Website Managed Services: $75-$150+/month Managed services can include blog writing, post-launch testing, and content maintenance.May also include marketing and advertising services including AdWords, Pay Per Click Marketing, Social Media Advertising and more.

Miscellaneous Services: $100-$1,000 Don’t forget to factor in other unaccounted for expenses. For example, when the customer doesn’t have high quality photos of their business or employees; we also provide professional photography for your website. Cell phone camera photos don’t cut it anymore. Remember, this is your first impression now. Do it right and do it smart. You’ll thank us later.

1. DO IT YOURSELF: FREE – $50/MONTH

   With advances in business models, content management systems, and software there are now (and really there have been) some amazing tools online some include Wix.com, SquareSpace.com among many. These tools are amazing. As a development agency it’s sometimes scary to see how far things have come.

   However, it’s important to note – these tools are often complicated and our (general) audience is still not comfortable learning and using these tools. Similar to the above – these sites are highly configurable, but still require some coding, graphic design, and other knowledge to cull out of them a custom, attractive look. However, these are excellent resources and I’d recommend these services for any business looking to do it themselves.

2. IF YOU HIRE A DEVELOPER: $1,000 – $2,500

   A basic designed website, acts primarily as an online brochure, establishing a necessary presence online to answer your customers’ questions “do you exist?”, “are you professional?” and “what do you do?” A basic website can be created in the $1,000 – $2,500 range. This website may or may not allow you to interact in a 2-way conversation with your audience (social networking, blog), transact business directly through your site (ecommerce), or enable you to manipulate and update the pages and content within your site without hiring a web programmer/designer to do it for you (Content Management System does enable this for more $$$).

   This gets complicated to further elaborate on why this may or may not be included. For us, the complexities of using and designing around a content management system (or tool that allows you to update your own website) is usually a bit more time consuming then coding HTML from scratch – additionally there are a lot of customer service, content, and small testing requirements that eat up time and budgets for all projects – but which make up a significant fraction of smaller projects.

   A basic website site will serve to help brand and market your company, showcase your products and services and inspire sales as a lead generating tool. The design of your website will, most likely, be templated at such low costs. This means that your site probably mirrors that of other sites on the web. With our firm, these sites will be responsive using the latest standards to allow your site to look the same on nearly every computer/device and will be Search Engine Optimized (SEO) for greater natural search engine ranking success.

   But not all firms code the same and have search engine optimization or online marketing as a top priority. Also, web analytics are provided with every site we build to track and ensure your web success.

Depending on the level of aesthetic design that is requested as well as additional features Content Management System (CMS) websites will run at a on average around $3,500. These websites are created with both functionality and design in mind, as you will receive both custom art design and the ability to manage and update all content, images, and text contained within the pages of your site (infinite number of pages possible). With a CMS capable website, your site will have endless possibilities.

These websites are built with the idea that you will have a significant number of changes, additions or updates to be made to your site in the near future. Instead of being charged hourly rates to make such changes, a CMS system enables you to do a majority of the basic additions without prior coding or web designing knowledge.  Social interactivity with your site visitors is possible with a site of this caliber, as a BLOG will be present within your site enabling you to place posts of content that you believe is relevant and desired by your audience. Your audience can choose to respond to your blog posts and each others comments allowing for 2 dimensional interaction between you, your audience, and within your audience.

Some ecommerce and real state listing sites can be created within this price range depending upon level of functionality and design.  Also, sites of this caliber have varying prices with regard to design elements. These sites do have custom design work, but more expensive elements like Flash Art creation will affect pricing.  Again, with our firm, these sites will be CSS and XHTML Coded to allow your site to look the same on nearly every computer and will also be Search Engine Optimized (SEO) for greater natural search engine ranking success. But not all firms code the same and have SEO as a top priority. Also, web analytics are provided with every site we build to track and ensure your web success.

If you are looking for a larger site, with advanced functionality including but not limited to social networking, blogging, ecommerce, or any other web application topped off with great design and content that speaks to your audience you should expect to pay a bit more than the previous two sections. We’ll detail out some specifics in our additional sections on Ecommerce & Custom Applications, but this section should serve as a decent place for larger businesses to start.

Like I said before, some ecommerce and web applications can be created for less, while most successful ventures are created for much more.  There are countless sites that have fallen in this price range include Facebook.com, Orkut.com, and BestBuy.com to name only a few (all GREATLY exceeding 6-figures).  A site within this price range may be built and hand coded from scratch – and in all cases will require extreme customization – and coordinating various technologies in order to work with your company or infrastructure.

That means your site is unlike any other and requires the attention and expertise of an experienced web application developer(s) and web site designer(s). A site that falls into this category requires months of planning, research, consulting, database design and implementation, software development and integration, site quality assurance and testing.

I know what you are thinking, ‘who knew it was so expensive?’ And the only answer I can give is that web design and creation is like any other craft or trade and requires a high level of knowledge and expertise.

Why are websites in this range so expensive? Here’s a few factors to consider, and examples of scenarios we’ve been in throughout the years that change the cost of a website, even when functionality may not necessarily be beyond the ordinary:

Tighter timelines, More meetings, More people (and approvals) involved, More exacting content specifications, More pages of content to port over or account for, Additional security concerns, Governmental or other requirements/regulations must be adhered to (for example HIPPA compliance is a beautiful and on some projects required element – accounting for this and testing for it takes extra time and money)

None of this is extreme or out-of-the-ordinary, but when needed or required, costs go up.