How Much Should a Website Cost?

On today's episode we break down how much should a website cost. We discuss four pricing tiers:  

• $500 - $1,000: Cheaper template websites
• $2,000 - $5,000: Simple websites. No e-commerce. Custom with simple customizations.
• $8,000 - $10,000: More complex custom websites with customizations. Some will be e-commerce.
• $10,000 - $15,000: Usually e-commerce websites. Fully customizable with integrations. 

Christian: [00:00:14] Helloand welcome to another episode. Today we're talking about how much you shouldspend on a website- Or actually no. That's not what we're talking about. We'retalking about how much should a website cost really. So we're going to kind ofbreak down some price points and basically what we feel are pretty averageindustry standard price points. Would you say so, Aaron?

Aaron: [00:00:36] Iwould say absolutely, and even after doing our research, it kind of justconfirmed that we were right.

Christian: [00:00:43] Prettyspot on. All right. So if it's the first time that you're listening to TheMarketing Natives, we usually do a sort of by-industry and we kind of tackle itthat way, but today we're kind of being a little bit more broad and talkingabout websites in general and seeing how much they cost. Now if you've beenlistening for a while and you haven't subscribed yet, make sure that you dothat. We publish episodes every Monday. So keep an eye out for that.

Aaron: [00:01:14] Allright. And we have about four different areas or four different sections ofpricing, and then there's obviously some outliers to that, but the four mainareas where we see people buying or building their own websites. Number one-We're going to work from the lowest priced to the highest value and just workin that order. So the first one here is the 500 to 1,000 dollar price point.This is a great starter website if you're not looking for anything that's kindof customized. It's more of a template. Your website may look a lot similar toanother person. For example, if you're a dentist and you have another dentistacross town, more than likely they would build a similar template. Like thisdentist website template that you find online. A couple of places that peoplelook for these types of websites- Even if you hired somebody and they werecharging about this price, they would probably be doing it on something likeWix. Another one's Squarespace. There's Weebly. What else would they be on?

Christian: [00:02:19] That'sabout it. Those are basically the three big players when it comes todo-it-yourself type websites. I mean, if you want a cheaper price point whereit's do-it-yourself, then we definitely recommend those three, Wix,Squarespace, or Weebly to build your own website. If you're up to it.

Aaron: [00:02:39] Right.I guess the pro is that it usually can be launched a lot faster. You couldprobably build that website in a day, maybe a week or so if you knew what youwere doing. The cons are- And another pro is that it's obviously a lot cheaper.The con is that you don't have any customizations or features. So you know,maybe even a blog would be a little too much or something or being able to fillout certain forms may be a little less robust. So kind of the break down thereand some people fall into that. That is better than not having a website. Whichwe'll get into some fun stats a little bit later, but that's better than nowebsite.

Christian: [00:03:20] Yeah,exactly. And you might find people who will do website cheaper than 500. I mean,you can definitely for sure say that those are going to be templates. They'realready pre-built. Even the text and content for it, it's going to be the copyand paste from someone else which you really don't want that, and you mightfind a cheaper price point for maybe like a one-page website or a landing page.And I mean, that's totally fine, but keep in mind that as well. Were you goingto say something?

Aaron: [00:03:52] Iwasn't- I mean, I think it's fine or we should say that it's okay, but I thinkit's more of a transitionary website. Like it shouldn't be your long-term, thisis what we're going to build a company around. So.

