How to budget for a custom website design. A look into the cost of professional web design.

Web Design Cost

The true cost of web design isn’t something you can easily find online. There aren’t a lot of open discussions about it—probably because design companies are afraid of scaring off clients up front. Nonetheless, it’s an important question, because many companies find it hard to even guess at what they should be budgeting. So here, I’m going to bare all and break down the cost of custom web design for you. What you learn may surprise…or even shock you.

Step 1: Your website design budget starts by establishing a realistic marketing budget.

Your marketing budget will vary depending on your industry—but experts agree it should be between 2% and 12% of gross sales.

In other words, if you’re a one million dollar company, you should set a budget up to $120,000 pending your industry and other factors, to market and promote your brand. As you grow you can do more with you marketing bucks and slowly reduce the percentage of revenue you allocate towards marketing.

For a brand-building project which just focuses on the key components of branding, most companies will spend between $30,000 and $75,000. When I say “key components”, I’m referring to the essential branding elements that most companies need:

• Naming/Logo
• Collateral
• Compelling Copy
• Online Brochure
• Custom web site
• Interactive Presentations
• Custom Blog
• Email Campaigns
• Lead Generation Tools
• SEO
• Social Media Marketing
• Exhibits (as needed)

This cost logically adjusts with the size of the company—larger companies, or well-funded start-ups, may spend a lot more to enter or raise awareness in a market.

If what I’m saying is a surprise to you, you should know that I didn’t make these guidelines up. They’re publicized by organizations like SCORE and the USSBA. They’re benchmarks based on real statistics and actual business case studies, and they’re the reason venture capitalists will usually require a sizeable marketing budget. If you’d like to learn more, here are some good articles that offer more insight into setting a marketing budget (of which your website design cost is a major consideration):

• http://www.imageworksstudio.com/blog/2009/setting-marketing-budget/index.html
• http://www.score.org/m_pr_11.html
• http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/manage/marketandprice/SERV_MSTRAT_MKTBUD.html

Step 1: Determine web design pricing for your industry. Realize that you’re not just designing a website—you’re building a brand.

Your website is not a stand-alone marketing tool. It is, in many cases, a prospect’s first impression of your brand. It is also the place your prospects go to either form or validate an opinion about your company…before they decide whether to take the next step. It’s the most important element of your brand image, and it sets the pace for your conversion process. So you need to budget for the full scope of the branding you need—not “just” for “a website”.

To do this, you’ll first have to assess your industry and look at what your top competitors are doing. Just getting to the “design phase” requires going through an in-depth marketing discovery process, and then formulating a web marketing plan. Trying to build a site without this initial investigation & planning is like trying to build a house without surveying the land or creating any blueprints. It's going to fall apart.

Step 2: Understand the full scope of your true needs.

To be successful, your website will need to include some of the following components and media. To build a site without them is like going big game hunting with a pocket knife…or, returning to our previous analogy, like building a house without a kitchen or dining room. It's just not smart. If you don’t have at least most of these things, your branding efforts will simply be ineffective:

• A Discovery Process and production of a well articulated creative brief—the essence of your marketing and sales strategies.
• A sitemap—an outline of your website which shows all the navigation and pages. This should be completely centered around your customer’s needs.
• Visual direction and messaging aligned with your marketing objectives.
• A design and layout for your homepage, based on an agreed-upon visual direction and messaging.
• A design and layout for an interactive subpage template which will inform your visitors, and guide them through your site while maintaining your own brand identity.
• Professional copywriting or content optimization (yes, you do need it!) which will allow prospects to scan, while offering information to pique their interest and drive them toward your calls to action.
• Flash animation to stimulate interest and communicate key points without crowding the page.
• A custom-designed blog. This is critical: it's today's free PR machine and a SEO staple.
• E-mail templates which match your new online brand. Email marketing is the best ROI in marketing—a must-have!
• A downloadable PDF brochure with easily-digestible information—so your prospects can forward it to a decision-maker or read it on the Metro.
• Online conversion forms. Why make it difficult for someone to contact you? Interactive forms make inquiries a breeze, and data capture automatic.
• An internal search engine. Forrester Research has found that users will simply abandon a site if they can't easily find what they’re looking for. A site search tool enables users to quickly find the information they want, without hassle.
• Search Engine Optimization. Your site should be designed in a way that’s search-engine friendly. By thinking ahead, you’ll be well-positioned to appear high on search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Call to Actions / Landing Pages - Destination pages that lead to specific conversion goals established in your creative brief. 

This list could easily go on, but you get the idea. Now, most of these items cost between a few hundred to a few THOUSAND dollars each—so you can quickly see that building a successful online brand via your custom website is going to take a serious investment. Of course, a site which is built correctly will grow revenues and awareness of your brand more than you can imagine! Our clients have experienced revenue growth that has paid back their investment hundreds of times over! It's not so much what you spend, its about how your expenditure affects revenue growth.

OK, OK, I get it! So what does a custom website design cost?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer, because the cost of your custom website should easily fit into the budget guidelines mentioned above. The bigger your company, the more you should invest in your online brand, and the more features and functionality you can afford to enhance your online presence. If you’re a $45 million company, but you invest the way a $5 million company does, you're going to fall behind your competition and fail to impress your customers.

Madison Avenue and other high-profile agencies will charge mid-six figures and more to build an online brand. At the other end of the spectrum, there are freelancers and small web design firms who can build you something for a few thousand. For most companies, Madison Avenue is out of reach, and a freelancer or small web development team will more likely hurt than help, because one or two people just can’t adequately cover so many areas of expertise well.

The middle ground is a full-service agency. Putting the right assets in place to build an effective brand is costly, but the rewards are substantial and ongoing. For marketing direction, messaging, design, coding and CMS implementation, a reasonable average fee from a full service agency is between $10,000 and $30,000. This is for a site with 30 pages or fewer, without any back-end programming, database, custom applications, Flash animation and so on.

You can Google as many articles about web design pricing as you like. You can even experiment with do-it-yourself templates, or hire an inexpensive firm to build your website—the most important and influential piece of communication you have. But I’ve supervised the creation of over 1,000 online branding components (web sites, blogs, presentations, PDF brochures, landing pages, etc)…so I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to build an effective web “experience”. I can tell you straight up: the bottom line is, if you want a professional online brand that will recoup its value, $10–$30k is a good range to start for the initial build of your "brand assets" (including your web site) -- AND you should also plan for monthly enhancements, promotions, lead nurturing, advertising, search marketing, social marketing and more by setting a monthly budget consistent with your annual revenues as per the above budgeting guidelines. 

The power of your new online brand

By now, you probably realize what it takes—and so what it costs—to build an effective and conversion-oriented online brand. The rewards will be tremendous. Here is what you can expect from a website done right:

• Your employees, prospects, and clients will have confidence in your brand.
• The number of prospects who visit your site will substantially increase.
• Visitors to your site will be more likely to want to learn about your products and services, and thus more likely to convert.
• Measurable results will be obtained that can be used for further improving your online brand, and customer conversions.
• With an actual system to convert customers, you'll be able to take advantage of the 80% or more of prospects that have a buy later mentality.
• You’ll get more referrals.
• Your investment will be paid back in spades—and then some—resulting in substantial revenue growth. 

Scott C. Margenau is the founder and CEO of ImageWorks Studio, an award-winning Web design and branding firm. Visit www.imageworksstudio.com or call 800-308-8573 for more information.

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