How Much Should a Website Cost?
It is very confusing, the prices advertised for the creation of a website vary wildly and the field is full of jargon.
At Little Fire we believe that to help you to make the right investment, what we offer and the associated prices should be explained clearly.
What Do Little Fire Digital Bring to the Process?
Expertise
This is what we do every day, we’ll do the job faster and better than the average Joe.
Experience
We do this all the time – we have the right tools and we know how to use them. We’ve done this before. We can make the decisions that help your website perform better for longer with less maintenance.
We’re a team
So you get more. We have:
- Dedicated marketing expertise – a good site with no marketing is less use than a bad website actively marketed
- Expert solution builders – team members with a proven track record of building powerful, successful online solutions
- Award-winning designers
- Award-winning illustrators
We have development and experience and talent and, where your project really does require something unique, we have the skills and experience to graft that into your final project
And What Should it Cost?
Irritatingly, it depends. A five page brochure site built from a good looking template site is clearly going to cost a lot less than an enterprise-level e-commerce solution sporting thousands of products.
Completing any task well takes both knowledge and time. We know what we needs to be done, for example, for us to be really satisfied that we are doing the job right, this is what we‘d consider optimal for a medium sized website with no additional e-commerce or other custom function.
We‘ll Build a Brief
Lots of sites are similar but most have something unique to convey. We‘ll work with you, listen and make sure we really understand what you want.
We‘ll Plan the Job
Some sites need more than others. But we‘ll assemble a timeframe and establish a schedule for keeping you informed as to the progress of the project as we go along. We normally provide a password-protected development site where you can see for yourself.
We‘ll Ensure the Branding is Right
We‘ll make sure we match your branding if it exists, or develop something in-house, just for you.
We‘ll Design a Site
We‘ll work out what you like and what you don‘t. We‘ll research your market and develop designs that will work for you and your business.
We‘ll Assemble Content
It takes longer than you might think – it‘s often the largest part of the job.
We‘ll ensure that you:
- Have SEO optimised content for every page that both you and Google can work with
- Have all the images you need and make sure all of them are optimised for use on the website
- Ensure you have all the compliance documents you need (privacy policy, website terms of use etc.) and ensure they are appropriate for your business.
We‘ll Build the Base Website
Based on your needs we’ll pick the most appropriate framework, install it on one of our low contention, UK based web servers. Depending on the platform and the project, we‘ll add the plugins and extensions we need. We‘ll then apply the design – be that from a template or a custom design.
We‘ll Integrate the Site
Most sites need some level of integration. Signup forms need to work with MailChimp, outgoing email will need to work with SMTP servers if it isn’t to end up in a junk folder and so on.
We‘ll Set it All Up for Launch
We will:
- Test forms ensuring submissions end up in the right place
- Test mailing list subscriptions
- Test the user experience on all modern browsers and a representative sample of mobile devices
- Review the finished site against the original designs to ensure they match the originals and either approve any changes with you or work to match the originals more closely.
- Ensure all plugins are correctly subscribed and future billing is in order.
We‘ll Launch the Site
This involves:
- Mapping all pages on any existing site redirect seamlessly to an equivalent page on the new one so that any authority relating to those pages is not lost.
- We‘ll back up any existing databases.
- We’ll load all the files into place, update the DNS and launch the site.
- We‘ll test the site in its new final location.
We‘ll Report Back to You
We‘ll check in to make sure you’re happy with the project.
Typically we would expect this to cost a client about £5,000, if you ask us, we could probably do it for less but some or all of the above would have to go.
If you want e-commerce, custom functionality or just a whole lot more pages, clearly that price would rise.
Is That It?
Sadly no, every website needs to be hosted, hosting varies in quality and the prices range enormously. At it‘s cheapest, it can be as little as £5 per month (or cheaper) but without maintenance, the site will become insecure and it will start to break as plugins go out of date.
We host websites on our own servers. Your site won‘t be sharing space with many other sites and all of our boxes are firewalled, backed-up daily and regularly scanned (and fixed) for security vulnerabilities.
We always create sites to perform as well as possible for Search Engine Optimisation but, over time, the initial advantages will fade. We offer SEO packages to keep your site full square in front of your desired customers.
No Hidden Costs?
In all honesty, we simply can’t and won’t promise it.
The internet is an ever changing place: plugins will need updating, free services will become freemium, freemium services will become premium.
Hackers will always hack and security standards need constant updating.
So as your business grows, all those ‘free’ tools that you used to set up your site will quickly start charging you for a piece of the action.
We have all found that they offer just enough features to make you wish that you had more and you’ll have to upgrade to pro to make it work slicker and simpler and save you time and before you know it … it was cheaper to use an agency who had all the right tools, knowledge and experience, than it was to get it for free or to go with the cheaper company.
One thing we can and will promise is that we will never be the smiling assassins offering cheapness and freebies when it’s not in your best interests to take up such offers.