Website development and maintenance have evolved into one of the biggest industries worldwide. Many entrepreneurs and companies offer web development services. The prices charged by these individuals or organizations depend on the market's demand and competition. The trends change in this industry continuously, depending on the tools and software available.
You need a website to create an online presence for your brand. Every business needs to go through the web development process. Companies cannot rely on a physical store to keep the revenue afloat. They have to build an exquisite website to showcase their products and services. They should have at least a landing page that displays their offerings.
Web development costs have become a huge topic in this industry. Every organization with a considerable marketing budget prefers to save on website development costs. They would do their research to reduce their overall development costs before hiring someone that costs them a fortune. People who understand the technical world make intelligent decisions by accepting the overall development costs they get someone to build for their business.
How Much Does it Cost to Make a Website?
Many factors contribute to the overall development costs of the websites. Let's have a quick overview of these development factors:
- Web pages ($1,000 to $10,000): Factors like products, services, and sections influence the number of web pages you want to include. Freelance designers and web design companies maintain their rates on the number of web pages.
Image taken from Strikingly
- The domain name ($5 to $30 yearly: The website address you see in your browser's address bar. Customized domain names (such as .restaurant) can be priced at $200 per year.
- Theme/Style ($2,000 to $15,000): The simpler the design, the lower the website development costs. Web design includes different visuals and the usability of your site.
- Responsive design ($3,000 to $25,000): It allows you to adapt your website to a user's device (desktop, mobile, tablet) and gives them a wonderful experience.
- Interactive multimedia ($250 to $10,000): Developing interactive multimedia is time-consuming. You can provide an engaging experience to your visitors by allocating your resources properly.
- Website hosting ($75 to $200 yearly): A service that makes your website accessible on the Internet
- Maintenance ($500 to $12,000 yearly): It allows you to keep your website functional and resolves any website-related issues
- SSL certificate ($10 to $10,000 monthly): An SSL certificate keeps your website safe for users and visitors worldwide. You have to renew your SSL certificates every year to ensure the security of your website.
Tips to Reduce Web Development Costs
1) Use Pre-Made Templates
Looking at website builders nowadays, you will find thousands of templates created to suit different businesses. Strikingly has a collection of website templates for users to choose from.
Image taken from Strikingly
Previously, you had to develop your website designs from scratch. With so much hard work and investment, the website development process was almost as if you had a mountain to climb. Although you can still develop your sites from square one, more accessible options are available. For example, many companies build quality website designs and sell them as website templates. These templates are easy to use and can reduce your web development costs. All you have to do is select the preferred website template for your business and start adding your website content.
For example, suppose you want to build an eCommerce website with minimum website development costs. In that case, you can select an eCommerce website template that is built in a way that you can upload your product photos, write product descriptions, and add a payment gateway for you to receive payment from your customers.
2) Use Free Images
If you make unique website images for your platform, it can be a costly and time-consuming process. If you have existing pictures, it will make sense to use them. You have to make sure they are appropriate for the web pages you will use them for. Stock photography sites offer a wide range of photos to choose from. You can buy those images or access them via a subscription to the service. The subscription cost of these images is usually less than $20 per month, with unlimited access to their paid images.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
The best thing to do is to use free images you can access. Whether you consider vector art or some other platform, you can find a website that offers free pictures of these types.
3) Reduce the Number of Pages on a Website
When you build a business website, you must keep it short and precise. This pragmatic approach will help you in reducing your web development costs. Even the simplest form of web pages requires website content and images, which adds to the cost of the website. Therefore, if you have unnecessary pages on your website, you should consider dropping them.
Many businesses have started building single-page websites which look professional and easy to navigate. You can find all the basic information about the business credentials on that web page.
4) Bring Simplicity to Your Content
Content is the bread and butter for any website. Once your web design is ready, you need different website content to inform the world about your business plans. Videos, animations, GIFs, and graphics all are added to your website to create interest for your visitors. The problem is that adding different types of content adds to your web development costs. Developing a site with complicated content can hamper your productivity. By choosing the most necessary form of content, your site will eventually cost you less.
Simple content keeps the costs of website development low. As you write short and precise, you will take less time to build your content. Simple content is a combination of images, videos, and texts. It means that you will spend less time writing and more time filling spaces with your pictures and videos.
5) Reuse Old Content
If you are not building a business website for the first time, there is nothing wrong with recycling old content to save time and overall development costs. Of course, you can modify the old content, but you can also save time by taking pieces of paragraphs from the old content as part of your new content.
Many companies tend to make everything brand new when they build a new website from scratch. However, it is unnecessary because it will impact your web development costs. Furthermore, if the old parts of the content are still relevant to your business, you can use them again.
You can review your old content and identify the parts you want to keep. You may find a lot, but you should blend it with new content, boosting your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking. In addition, combining the old and new content will reduce your web development costs.
6) Take Work on Yourself
You can develop your website without relying on anybody by taking advantage of numerous professional website-building platforms like Strikingly. Taking hold of some tasks may look daunting, but apart from the website design, the rest of the work is pretty straightforward. To make things easy for your development team, you can take on some of the work, such as:
- Writing website copy
- Finding appropriate images
- Testing the website
Anyone who uses a computer can test a website these days. Not only will it minimize your web development costs, but it will also ensure that your website is error-free when launched.
Build a Cost-Effective Website on Strikingly
Strikingly is a top-class website builder that allows you to build websites without investing much time or effort. Through its drag-and-drop feature, you can quickly develop quality website designs rather than investing in designers and increasing your overall development costs.
Image taken from Strikingly
Strikingly provides its users with responsive website templates that look great on desktop and mobile. After signing up for a free account on Strikingly, you can access the template section. You can select the most suitable template for your business idea. We have different types of templates for your business needs. For example, if you plan to build a blog with reduced web development costs, you can choose one of our blog templates.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
In the Strikingly free plan, you can build a fully-functional and user-friendly website with minimum overall development costs. In addition, the responsive menu allows visitors to move directly to any section of the web page by simply clicking on the section's menu.
Strikingly also helps you to include images and videos as part of your website content to keep the visitors engaged. Uploading or embedding photos or videos to your website takes less time and effort, which reduces the website's costs.
Conclusion
There is no excuse for having a website design that doesn't perform according to the current standards. However, as a website owner, you should ensure your site reflects the kind of image you want to portray for your business. Following the approaches above can reduce your web development costs and increase productivity.
If you are interested in building a website at a low cost for your business, you can sign up for a free account on Strikingly. You can use the drag-and-drop feature to make a high-quality landing page yourself. In addition, we provide you with 24/7 live chat support if you face technical difficulties maintaining your site. By saving your web development costs, you can have a top-drawer business budget at your disposal.
