Your business website is an online storefront where users can digitally access your products and services. It is quite similar to a software app that has a strong front end with a dazzling user interface (UI) for visitors to view. Additionally, there’s also a complex backend that helps website admins and developers to interact and make the website function desirably.
When you are sure that you want to build a website for your business, the next thing to make sure of is the cost of website development. A business website design is likely to stay constant for months, if not years. Thus it is prudent to invest in the process upfront to reap results in the terms of leads and branding.
Small businesses and solopreneurs usually select the website template that offers prime customization, and enough room for changing the UI and functionality with accurate back-end coding. Alternatively, complex enterprises usually choose a sophisticated website where they can have the power to communicate and control their brand. Now, let’s see what factors that may influence your web development cost other than choosing a custom website and template website.
Here’s the list of the 10 primary factors that affect the website development cost and you have to plan the budget accordingly:
Technology and Platform
It’s essential to pick a suitable technology and platform that the development team is experienced in. The use of a new programming language that sounds the latest and fancy but your programmers find it difficult to learn may bring bug-laden returns that take more time to solve. It will bring down the ROI of your business in the short run.
So, always following the motto of well-known frameworks makes the work easier.
Additionally, it’s essential that you can fix your KPIs like the browser compatibility and devices that you want your website to work efficiently on. All such factors have an influence on how to code the website, the time taken to develop the website, and directly affect the project cost.
Complexity and Components
What about the cost of images, infographics, and logo designs? Who will be managing the whole project? What is design handover? What are the plugins, integrations, and API keys cost?
When the matter is of web development, data that is not known will right away control the project complexity. Frequently it happens when the project requires the development team to learn a different programming language.
Sometimes, it happens that the team is skilled in the programming language with underlying frameworks, but the app scenarios that they come across are unknown.
Alternatively, there are chances of developers working on different platforms. For example, one developer is working on making the website mobile-friendly while the other is checking whether the website is performing well on tablets or not. This will take more time and add more layers of complexity.
Integration of Business Systems
When your website becomes your online storefront, visitors can easily begin engaging and interacting with this storefront. If your website provides what they are looking for, it takes no time for visitors to become your customers.
In such situations, it’s essential to keep track of data and transactions that connect to the business projects. If one owns a restaurant that offers a website ordering facility, the payment gateway transactions need to be used in the Sales and Accounting systems.
Alternatively, if you own an eCommerce website, you will require to include the data of logistics and offer your customers a new value addition after they placed their order.
A skilled team of developers is required to implement the integration business system with your website. Additionally, it takes expert developers to develop a strong backend that allows integration easily. These integrations are made differently, hiking the website development cost.
Type of Website
There are different solutions present in web development. Such solutions we use for one eCommerce app or website development aren’t the same, for eg., creating a personal blog.
For developing a blog project, you will need an expert in WordPress, it’s a well-known Content Management System. However, for one eCommerce site, Magento or PrestaShop experts will fulfill your requirements.
Finally, your organization may, because of its unique business architecture, require custom web development. Developers will have to make everything from the beginning.
Website Pages Cost
Websites can include one page or even multiple pages. You must already know the fact that with the increase in web pages, the cost of development increases.
It is obvious because a web page contains different functionalities and it will require time and manual effort. Remember that if you own a simple eCommerce website, its development cost will be more because each product will have its page.
Hence, have a rough idea of how many web pages your website will require and plan the web development cost budget accordingly.
Maintenance
Until you live in a world where nothing goes wrong, you will eventually need to do some maintenance on the website. All technologies can break at some or the other point, and being able to fix it will require little technical knowledge you possess or not.
This is the reason why you ask yourself who will solve the bugs and problems in the website if you are self-hosting it.
However, if you are not tech-savvy, hiring web developers in India could be beneficial for your site. They can readily help you in building and maintaining your website.
Additionally, the number of issues that you could run into with the websites will depend on the complexity, no. of plugins, and custom code you are installing.
Addition of UI and UX
User Interface and User Experience is a hot topic of discussion while developing a stunner website. An amazing website spells the success of the service/product.
In short, UI/UX designing plays a very important role in the website’s success. What does it take to make an attractive website to influence your customers? Here are the steps that are involved in the UI UX development process, and it includes:
- Research
- Wireframe
- UI/UX designing
Summing up with this, the UI/UX phase might take an average of 1-2 weeks and it can cost from 750 dollars to 4000 dollars or even more. The timeline may depend on the project’s complexity and requirements. Hiring UI/UX developers is the smoothest way to integrate proper UI/UX into your website.
Safety & Security
For making your website secure and safe, the first thing is to add the SSL layer which means, growing your website from HTTP to HTTPS. It will add a layer of safety to your website. Additionally, before making your website live, developers also need to check the third-party plugins and other integrations that have to be used in your website.
Equal security and safety measures will help you save your website from attackers and hackers.
Marketing costs of a website
Digital marketing of your website is also a significant aspect that you need to keep in mind and it also helps you gain qualified and potential traffic and customers.
Here you can pick the class to invest in the services which offer you the most value and fit in your budget such as SEO (search engine optimization) and developing a specific marketing strategy.
Content of the website
While developing a website, developing website content is also necessary. The more accurate and interactive content you want to develop, the more impact it will make on the web development cost.
Content includes infographics, text, images, templates, videos, etc. Any form of information that you provide to the user is in the form of content. You can hire graphic designers, content writers, and many more to develop your required content.
Final Words
The factors that we discussed in the above article are some of the primary expenses that will affect the overall web development budget.
There are many factors excluding this list that can scale up or down the price. In a simpler way, when the content and complexity of your business website increase, it will increase the development expense.
Hence, if you are aware that your website will need more functionalities, be ready to pay a hefty amount to the website developers. If you are tech-savvy, you can also develop a site on your own; but there are high chances that you might leave the development process in between.
So, the easiest way is to hire reliable talent or hire a whole in-house team who can especially work for your business project development. Decide a budget and make decisions accordingly.
