfully.

Website Design Software

For those who do not have the pocketbook power to make all these professionally designed websites happen, there are inexpensive alternatives. Website design software is available now for virtually every application, website style, type and budget. Software such as WebPro Easy from Avanquest begins at $50; a more advanced program (with Photoshop compatibility and FTP export function) such as Microsoft Expression Web would cost about $150.

Free And Low Cost Website Design

Fortunately, most website design software remains within the $50 to $150 range; it is ideal for the amateur website that transacts very little business but wants to be an internet “presence.” Some of the programs even give a beginner a free programming package; these free packages, while extremely limited in their capacities and additions, nevertheless give an amateur a starting place for his/her new website enterprise.

When you compare the slight cost to the amateur of using software to the immense expenses of the professional web designers and their package programs, the software option seems like even more of a bargain.

In Conclusion

The range of prices available for website design and development are limited only by the excesses of one’s budget. In principle, the development of a new website can be akin to the launching of a yacht or the one-man launch of a canoe. Both are traveling the ocean of commerce, and hopefully both will hit their destination.