The question – ‘How much does website design cost when hiring a web designer?’ – feels like it should be fairly straightforward. In reality, if you’ve ever tried to ask this question from a salesperson, you know this is not the case. When asking about costs, it may seem like you’re intentionally being given the rigamarole by sales reps because they can’t give you a straight answer on how much a website costs. But trust us, there really are a large number of factors that go into calculating the cost of a website. With a trustworthy salesperson, they’re only making sure you aren’t paying for things you don’t need.
Questions that factor into how much it costs to hire someone to design a website:
- Do you need design and development?
- What platform is your website built on?
- How many page templates do you need?
- Are you building on a page builder or doing custom design?
- Are you looking for any rebranding?
- Do you have photography, graphics, or iconography, or will you need that created as a part of the design?
- Are you looking for a new website organization?
- Do you need data from the old site analyzed to inform the organization and structure of your new site?
- Will I need a cart or other e-commerce processes
There are also many more factors that can play into website design cost than the questions above. Based on what you’re looking for, there can be a lot of variation in the exact cost of your website. In this article, we hope to clarify which features of web design you will get at different prices.
Cost of Website Design for Small Business
Even as a small business, the minimum you could be expecting to spend on a website design that meets visual and user expectations in 2022 is about $5,000. Although, we certainly don’t recommend giving your website only minimum functionality if you hope to make your website a focal point of your business. A more realistic estimate of hiring a web designer for your site is $20,000 or more. This may sound like an intimidating number, but it is impossible to over-emphasize how important it is to have a high-quality website in 2022.
Expectations at $5,000-10,000
With all websites, you can expect to get set up on a CMS (content management system) for easy future updates on your website. A popular CMS you’re probably familiar with is WordPress but we recommend HubSpot at MINDSCAPE. HubSpot makes adding and designing new pages to your website extremely easy and intuitive with no need for large amounts of plugins.
In both the $5,000-10,000 and $20,000 tiers, you can expect social media integration. You can schedule posts out months or even years ahead of time. No need for anyone to be sitting at the computer to send out social media posts. At MINDSCAPE, we have well over a hundred social media posts scheduled for the future.
With both options, you can get set up with Google Business and Maps integration. This will require a snippet of code on the backend, but a web designer can ensure that Google highlights your site if a Google user in the area searches relevant keywords for your business. You can also get a sitemap set up on your website. A sitemap is a file which you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to crawl your site more efficiently. You can also set up at least basic Analytics integration in both options. This allows website owners to track their visitors and see a record of how those visitors interact with the site.
Somewhere between $5,000 and $20,000 is where e-commerce processes and features like automated live chat support come into play. Depending on how you want your checkout process to be, there is a lot of room for customized experiences at varied costs.
Expectations at $20,000+
As for the $20,000 tier, the real appeal of this option is the addition of strategy – and not every web designer is willing to go that far (But we’re certainly willing to go that far at MINDSCAPE). For $5,000, a web designer will make anything they’re told to set up, but they won’t go so far as to wholly create a design that encourages user engagement. At this higher tier, you will get a website that’s planned out in a way to create paths for the user to naturally guide them where you want them to go. You’ll also be getting much more data about where your users are going and how long they’re staying there at this tier. The web designer can also create forms on your new site and design a path that encourages visitors to engage with your form, generating even more data.
At this level, you should also expect to see developer involvement for interactive and stylized elements on your website. You can also expect graphic designer involvement if you wish to have infographics or other visual elements on your site.
At MINDSCAPE, we take the time to do a competitive analysis of your top competitors and will design your website in a way to directly outperform your competitors. We look through every page to see if there are any cracks in competitor websites and create new content for your site that answers all the questions your competitors may be overlooking.
We will also optimize your content for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) so you will be outperforming the competition in search engine results as well. At this level, we go far beyond the basic implementation of technical SEO. We do focus keyword research and create brand new content designed specifically to target relevant SEO keywords in your industry. Going the extra mile and implementing these kinds of SEO and design practices on your website make the difference when customers are comparing options online.
Cost of Website Design as an Individual
If you’re an individual looking to set up a simple website, there are options you can find in the $250-1000 range. With these websites, don’t expect to be delivered much more than the example pictured below. The most advanced feature you can expect when purchasing a simple website like this is a basic blog feed.
Web Design at MINDSCAPE
We hope this has helped you get a better idea of how websites are priced and how much goes into building one. Website design is one of our specialties at MINDSCAPE, and we have a whole portfolio of designs we’re proud of. If you’re interested in getting started with a new website design at a cost you’ll be happy with, you’ve come to the right place.