Christian: [00:04:04] Right.Exactly. I guess the next series is about the 2,000-5,000 website. At thisprice point if someone is offering you a website for two to five thousanddollars and they're using something like Wix or Squarespace, I would have myguard up. That would be a red flag, I would say. I don't think a Wix orSquarespace website deserve to- People deserve to charge 2,000-5,000 dollarsfor a website of that caliber. I'm not saying that they're bad. It's justthere's a lot of limitation to what you can do with those type of websitebuilders. So when it comes to the 2,000-5,000 range, these are still sort of fairlysimple websites. You can definitely have multiple pages in there. Some peoplemay use a template around this price point just to- Some companies do usetemplates just because it's a little bit faster and easier to complete thewebsites. You will also find the ability to do some customization and somefeatures that you want on a website like that. So I guess, yeah, two to fivethousand is probably a good price point for any small business. You know, we'retalking about dentists. We're talking about maybe a little startup, talkingabout lawyers, talking about, yeah, any type of- I guess if you're part of thechamber, you should be expected to pay about that price point I guess.

Aaron: [00:05:37] Yes,absolutely. And obviously, the difference there is that the 2,000 is more thanlikely going to be a template. It's not that it won't look good. So I guess wedon't want to confuse that with- There's amazing templates on everything. Soit's not always the looks. It's more about the functionality and the featuresand the user experience. So when your customers go there, you want them to makea decision on what to do and then obviously call you. Anybody could put up awebsite, but if it doesn't bring you any business then you may have just wasteda bunch of money even if it was that 2,000 dollars or so. So anyway just bethinking about that, and if it's closer to that 5,000 dollar range, you may begetting into some custom work and more features. And I think one last thingwith this price point is that you should have the ability, if you want toanyway, where you're able to like edit the text and upload the images andchange those things. We called those CMS. So that's just a content managementsystem which means it's super easy for you to do, and in that ballpark, you'regoing to have a lot of that.

Christian: [00:06:45] Yeah.And usually they're going to be built on WordPress or maybe Webflow. So yeah.

Aaron: [00:06:55] Allright. If you are listening to this for the first time, this is a spot in ourpodcast where we try to explain a little bit more about us, BitBranding, acreative digital marketing agency in Allen, Texas, and actually speaking onthat, I want to kind of educate some people or you guys anyway. We're a littlebit different than a lot of agencies in the sense that we do everything forlike an ad campaign from the start to finish. Meaning that if you wanted tocome up with an idea for a dentist and you wanted to get more leads, we come upwith the ideas. So like the video or the images for that ad. We also run theads, and then we set up the automation and the workflow and the e-mails that goup after that. Some people don't realize that that's actually like threedifferent businesses in one, but we have a design team and a marketing team. Sowe can really do both parts of that. So some people just run the Facebook adsand they work with other designers, and some people are designers andautomation people and they work with other ad companies. And we actually haveall of that in-house. So that allows us to create a smooth workflow andgenerate a better quality product for our client. So I know that can be a lotto handle, but just know that if you need any lead generation, say you'redentist or a home service like a contractor or a plumber, anything like that,we can definitely help with lead generation online.

Christian: [00:08:35] Boombaby. Now we're back to our episode. So the last two price points that we weretalking about was- The first one was 500 to 1,000. The next one was from 2,000to 5,000, and this third price point is going to be about the 8,000 to 10,000dollar range. And for this you can definitely get a very- Not very, but youknow, pretty complex website. So a lot of customization, a lot of features aredefinitely possible within this price point, and also some e-commerce websites.You're probably talking about maybe- I guess e-commerce websites the pricepoint goes up, I feel like, depending on the amount of products. That's a hugedeal with that just because it's so time-consuming to do all that.

Aaron: [00:09:29] Iwould say even SKUs. Like it could have one t-shirt, but you have 40 differentcolors of that t-shirt or something like that. That would be crazy too.

Christian: [00:09:38] Yeah.So yeah. Between the eight to ten thousand dollar range, you can definitelyfind some of those e-commerce websites. Maybe a smaller e-commerce. Maybe youhave - I don't know - 10, 15, 20 items. Something like that. That woulddefinitely fall under that category, and then beyond the e-commerce, also if- Imean, if you're a dentist and you- I don't know. I feel like we keep going backto dentists, but if you want some crazy features on your website or maybe youhave hundreds of pages, I think you definitely would see yourself in thiscategory between the eight to ten thousand dollar range.

