Discover the best website design options for your business! From DIY to traditional agencies and our innovative Launch Kit program, find the right fit for your needs and budget.
How much should you pay for small business website design?
So, you're looking to establish your business's online presence? Excellent. Great choice. A website is what we consider step two of the core four marketing moves.
Just for reference, step 1 is brand development, step 3 is photo/video content, and step 4 is social media.
When doing search engine optimization research for our own website, we learned that pricing is the most popular question people are asking online when it comes to website design. So, welcome to today's article. I'm going to break down some different options for getting your website built and how much you can expect to spend. Let's get into it.
Okay, I'm going to start with the cheapest option: Do it yourself, aka DIY. There are two platforms I can confidently recommend, I'm sure you've heard of them, Squarespace and Wix. Each of these platforms allows you to build your own website without needing to know HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. They're a one-stop solution, which is great.
If spending the least amount of money is your top priority, then DIY using Squarespace or Wix is your best bet. You can expect to pay under $100/mo for your website. This is the biggest "pro" in the DIY column. These platforms have done a great job at making it so you can get your site up and running all by yourself.
The biggest drawback in the DIY category is going to be the time you, the business owner, will need to invest in building and working on your website. It's common in the early days of a business to wear all the hats, to do all the responsibilities yourself. As the business develops, one of the best skills to learn is how to delegate tasks. Learn your strengths, lean into those, and trust others to help you in other areas. I'm talking about hiring team members and being okay with the fact that they are more skilled than you in their area of expertise. As I transitioned from being a solopreneur to hiring staff and building Launch Kit, this idea of right people in the right seats became one of my core values.
Anyway, my point in saying this is that there comes a time when the lowest cost option isn't always the best option when you take into consideration the value of your time. For example, it's a better investment for me to hire a plumber as opposed to me going to Lowe's, getting the parts, figuring out how to fix the issue, all just so I can then do a mediocre job.
So this leads me into option number two, hiring a traditional web design provider. This could be a local freelancer or a marketing agency.
Do a quick Google search for "web design followed by your city name", and you'll find a dozen companies.
It can be a bit tricky sifting through the noise since the market is a bit saturated, so I'll give you a key thing to look for.
When building, maintaining, and updating your website, communication is key. There's a lot of little moving parts that go into a site, so having a clear, organized, and productive means of communication with your website provider is essential.
The number one reason people come to Launch Kit is because their previous provider had poor communication skills.
Alright, the second thing to understand is their pricing model. Most of them are not going to post pricing online. They'll make you do a consultation, and audit, then they'll build a proposal and pitch it to you.
The traditional web design provider follows a model where they bill you typically somewhere between $1,000 - $10,000 upfront to build the website. I'm talking about a small service-based business website, by the way. So like a restaurant, contractor, or professional services business.
So they bill you the $1,000 - $10,000 upfront, then you are usually responsible for the hosting plan, which will run you $50/mo or less. Then, for the web design provider to do further work on the site, they will bill you some form of an hourly rate. I've seen a lot of companies bill around the $100/hour mark.
The good thing about this solution is you're delegating work that maybe you're not the best at. By letting these guys spend hundreds of hours working on your website, you open up the bandwidth to actually run your business. You can be thinking about things like hitting your one, three, and five-year goals instead of trying to SEO optimize your website.
Alright, now I need to put a big disclaimer for this next portion of the article. I'm going to provide my personal opinion; take it with a grain of salt.
In 2020, I launched a new form of website design solution. This program went on to be one of Launch Kit's most popular services, and it's helped hundreds of small businesses build their online presence.
We were providing website design via the traditional model I just explained. We'd bill somewhere between $1,000 to $10,000 to get started, and then when you needed updates, we'd have to either do the work pro-bono or we'd have to be like your lawyer and bill you the second we picked up the phone. Honestly, neither was a fun option. One led to us not making any money, and one felt transactional.
The billing for updates and maintenance was a big issue because, like I said, the number one reason people were coming to Launch Kit was that their previous web design provider was impossible to get a hold of for website updates.
They didn't have systems in place for easily providing site updates, so small business owners like yourself would not bother updating the website with new information; the site would go outdated, and it would eventually stop providing value to the business.
I was watching this happen to small businesses over and over again, so it got me thinking about a new way of providing web design. The solution ended up being Launch Kit's web design program.
In simplest terms, when you join Launch Kit's website design program, we design, develop, host, secure, and update your website. There's no upfront cost, there are no long-term contracts, you just pay your monthly membership, and it covers all the work we do. It's basically like our salary. We have plans that range from $269/mo to $599/mo depending on what website features your business needs.
You own your the copywriting, images, and videos that go on the site; the analytics are yours; the leads and customer information generated are yours.
We've developed an easy-to-use platform where you can manage your website project and send us new content. Our team is based here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and we do all client work in-house.
Alright that's enough of a sales pitch, this article's about pricing, so let me rein it in.
Launch Kit is basically a blend of the DIY platforms and the agency model. We're like the DIY platforms in that you just pay a single monthly flat fee for all your website needs. We're just more expansive than Squarespace and Wix because our fee includes us doing all the work, not you. We're like the agency model in that you're getting a custom-designed site and expert guidance. We just don't bill upfront because we recognized the real value of the site comes from continuously building, optimizing, and refining the site over time.
We're more expansive than Squarespace and Wix.
Okay, I think that's enough for one article. We looked at three different options for building your business's website: the DIY model, the traditional agency model, and Launch Kit. I genuinely think all three can be a great option depending on where your business is at. If your top priority is low cost and you have time to spare, go with DIY. If you have over 300 employees, need web application functionality, or custom e-commerce solutions, go with a traditional agency. If you're a small service-based business, go with Launch Kit.
If you have any specific questions, email me. I hope you found this article insightful. My goal in making these is that they help at least one person build their business. Well, see you in the next one.
Kevin Kamis
Each year, we take a fresh look at the various marketing efforts a small business can make. We've built this framework to get started optimizing your business's online presence.
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