We are often asked the question, “How much does it cost to build a website?”
Unfortunately, the answer to that question is the same as if you asked a
building contractor how much it costs to build a house. Clearly, the answer
in that case is dependent upon the number, types and sizes of the rooms, the
construction materials and the many potential amenities.
Many factors affect the cost of a website.
These include whether you are going to be selling something on the website
(e-commerce) or just providing information about your products or services.
It is also determined by the number of pages there will be on the site and
the general content of the pages. Will there be forms for the visitors to
fill out? Will there be downloadable brochures? Who will be providing the
content? Who will be providing the images, and will they already be
digitized or will they need to be scanned? There are many other questions
that will need to be answered in order to finalize a price.
Having said that, we know that you still
want to get an idea of the relative magnitude of the cost. You can use the
following as a guide for pricing your website, but keep in mind that we
cannot give you an actual price until we know a lot more about your needs.
Opening page - $595.
- Includes professionally designed header
graphic, navigation buttons, insert of content (text and images)
Additional pages - $75. to $295.
- The wide price spread shown is
indicative of the fact that the cost will be calculated based on the
content of the page.
E-commerce items
- If you are going to be selling items on
your website, there will be a charge of approximately $20. per item listed
to cover the cost of inserting the image of the item and the coding to
enable the “shopping cart” program to process the item.
If you will only be offering PayPal as a
method of payment to your customers and you do not have sophisticated
discount structures, complex sales tax requirements or complex shipping
charges, you can use PayPal’s shopping cart program at no charge.
If your pricing structure is more involved,
you may need to license a shopping cart program that can accommodate your
involved needs. The program that we use requires an annual licensing fee of
$399.
If you want to be able to accept credit
cards without using PayPal, you will need to obtain a merchant agreement
from a banking establishment. We can assist you in that regard. We also
recommend Merchant Support
Network, Inc. They specialize in merchant accounts and have
handled the majority of our client's merchant account needs. To learn more, and apply
online,
click here or you can visit their main web site at
www.MerchantSupport.com.
