When you are first thinking about a website or are considering a re-vamp of an existing website, you would like a rough ball-park figure for the costs that might be involved.

What do you want the website to do?

Were you to enquire of the price of a car or of a new kitchen, you would need to have made some initial decisions before asking for an estimate: what size car, what sort of luggage capacity, what sort of driving conditions. For a kitchen you would need to consider the size of the existing room, the equipment you want, the finishes, the ease of accessibility for installers.

For a website, you need to consider what you want the website to do and what information – text, images, databases, computer skills etc. that you have available already to bring to the process of putting it all together.

What makes a website cheaper?

Initially

Having a clear idea of what you want your website to do now and in the future.

Allowing good time for the design and development process.

Later

A clear structure

Having a clear structure of the way the website will be put together. What the different sections might be, what information is to be included in each section. This is true even if there are only two or three sections. This is often referred to as the website ‘architecture’.

Text and words ready

Having the text for each section and each page clearly set out - even if it will later change. In fact, a good web-developer will probably suggest changes to the way things are written. Writing for a website is different for writing in a brochure - people read things very differently on a website. But having it written down gives the web-developer a better means of picturing the whole structure while creating design ideas.

Pictures

Having images ready in a digital format - not necessarily the final images but at least versions that show what will be there. You might take your own product photos for now but have booked a professional photographer for the final versions.

Before taking final pictures for your website whether taking the pictures yourself or using a photographer to take pictures for you, you will save a lot of time, and potentially save a lot of money, if you get the photographer to talk directly with your chosen web-developer first. It isn’t just about the content of the shots, it’s how they are going to be used on the website hat can dictate the backgrounds, coliours, sizes, framing etc.

OK - so what’s the bottom line?

Webspace or hosting

You will need some webspace to ‘host’ your website pages. You will want email addresses that tie in with the web address. You will want a domain name or ‘web address’ for your website.

Allow between £80 and £120 per year for that. You can get it more cheaply – you may have see this service offered at silly prices – a cheap price means a cheap service. Paying a good price means a good service: unlimited downloads for your visitors - the website doesn’t disappear half way through the month, your domain name is automatically renewed having been regsitered in your nam,e not the name of the cheap hosting provider.

Design

The design process is at the heart of the whole thing of course. A good web-developer will look at your needs, look at your content (text, images etc), consider your potential audience. Only then should there be any design work. This is in fact the part that (should) take the most time if it’s done properly.

You can help your web-developer by looking at sites on the web and make a note of those that you like and those that you don’t like. Cut and paste the website’s address from the address bar of your browser - paste it into a text editor or into Word and add some notes about why you like it or why you don’t like it.

Once that part is done well, then putting it all together takes relatively litle time.

A simple brochure website, with all the content prepared beforehand should cost around £400.

What really adds to the time is messing about with images and getting them right for a webpage. So if there are a lot of images not taken by a professional photographer, expect this to be more.

More complex websites can cost anything from £1,000 to much more. It all depends on what you want. But BEWARE if a web-developer starts quoting you anything around the £5,000 mark before really talking to you, then walk away. There are too many sharks out there. Let me tell you a story:

A company wanted a straightforward website that allowed visitors to search for particular types of holiday acommodation. Without talking in any great detail with a developer, they were wuoted £32,000 (yes, thirty-two thousand pounds). When the company said that this was more than they had expected, the web-developer offered to do the same for £16,000 - half the original quote! Yet the alarm bells didn;t start ringing. It gets worse: when the company asked if it would be possible for it to be done in two weeks (from giving them the content – list of properties etc) the web-developer were happy to comply. The company knew there were only two people involved in the web-development company. BUT they didn’t think to work out that this meant that even if the two worked 16 hour days for two weeks they would be charging £50 per hour. We happen to know it took one of them 10 days - £200 an hour!

Annery Kiln Web Design was called in when it became clear that the website was badly designed, was not accessible to visitors with disabilities, was not accessible by major search engines and when the company soon discovered that visitors were unable to udnerstand the over-complex accommodation search system.

We started from scratch – we produced a well-designed website, that was easy to use, was accessible by everyone and search engines. We did it for ££3,000 and considered ourselves well paid.

Maintenance

Can you update it yourself?

Maintenance contract

Easy payment system

More to follow...