the ultimate Website Design Cost Calculator
This calculator will help you understand how web design & website development pricing works. Play around with it and you will learn what goes into estimates. Take it seriously, read the supporting copy, and your chances of success with your web design project will increase exponentially.
Next time you require to redo your professional firm's website use this free tool to stay on the right track.
The amount of work put into the creation of visual aesthetics has an effect on the overall quality of the design.
Free, open-source templates usually have lower quality than custom-made layouts, due to the fact that they were created for everyone rather than tailored to the specific business needs.
Free template implies no customization — every business website is similar to one another.
Custom responsive web design involves creation of page layouts from scratch.
Custom responsive design with animations, SVGs and icons is the most time & effort consuming type of work; it also produces the best results.
How many different design themes would you like to be created?
Mockup is a visual representation of text, images and graphic elements on the screen of any device. Most commonly mockups are made for desktop and mobile screens.
Mockups help to facilitate the translation of ideas into visual representation of the prototype. They make it easier to bridge the gap between words and the final result.
Which devices you would like the mockups to be created for?
Devices:Do not include dynamically created pages, e.g. search results pages or next page in a collection. Dynamically created pages use the same layout created for one particular page type.
Developing unique page layouts makes sense when each page has a different purpose, business goal or has to communicate a different message.
How many unique web page layouts do you require?
Wireframes are the blueprints of the design; they provide the visual structure for the layout of elements.
Creating wireframes helps with iterating over multitude of ideas in order to come up with most favorable option before actually coding the pages. Making wireframes reduce the amount of revisions and changes; it is a cost-effective approach for medium to large scale projects.
Which devices you would like the wireframes to be created for?
Devices:How many wireframes would you like to be created per each selected device?
Images, video, copy.
Content brings meaning to the page through images, text copy, video and graphical elements.
How many pages of the copy (text) needs to be created?
What kind of images will your website have?
Images:What kind of video content will be published?
The framework, system or software.
Choosing the software to build your website with can be challenging; here is a link that will help you figure out how to select the right tool to create a business wesbite.
Which platform would you like to use for your website?
Options:Content Management System.
CMS stands for Content Management System; it offers a user-friendly way to create web pages, add images, videos and text blocks, change fonts and apply styles.
This is a good option for people who lack coding skills but want to manage their websites themselves.
Do you need a CMS?
Options:For those who do not intend to create, update or upload content to their websites themselves but rather with a help of web developers.
Free to install, open-source CMS like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla or subscription-based website builders like Webflow or Shopify.
A content management system built specifically for your business needs.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization — a set of actions required to make web pages more "appealing" to search engines' crawlers. The more optimized the pages are, the more likely they are to score high on the SERP (search engine result pages). The higher the score, the closer the web page is to the top of the results.
How important it is for your business to appear on the first page of search results?
Options:Page title, description.
HTML structure, keyword research, web vitals, images, speed, schema, etc.
Thorough optimization and updates carried out on a regular basis.
How many web pages must be optimized for search engines?
Social Media Marketing
SMM stands for Social Media Marketing. This is not compulsory — to integrate social media feed and widgets into the website, however, sometimes it makes sense to do just that, especially when the company is active on SM and have clear business objectives in regards to these channels.
Are you (going to be) consistently active on social media?
Integration Options:How many social media channels will you need to integrate or link with?
The size and scale of the web app will stipulate the amount of database tables and servers that add to the overall complexity of the system.
Depending on the size and scale of the project, the number of users, the daily traffic and the amount of data transferred your website will require an adequate infrastructure to support that.
What kind of images will your website have?
Database (DB):How much traffic users are going to consume on a daily basis?
Infrastructure:When is the project's due date?
Sometimes the window of business opportunity is so narrow that it makes sense to act as quickly as possible making sacrifices along the way; sometimes it is more important to spend extra time on designing the web app in a most rigorous way possible.
How fast will you need the web app done?
Options:ASAP stands for "As soon as possible."
How to set a Budget for a Website Design Project?
This calculator is a great tool that will help you to understand how the web design & development pricing works. When you’d need to figure out how much should you budget for a website design, use this tool to stay on the right track.
Web design project is not so much different from other projects you’d manage within your role at the company. First, identify the objectives of the project — what do you want to achieve? Second, set timeframes for the selected objectives — when would you like to have results? Third, know your financial limits — how much are you comfortable with spending in order to attain the specified goals within a desired period of time?
There are many ways how to build or redesign an existing website. Thus the expenses can vary greatly. To avoid future headaches we’d recommend defining business objectives first. It’s rarely the case that your professional services firm needs a website itself — it’s what it can do for your business.
To better understand the options available to you talk to professional web developers, designers or web design agencies. Also, read this article: The Fair Price of Creating a Website for your Business.