How Much Does A Website Cost? In-Depth Web Development Tutorial
How much does a website cost? This article briefly explains the various elements of what a website costs. It goes without question building your own website is more of an investment of time than money. Domains and hosting are the only things needed and the cost is rather negligible compared to hiring an agency.
2 very important questions, the first is geography and the second is demographics? Geography is simply how big or small of an area do you want your website to target.
The smaller that area is, the lower the cost is, as the coverage area grows larger the cost goes up. Local businesses have it made when it comes to the cost of a website if their smart and well informed. On the other hand, local businesses are frequently taken advantage of when it comes to the cost of a website. If you do it the cheapest way yourself it’s about $100 bucks a year.
Oh but I don’t know how to build a website? if you can send an email then you can get the hang of an affordable website builder. They’re that easy to build. “Get More Hosting” sells a personal website builder for under $6 a month and a DOMAIN for 9.99. That’s under $100 bucks a year and that’s literally all you need. Oh yeah sure that’s all I need, but it really is all you need, and here’s the reason why, GOOGLE.
Google Is Top Quality “FREE” Marketing
Now this applies to local businesses, not for large geographical area websites. I’ll get to larger geographical websites shortly. ” Google My Business ” is for local businesses that verify ownership of their business’s physical address by mail with Google. They verify the owner of that business’s right to do business from that address. Not actual ownership of the physical property.
It makes no sense for a local business to not have a website. The time it takes to build a local website is a one-time investment. Most local businesses ‘ have a “static” website that requires very little maintenance. A static website is a fixed page, with periodical changes. Unlike a blog that is continuously expanding with new posts, a static website remains the same.
Website Aesthetics
The number one hang-up about websites is no two people see graphics the same. What’s aesthetically pleasing to one person can be distasteful to the next person. But I can tell you what’s pleasing to all people but first I have to finish on the appearance factors. A really nice website just takes longer not necessarily costs more. It takes longer because to get to that look and feel you want is a lot of trial and error.
The one thing there is no substitute for is High-Resolution Imagery. A website that has a lot of high-resolution images is going to look phenomenal.
The following website is an excellent example of a website built with the $9.99 business website builder. The key to this website is the owner provided High-Resolution images and it looks great. She used the website builder that includes an online appointment calendar and payment processing.
Putting Off a Website Is A Huge Mistake
Waiting to do a website is a huge mistake because it’s the most affordable marketing on the planet. A personal website builder up to 5 pages that are a snap to put together is under .35 cents a day. If you don’t need any more business a website is still an amazingly powerful tool. It’s awesome for reputability, Image, professionalism, and who knows what the future holds. I have seen what happens to businesses that suddenly lose a location. They suddenly have no way to communicate with their customer base. A website is a virtual location so you can always be found for pennies a day. A website is a virtual salesman at its best and a great ambassador at its worst. So for $100 bucks a year a website has great value to any business.
Individual hairstylists should all have websites because it’s a transient industry. A website could save the day for a hairstylist in that situation because they can be found on the internet.
Beware
Beware of the so-called free websites because they’re not free. On the contrary, they are the most expensive websites. They can be as much as $40 or $50 a month and you do all the work. When Wix advertises how rich and beautiful their websites are they are working with images that cost thousands. Whereas you may not be so fortunate. So these flashy cool websites are not real-life examples. Once you find out yours isn’t so exceptional you’re stuck with it at a high cost. Use a Custom Template to achieve what they offer for a monthly fee for life, a template is a one time cost. Custom templates don’t work with website builders, they are designed for WordPress.
What Everybody Agrees With!
A great deal! Who doesn’t want a great deal, it euphoric right? People are looking for only 2 things and that’s straight forward honest information and great value. If you want to captivate somebody, put in their face what they’re looking for. The visitor is not going to go looking for anything, they bounce. That’s not the result you want from a website. Engage them immediately
In today’s world, people are doing research about anything and everything so be bold and give them the information. Give the visitor what they’re looking for, not what the owner of the business thinks it should look like. I am not saying to not care about the appearance. What I am saying is a website with a powerful message gets ranking with Google for a reason. The reason is Google bots Read just like we do but they don’t see the same as we do.
If you provide visitors with good information it motivates them to take action. People reward people who help them even if they don’t know them and it’s because they trust them. Google knows when or if your content is engaging.
Once you are verified with Google and get great reviews and are set for life. Google is going to put on top of “Near Me Search Results”. Any small business can do all this themselves. it’s so easy to do with the lowest cost website builder.
The Cost of a Website Increases Using WordPress!
From this point on I am talking about large geographical website development using WordPress. Large regional websites require a multitude of things a local website does not, but nothing is more important than SEO. This is how you market your website for free by impressing Google because the cost of paid advertising is too ridiculous for a large geographical area.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is how websites get found organically. So just starting out you need to know what Google’s requirements are, Google speak. The more competitive your industry is the harder it is to get found. So to get found you will need a lot of content. High-quality content, the more content the better the ranking.
Website builders are at a disadvantage when building a large geographical website. Developers prefer WordPress because of the control it gives you with SEO. WordPress has so many millions of possibilities and unlimited pages and is a dream for SEO. All this is based on learning WordPress. If your good at a computer and can run programs like Photoshop you can teach yourself WordPress.
It Pays Big To Do It Yourself!
The Best WordPress Themes
for Small Business Owners
WordPress is developed by many business owners themselves because of the cost of a professional. The cost is the reason why so many business owners learn to do WordPress themselves. That way the cost is mostly time instead of cash.
There’s no question that the cost of hosting and a domain name is negligible but your time is priceless. If you don’t do your own WordPress website, it can be very difficult to figure out what it costs. How many pages is the website? Does it require continuous updating with content? The cost of High-Resolution Imagery needed? The list is infinite.
There are more questions than there are answers if you are going to hire professionals. So most companies hire somebody specifically for this job as a way to cut the cost.
Should you decide to hire somebody to do your website development be absolutely sure they know SEO. Because that’s the most important thing, and you can’t see it, it’s not visual. SEO is what Google sees not what we see. SEO is Google speak, it’s kinda it’s own language.
The cost of doing your own large geographical website is calculable. The total cost of a professionally built website can’t be calculated to an exact number.
So How Much Does A Website Cost?
The Conclusion is if you DIY the cost is negligible. If you pay somebody to do it, it can get expensive.