Website Cost 2024: Design and Development
The following is an example estimate that breaks down design and development costs on a higher budget website project.
Core Website Elements and Pages (UI/ UX Design + Development)
Development of the most prominent and mission critical pages on your website. In total this could be around 100-120 hours on a typical SMB sized project. All pages should progress in a sequential series of deliverable stages from wireframe to mockup to development site.
- Site Header/ Footer (20-23 hours)
- Homepage (25-30 hours)
- Custom Page Builder – to create additional future pages as needed (5-10 hours)
- About Page (18-25 hours)
- Service Page (18-22 hours)
- Contact Page (10-12 hours)
Other pages to consider that are not included under core pages:
- Careers Index
- Individual Job Listings
- Case Study / Projects Index
- Individual Case Study
- Blog Index
- Blog Posts
- FAQ
- Events
- Gallery
- Why Us
- Process
- Past and Current Clients
- Landing Page(s)
- Google Map Finder
- Resource Repository
- Thank You Page (for conversion tracking)
Add On Website Functionality
Expect to incur more development hours in the total project budget for add on and customized functionality. Some examples of these functions and settings are:
- Google maps integration
- Pop ups for lead generation or awareness
- Gallery
- Social media feed integration
- Multilingual translation functionality
- Logo carousels
- Interactive timeline (company history, etc.)
- Mega menu
- Gated content
- Resource repository
- RSS feed (for blogs)
- Internal site search
- CRM integration
- WCAG accessibility compliance
- GDPR compliance
Content Development
Content can be provided by either the client, agency, or a contracted third party. Ideally, both client and agency will play some part in content creation and review.
SEO Copywriting
A good copywriter can budget this in around 3-4 hours with up to two rounds of revisions for a non article page. If a client plays a larger role in this process it may delay the project.
Business Tip: Having a trusted copywriter on board at the beginning of your project is crucial for avoiding website launch delays. A copywriter will be used to working with deadlines, and the requirements of website design (ex: limited character counts, calls to action, SEO). An internal writer, or assigned staff member will often not have this experience or understanding of the project, which can lead to delays, or increased back and forth with the design team.
Professional Photography ($250-$450 per headshot or business image)
This task can be significantly more involved and costly for an eCommerce website that needs product photography. Service based companies, especially those that meet customers in-person, benefit from photography of their team members in action and headshots.
Business Tip: Ask your agency if they have a good photographer referral. Often they will have a preferred vendor from previous projects. The benefit here is the photographer has been vetted for you and will be in better sync with the agency in terms of style and direction.
Uploading Pages of Content
Expect to pay the standard agency rate at 1-2 hours per page.
Business Tip: Ask the agency for an itemized line item estimate on content uploading. For pages they’re not custom designing, this is something you can do on your own, especially if they are including CMS training in the project. This can end up saving thousands of dollars in agency fees.
E-Commerce
Adding eCommerce functionality to a website completely changes the scope of a build project. The commitment required can vary dramatically and depends heavily on which CMS platform is used, and the size of the product catalog.
A rough ballpark commitment is 75-100 total hours. This is in addition to the budget for core site pages (Home, About, Contact, etc.).
A typical eCommerce project includes:
- General store setup
- Payment methods setup
- Shipping configuration
- Taxes configuration
- Order testing
- Shop page
- Product category page
- Product post
- Products compare
- Up-sell on checkout
- Connecting store to 3rd party software (Fulfillment centers, Quickbooks or other types of Accounting Software, CRM such as Salesforce, Email/Marketing Platform, Inventory Management, Referral Program)
Business Tip: If you have relationships with higher value customers, or B2C clients, involve them in the strategy process when determining store user experience, account dashboards, and checkout functionality. Their insights can be valuable, and provided readily for no cost (or in exchange for incentives that don’t hit the website project budget).
Industry-Specific Websites
Certain industries require specialized features, such as technology websites that leverage content marketing tools like a comprehensive resource center, gated content, and seamless CRM integration. Check out what to consider for your industry: technology websites, education, startups, consulting, construction, nonprofits, real estate, and healthcare.
Quality Assurance Testing and Revisions
This process is important to spot needed revisions and to ensure full functionality for your website across browsers and devices. Ample budgeting for time here is important as the process can involve a lot of back and forth between the agency and your company. This is especially true if you are involving more stakeholders in the project (executives, sales teams, business partners, consultants, etc.)
A good rule is that quality assurance testing and revision should be budgeted at 15-20% of total development hours. If a project is estimated at 100 hours of development work expect another 15-20 hours dedicated to quality assurance.
Business Tip: Make sure you are 100% satisfied with page mockups before moving from production into development. Many firms will charge extra for design tweaks after the site is developed. These efforts can include further customization of the backend and tweaks to the appearance of the site on the front end.
Website Launch (1-2 hours)
The culmination of everyone’s hard work is the website launch. While not a time intensive process, this is a crucial moment when customers and the public will see the new site for the first time.
Typically involves:
- Move of site from development to production
- Placement of 301 redirects (these move users from the old website pages to new and preserve SEO)
- Change of DNS (point website domain name to the new server)
- Submission of sitemap to Google Search Console (so it can be indexed right away)
- Install SSL security
- Setup content delivery network (CDN)
- Allow search engine indexing for desired web pages (so users can find your site and content on Google and other search engines)
