Thanks for reading my 5th blog! How much does a website cost? The cost of a website can vary wildly, and that's why it's so confusing.

Do Your Research When Finding A Marketing Company

You might hear from some guy that it only cost a couple of hundred dollars. Someone might say it's a thousand. Some websites might cost $20,000 to $50,000. I've seen multimillion-dollar businesses with a thousand dollar website. I've seen small local shops with websites that cost $10,000. You really have to investigate what you're spending, and what you're getting out of it. Don't just take everyone's word for what you should do on it. Spend some time online and find out how much should a website cost and what things are involved in a website.

Cheap / Free Websites

If you're trying to get it really cheap, it's possible to not spend any money on it. If you're going to invest your own time, then you could use a Google website, which is a free website tool they have in Google My Business. Doesn't cost you anything. You only have to pay for your domain name, which costs about $15 a year. You don't get any creative flexibility when you're using a Google website. You're just going to be able to upload some pictures to it, and put it in your important business information. Then when people find it, they're going to be able to use it to call you, request directions, or find out what kind of products you have. Maybe even see pictures of the inside of your store. So that's what you would just call a simple landing page or a digital business card. You can find out how to get that free website if you go to Google My Business. You go in there, there's a little link that says, "Create website", and that's how you would build a free one.

Using A Website Builder

The next step above a free website would be to go to a website builder like Squarespace or wix.com. EIther of those tools, I've used them a lot myself, if you use either one of those tools, it's going to cost you a couple of hundred dollars a year. That's not including your time or the content you need for it like your pictures. You have to have all that yourself or use stock photos.

So your total investment is going to add up, but the money out the door might only be a few hundred bucks If you're just looking at the price of hosting. Simple website building tools have really come a long way, and it's made it hard to tell the difference between a website that didn't cost much money and a website that may have cost $10,000 to $20,000.

They deliver results, especially if all you really need is for a way for customers to contact you, but you want it to look a little bit fancier, or have a little bit more flexibility than you would get with the Google My Business website.

Should you spend a lot of money on a website?

If you're just starting out or you only have three or four employees, and you're not a million-dollar business yet. I would definitely suggest going the website builder route. That's if you can and have the time. So the level above a Wix website or a Squarespace website would be a WordPress website or a few of the other tools that are out there. To use WordPress you're going to shop around and find a theme and installing that gets pretty advanced. If you're more focused on the sales of your business, or you're more focused on your product that you're delivering, you really shouldn't get that tied up into WordPress. At this point you should just hire someone else to do it.

Price of a WordPress website

You're going to have a few hundred dollars in hosting a year. You're going to end up spending a few hundred dollars on the tools or the themes that you need. Maybe a couple hundred dollars on the images. You're going to end up in the thousand-plus range anyways, and at that point, it just makes sense to go to a local marketing company. If you're in Greenville, NC we can point you in the right direction.

Hiring A Digital Marketing Company For A Website

So if you're going to hire a digital marketing company, or some sort of website development company, at a bare minimum, a website is going to cost you a few thousand dollars. The more expensive part of that is really the time involved. If you go and consult with them and they have a graphic designer, they have a web developer and have someone working on SEO that's already adding up expenses. Then they might have an account manager or an executive that's handling the communication between you and their teams.

Why do websites cost so much?

Over a website project, if each person only has about 10 hours invested, at a bare minimum, that's going to cause the ad agency in Greenville, NC about $2,500. So if they're going to make any money on that and then they're also going to pay for the technology to host your website, speed up your website, or help your website rank higher in Google search results. They now have a couple of thousand dollars in that as well. So now at a minimum, you're at $3,000 to $5,000. And that's how you get to that price.

You might be able to go online and find some sort of $100 a month website deal, or "We'll build your website for $1,000." However, if your business revenues are in the couple hundred thousand to couple million dollar range, it makes no sense for you to go that route. Trying to save a couple hundred bucks on your website when that's the face of your company online, doesn't make any sense. If you're making that investment and you're going to spend more money into your website, you're going to see results from it. And you should be able to get business and track the business you're getting from your website.

E-Commerce Websites

Just like investing in a salesperson, your website should be able to make sales for you or develop leads for you to capitalize on. There are many other tiers to this. If you're trying to sell things through a website and it's going to be an E-Commerce website where products have to be loaded, that's going to take a lot more time. That's going to escalate the cost of the website as well. One way you could do that yourself is to use a service like Shopify. That's a pretty easy website tool where you could load your products into it. Then you can also market those products through Google Merchant Center, or any of the other channels that Shopify allows you to promote, like Facebook or other social media channels.

What Website Should You Get?

You can look at this website process through the process of elimination. If you want to do a free website because that's the only money that you have right now, then that's the route you need to go. You can't afford any other ones anyways. If you'd have a few hundred bucks to throw at a website, but you want to do it all yourself, then you're probably going to go the Squarespace, Wix route. If you have a few thousand dollars to spend on a website, you don't really have the technical expertise to do it. You should just hire a local marketing company. Look at the websites they've built. Don't just take their word for it. Look at their quality of work and hold them accountable to that.

Shopping For A Website

If you're looking at that 10,000 plus dollar range for a website, this should be a corporate website. This is one with a lot of information, a lot of flexibility. You're going to end up with a lot of technology on this website to help it deliver faster, load faster. You should be getting quotes from multiple marketing companies on that. If you're going to spend 7, 20, 30 thousand on a website. You shouldn't just go to one digital marketing company and take their word for their proposal. Shop around a little bit. Find out what's included in that, and what you're getting for that money.

Here's something to keep in mind with your website. I've seen customers generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in business with a website that only cost them about a thousand dollars. The reason for that is customers were able to contact them easily, send them questions and call them. If your customers can do that, and that's all they need to do, you may not need to spend a lot of money on a website. Don't think just because you're a big business that you need to spend big money. Also, if you're a big business, don't try to cheap out if you really need something that is more involved.

SEO & Search Engine Marketing

Here's something to watch out for on your website. Don't get so invested into building your website and having features in it, and then forget to market it. I've seen this happen dozens of times. People have a website and they sit there and say, "the phone's not ringing. Why is my website not working?" Unless you had a phenomenal SEO strategy in place, just putting a website on the web isn't going to deliver you more business. You need a strategy to put that website to good use, and put it in front of the people who are shopping for your products.

How We Can Help...

So if you're wondering this question, does our company build websites? Am I trying to sell you a website? The answer to that is no. We actually specialize in search engine marketing. We get asked about websites a lot. We might help out a customer if they need a website, or they need landing pages. It is within our technical capability, but it's not something that we focus on. We can point you in the right direction, and we have lots of digital marketing partners that can help you build a website as well.

Our specialty is making sure your website is getting you results. So, if you already have a website or you're looking at investing in a website, I'm not telling you to cancel your plans and contact us. We would be in the position to come in and look at your website and see what you're getting from it, and see if there are ways you can increase your sales, or promote it better so that you're generating business with that website.

Clickfirm.com Is a Google partner that just means that we're qualified by Google to do advertising campaigns for websites on their search marketing network and on the YouTube advertising network.

Hopefully, I was able to answer your questions on how much it website should cost. I know it's not super clear cut, but it all really depends on what you need. If you have any more questions, feel free to email me at info@clickfirm.com. You can also call us at (888) 234-3570. Feel free to reach out, and thanks again for watching.