First of all, let’s get this straight… you need a website. Period.

And not just any website, but a great website with a clear, crisp, professional and easy to navigate design with excellent user capability and functionality. In addition, you need a website that is as easy to use administratively as it is for your site visitors.

It doesn’t matter if you are a national corporate brand, a smaller brick-and-mortar store with ‘a lot of business’, a brick-and-mortar store with only local businesses, or an ice cream shop that only sells to people between 5’10 and 5’11 wearing baseball caps before 3 pm only… you still need a website! Your business can be broad or niche, it can be big or small, and despite what you may believe… you need a website!

Now how much does a website cost?

Like the companies they represent, websites are not all created equal and serve various purposes, therefore their cost can vary greatly as the level of design and functionality increases and becomes more complex to suit needs. of your company.

$2000 A basic design website, which mainly acts as an online brochure to simply establish an online presence needed to answer the questions ‘does it exist?’, ‘are you a professional?’ and ‘what do you do?’, can be built for a mere market average of $2000. This website will not allow you to interact with your audience (social media, blog), transact business directly through your site (e-commerce), nor allow you to manipulate and update the pages and content within your site without hiring a programmer/web designer to do it for you (content management system allows for more $$$).

But the site will serve to help brand and market your business, showcase your products and services, and inspire sales as a lead generation tool.

Unfortunately, your website design will be a template at such low costs. This means that your site probably mirrors that of other sites on the web with a similar layout and structure.

These sites should be coded with CSS and XHTML to allow your site to look the same on almost all computers and will also be Search Engine Optimized (SEO) for greater success in natural search engine rankings. But not all businesses code the same and have SEO as a top priority. Also, web analytics should be provided with every site created to track and ensure the success of your web. So make sure you ask the right questions before you hire.

$3,000-$7,000 Custom designed websites, with all the aesthetic beauty you can imagine, cost a market average of $5000. These sites are not very functional but they are extraordinarily beautiful and all design elements are created and designed specifically for your site and They adapt to the needs of your market. These sites will not yet allow audience interactivity, e-commerce, or content management. The cost of the sites is due to the number of hours it takes to create beauty within the pages of your site.

The site will serve the same necessary purposes as a basic design website, but will be much more aesthetically pleasing and customized to your company’s desires.

Again, these sites should be coded with CSS and XHTML to allow your site to look the same on almost all computers and will also be search engine optimized (SEO) for greater success in natural search engine rankings. search. But not all businesses code the same and have SEO as a top priority. Also, web analytics should be provided with every site to track and ensure the success of your web.

$7,000-$12,000 Depending on the level of aesthetic design that is requested, Content Management System (CMS) websites will run at a market average of $10,000. These websites are built with both functionality and design in mind, as you’ll receive custom art design and mid-level functionality, including the ability to manage and update all content, images, and text found on the websites. pages of your site (an infinite number of pages). possible). With a CMS compatible website, your site will have endless possibilities as a flexible pluggable web application capable of adding additional features as desired.

These websites are built with the idea that you will have a significant number of changes, additions, or updates to your site in the near future. Instead of paying hourly rates to make such changes, a CMS system allows you to make most of the basic additions without prior knowledge of coding or web design.

Social interactivity with your site visitors is possible with a site of this caliber as there must be a blog present within your site that allows you to post content that you think is relevant and desired by your audience. Your audience can choose to respond to your blog posts and to comments from others, allowing for a two-dimensional interaction between you, your audience, and within your audience.

Some eCommerce and real estate listing sites can be built within this price range depending on the level of functionality and design.

Also, sites of this caliber have variable prices regarding design elements. These sites have custom design work, but more expensive items like Flash Art creation will affect the price.

Again, these sites should be coded with CSS and XHTML to allow your site to look the same on almost all computers and will also be search engine optimized (SEO) for greater success in natural search engine rankings. search. But not all businesses code the same and have SEO as a top priority. Also, web analytics should be provided with every site created to track and ensure the success of your web.

$12,000-$100,000+ If you’re looking for advanced functionality including social media, blogging, e-commerce, or any other web application complemented by the leading design elements on the market, you should expect to pay a market average of $25,000! Like I said before, some ecommerce and applicable websites can be built for less, while the most successful businesses are built for much more.

Sites that have fallen into this price range include facebook.com, orkut.com, bestbuy.com, and wgcu.org, to name just a few.

A site within this price range will be built and coded by hand from scratch. That means your site is unlike any other and requires the attention and expertise of an experienced web application developer or designers. A site that falls into this category requires months of market analysis, software research, consulting, database design and implementation, software development and integration, quality assurance, and site testing. This is the mother load and is priced accordingly.

I know what you’re thinking, ‘who knew it was so expensive?’ And the only answer I can give is that web design and creation is just like any other trade or trade and requires a high level of knowledge and experience. Also, with the rapid pace at which technology and the internet are constantly changing, the gap is starting to seriously widen between web hobbyists and web professionals. Can you still get a website for $500? Sure it can, but it won’t display or function like a professionally designed website would and it will be just as ineffective and flawed as the person who designed it.