How much do websites cost?

This is the question everybody starts with, and it is the hardest one to answer honestly, because a website is not really a product. It is a range of very different things that happen to share a name.

A one-page site for a sole trader and a booking platform that has to talk to your calendar, your CRM and your accounts are both called a website. Asking what one costs is like asking what a vehicle costs.

What actually moves the number

• How much of it is bespoke. Starting from a template is cheaper and looks it. Starting from your business is not, and does not.
• How many things it has to connect to. Every integration is a small piece of software, not a page.
• Whether anyone is designing the journey, or just the pages. The thinking is the expensive part and the part that pays.
• How much content has to be created. Words and pictures are usually the reason projects run late.
• What happens after launch. A site nobody maintains is a depreciating asset.

The three broad routes

Do it yourself on a builder

Squarespace, Wix and the rest are cheap and quick, and for a personal site or a very early business they are a sensible starting point. The trade-offs are real: you are inside somebody else's system, you are limited to what the builder allows, and your time is doing the work. For a business that sells something considered or expensive, it usually shows.

A theme, customised

Buy a template, have somebody adapt it. Faster and cheaper than bespoke, and perfectly reasonable if you need a credible presence rather than a machine. The catch is that the theme was designed for a business that is not yours, so you end up bending your business to fit the layout.

Designed and built for you

Everything starts from what the site has to achieve. It costs more because it includes the part nobody puts on an invoice: deciding what the site is for, who it is talking to, and what it must make happen. It is the right route when the website is a working part of how you win business rather than a brochure.

The question worth asking instead

Not what does a website cost, but what is it worth if it works. If your average job is meaningful and the site is the thing that wins it, the difference between a cheap site and a good one is recovered quickly. If nothing about your business changes when the site improves, then do not spend much on it, and spend the money on whatever does change things.

A website is not an expense with a number. It is a piece of equipment, and equipment is judged on what it produces.

Before you ask anyone for a quote

1. 01Write down the single thing you want a visitor to do.
2. 02Decide what the site has to connect to, and what happens after somebody enquires.
3. 03Be honest about who is writing the content and taking the photographs.
4. 04Agree what you will measure three months after launch.

Turn up with that and any competent studio can give you a straight answer. Turn up without it and every quote you receive will be a guess, which is why they will all be different.