How Much Does Website Design Cost You In 3 Huge Types of Design Methods
Knowing how much does website design cost as well as the elements that go into it is critical when you desire a new website design and the range for a website design is free to $10,000. Almost no website needs all those elements (the exceptions being mega companies like Amazon, Google, etc.), but all websites need at least a couple of them. To further complicate things, most of those elements have a range of costs/prices with a range of quality on top of that.
We will go over how much does website design cost with three kinds of design methods:
- DIY Basic Sites.
- DIY Sites With Decorations.
- Professional Designed Sites.
What Elements Go Into Website Design?
First, if we want to talk about how much does website design cost we should go over the elements of website design.
Hosting
The first element of website design that may or may not be involved in how much does website design cost is hosting. A website needs to have its data one some form of hardware somewhere, but people rarely have their website on their own hardware. Instead, they use someone else’s hardware. This is often done through hosting companies. These companies will/may:
- Hold the site’s data securely on a server.
- Maintain the domain and IP address of the site.
- Allows users to access the website.
- Help further secure and optimize the website.
Hosting is connected to website design by how fast it ‘delivers’ a page to users, how much it moves things around a page (aka page shift), and even if a company allows updates on software or specific plugins or templates to be used on their hosting platform.
Hosting prices go from freemium (WordPress.com, Wix, Site123, etc.) to a range of $1.99/month – $14.99/month (funny enough, this last one is the one I recommend; they have good customer service and if you are paying for a year in advance it goes down to $3.99/month) for a basic site. More speed and data storage has a higher range of around $11.99/month – $28.99/month.
Visuals
The second element of website design is making the aesthetics appealing to users. 75% of users judge a brand’s credibility based on their website’s design. Design your landing page based on your site’s values and purpose. Keep it as minimalist as you can. Minimalism in websites causes users to find key things easier and creates a more relaxed and comfortable feeling for users.
You can get free stock photos and other images from websites like Pixabey, ReSnap, Canva, StockSnap, and UnSplash. You can get more unique photos and other images from Shuttershock for $29/month, Adobe Creative Cloud for $29.99/month, or, on the high end there’s CanStock Photo for $99.00/month or $7/image.
Plugins
If you don’t want to use the basic design and adding features tools that came with your hosting (and I don’t recommend them), you will need to add plugins to your site. Some plugins are free while others are not. I don’t think you need to pay for plugins to have a decent site since there are good freemium plugins that have good enough free versions that you don’t need to pay for the paid version:
- Forms – Contact Form 7
- Sliders – WordPress Carousel, Smart Slider 3, or Serious Slider.
- Socials – Blog2Social, simple social media share button, or Revive Old Post.
- Optimization – WP-Optimize, EWWW Image Optimizer, or Smush.
- Security – Wordfence (highly recommend!) or Jetpack
Page Design Programs
There are many programs that help designers design pages of a website. Gutenberg Editor comes standard to WordPress sites, so there is a free way to design pages without having to write the code yourself. The common page design programs (aka page builders) and their recommended product price is:
- Oxygen – $16.58/month ($199/year) (good, but make sure not to have more than one person or tabs running it at the same time; it can crash)
- Elementor – $8.25/month ($99/year)
- SeedProd – $16.58/month ($199/year)
- Beaver Builder – $16.58/month ($199/year)
- Divi – $7.42/month ($89/year) I don’t recommend this one; too many people get confused with it.
Professional Website Designers
Lastly, if this all seems a bit too complicated or takes too much of your time, you can hire a professional website designer/developer to design your site for you. The caution with this option is to make sure that the one you pick is not one that will rip you off (there are some sleezy frauds in this field; having the client pay $1000 for a theme they don’t even use, never give control of the site to you, refuse to change or alter the site in any way while charging hours; it can be a madhouse). Make sure to check reviews of the website designer you use before signing any contracts!
Professional Website Designers can cost anywhere from $500 – $60,000+ for the bigger, fancier sites. That’s quite a range for how much does website design cost!
How Much Does Website Design Cost?
DIY Basic Sites
How much does website design cost starts with a do it yourself (DIY) basic site. These can be relatively cheap but require you to have some idea what you are doing. WordPress.com has free hosting and website design with the cons of having little in the choice of templates, plugins, and some other design options. In my experience, WordPress.com sites can be difficult to work with and move to a different hosting company.
Thus, as long as what you want is very basic and you’re confident in your abilities and don’t think you are going to move your site to a different hosting company (or domain name) using basic WordPress software, a website design can be free.
DIY Sites With Decorations
how much does website design cost goes up if you want decorations. If you want fancier and more features for your site, you’ll need to add decorations and how much does website design cost goes up. For a blog site, you might want to add sliders, accordions, photo murals, better photos, more fonts and colors, better optimized SEO, etc.
For a commerce site (including sites for nonprofits and charities), you’ll want to have a way to accept payment and/or donations. This means you need a payment gateway and good security (make sure your site is getting a SSL certificate from your hosting) to receive credit card numbers securely.
For a social site, you might want a forum plugin (BuddyPress possibly) or a way for users to make profiles and upload posts, images, videos, or other media. Keep in mind that this all takes time to set up and maintain. This can cost from a few dollars and a lot of time to hundreds of dollars if you want to use fancier services and products to make and maintain your site for you.
Professional Designed Sites
Lastly, if you want to save your time, how much does website design cost goes up quite a bit with hiring a professional to design your site for you. Professional Website Designers can cost anywhere from $500 – $60,000+ for the bigger, fancier sites. We, at SJ Usability Services are at the cheaper end and we love working with and helping small businesses, charities, and nonprofits.
We will make your website is build for Google Analytics by:
- Making it Optimized for mobile users.
- Ensuring it is HTTPS secure.
- Following Intrusive interstitial guidelines.
- Making it Optimized under Core Web Vitals.
- Low Largest Contentful Paint
- Short First Input Delay
- Few Cumulative Layout Shifts
It will be built especially for you:
- Interface designed for your customers and your goals in mind.
- Pages engaging for you and your users to use.
- A professional aesthetic that will keep your style and tone.
Contact us now if you want a new website design, an update on an existing design, and/or a transfer to a new hosting company or domain name!
Summary
Very few websites need all website design elements, but all websites need at least a couple of them. Most of those elements have a range of costs/prices with a range of quality on top of that. Designers can cost anywhere from $500 – $60,000+ for the bigger, fancier sites. We went go over how much does website design cost with these three kinds of sites:
- DIY Basic Sites.
- DIY Sites With Decorations.
- Professional Designed Sites.