Aaron: [00:10:15] Andthat range also is like- So we optimize each of our websites as far as SEO, butin most people- Well, actually I don't know if the 500 to 1,000 or the two tofive thousand would be optimizing for the pages, but for that eight to tenthousand, at least for us, it's more about making sure that everything isSEO-friendly. There's probably some copywriting that's quoted into the deal,and there may be even some video work or more images or photography taken forthe website. So it's all custom. It's actually pictures and videos that areused and pulled from your store or from your location or from your spot. It'sfunny. We'll just go candid here. The air conditioner has now went out. So justa sidebar there. But.

Christian: [00:11:04] Andit's the hottest day of the year.

Aaron: [00:11:05] Itis. It is. We're recording this in July. It's like 118 heat index right now.So.

Christian: [00:11:10] Yep.That's dedication right there.

Aaron: [00:11:13] Yes.We wanted to really let you guys know about these sites. So back to thewebsites, the eight to ten thousand range you're really going to get somethingthat should have a really good ROI for it. We built a website, I would say like14 months ago, 16 months ago that was about a eight to nine thousand dollarwebsite, but we just met with him- I would say, we met with him last week, andhe closed some deals that probably accumulated close to 80,000 for him. Nowthat's a little- You know, that's an outlier for sure, but he definitely hasgotten his money back. And that's- When you pay that kind of price, you expectto get your money back, and you expect to pay for a quality product in thateight to ten thousand dollar range.

Christian: [00:11:54] Mm-hm.Yep.

Aaron: [00:11:54] Allright. And our last one here is the 15 to 15 thousand dollar range. This ismore than likely going to be an e-commerce site or something that has somecomplexity as far as a signing in or keeping data or anything that's completelycustomized to you, whether it's integrating two other systems that you have.This is fully-on customized and completely specific to you. This is somethingthat you're not going to go to like Wix and figure out how to create or go toWordpress and start from one of the templates.

Christian: [00:12:33] Yeah.Like Aaron said, I guess most e-commerce websites will fall under thiscategory, but yeah, like if you- I mean, if you have- Maybe you're a realtorand you're wanting to do very customized MLS listings and different ways tocapture data and leads from your web- We're talking about, yeah, majorcustomization within other systems. We're talking about MLS. You might alsohave some kind of CRM system in your office that you need that to link up to.So it's basically a lot of moving parts when it comes to this range from the10,000 to 15,000 dollars.

Aaron: [00:13:14] Allright. And a couple of those quick facts for you guys is one, there arebusinesses- Rather in businesses with 1 to 5 employees only 40 percent of themactually have a website. So if you're listening to this and you're usingFacebook or Instagram as your means to collect business or to generate incomeonline, it's time to switch it up and get a website, buy your own domain. Shootus a message if you need to, and the other one is that there are - just a funfact - there are over 200 million active websites right now, and as of thestart of the internet - I'm doing quotes here - a rough estimate that therehave been close to almost two billion websites built. So very cool, but theInternet's only been around a little while, and I see that number going updramatically. So kind of cool.

Christian: [00:14:00] Yeah.Awesome. All right. There you have it. Another episode of The MarketingNatives. This was how much should a website cost. If you enjoyed this episodeand you'd like to share that with someone, you can go to our websitebitbranding.co/podcast, and you will be able to see all of our episodes rightthere. We have individual pages with show notes and actual transcripts of thewhole episode. So if you want to share that with a friend, you can just go toour website and share it that way. Again if you haven't subscribed, make sureyou do that on your favorite platform. We're actually- If you're using Applepodcast app, we're actually on Spotify or on Google Play, Stitcher, Overcast.Basically any other podcast app that you want to try out, we're definitely onthere. All you have to do is search for either BitBranding or The MarketingNatives.

Aaron: [00:14:49] Talkto you guys next week.