Website design and maintenance costs

What are the build and maintenance costs to run a website

A lot of people looking to get someone to build a website ask the quite reasonable question "what is this website going to cost me in terms of design build and ongoing maintenance". Unfortunately it isn't a particularly easy question to answer.

Let me start with the website design costs, the overall cost of your design will be dependant upon a number of factors, firstly, are you going with a custom design or will you be getting a template. If you get a template you run the risk that you will be running a website that looks very similar to a lot of other sites out there. If you get a custom site it will look unique however will cost you a bit more. Once you resolve whether it is custom build or template you will need to consider how big you are going to make the site, will it have interactive forms, whether it will use stock images, will it have an online shop or some sort of interactive booking system and who is going to create the content. These will all add to the initial build cost. To give an example of cost, for 123 2 Web to build a custom site, costs can be anything from $750 to $10,000 plus.

Once your site build is complete what costs are you going to have to pay for maintainance? Again, ongoing maintenance is dependant on a number of factors. If all you want is to put up an online business card or brochure and you are in an industry that is not too competitive then it may only cost you a couple of hundred dollars a year in hosting and minimal maintenance. If on the other hand you want to use your website as a marketing tool to drive leads and potential new customers then you will probably need to spend a lot more in maintenance. This might involve an ongoing plan to create content, write blogs or employ someone to write blogs, pay for PPC or pay for ongoing SEO support. To give an example in terms of costs, it is not unusual for small and medium sized businesses to pay $2k plus per month on PPC alone and many of the larger SEO companies will charge $1k plus per month.

For a lot of companies within highly competitive and moderately competitive markets the ongoing maintenance cost of running your website will be significantly higher than the build costs.

On the positive side, if you have a well built site that does a good job of converting leads into customers then the costs of a focussed PPC and SEO campaign will be far cheaper than the cost of employing additional sales people or pursuing a range of offline advertising methods.

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Date posted: 2013-05-19 | posted by: 1232blog

Comments

The build cost of getting a website is minor compared to the ongoing cost of keeping it current and building traffic.
Date: 2013-06-03 | comment by: Furniture Movers

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Website design and maintenance costs

What are the build and maintenance costs to run a website

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