How much does website development cost?
Hello! I would like to touch upon a very important topic - how much does it cost to create a site and why exactly how much.
At first glance, the site development market is oversaturated, only in Tomsk at the moment there are about 150 organizations and their number is growing very rapidly, but those who have at least once in their life encountered the problem of choosing an artist know that normal developers can be counted on the fingers of one experienced hand milling machine operator. Anticipating - yes, T-studio is cool, we consider ourselves to be “normal”.
Let's take an example - you have a small company that buys things in China and resells them in Tomsk. For a long time you worked through groups in social networks, a certain client base has accumulated, which is growing at a good pace, and you are tired of constantly answering in messages what sizes are available, what is already sold, what will be available soon, etc. The solution is obvious - you need your own website, where your entire range will be with the ability to order, pay, ask a question, in general, in appearance - a fairly standard online store. You drive into the search engine “create sites in Tomsk” or open 2Gis, send your request to everyone and look forward ... About half will not answer you at all, because these were the guys who decided to “make websites”, added themselves to 2Gis, but ... "The kid was walking towards success, it didn’t work out, he didn’t fartanulo" (c). There are no orders and they have long been engaged in another matter. Another quarter will answer you when you have already chosen an artist. They are probably very busy to answer incoming requests. In the bottom line, get about 15-20 offers.
The price range will turn out simply shocking, from 5 000 rub. up to 3 500 000 rub. Most likely you will choose something close to the lower border, but not the cheapest, the studio which does not have the worst portfolio, thousands for 25,000 - 30,000 rubles. and they have already made several similar stores, with the thought “yes, for 1,500,000 they certainly do a really cool thing, but I don’t need something outstanding, for the 25th normal version”. This is logical, we all want to save money and it is not clear why I should pay 3,500,000 when there are more profitable offers.
Let’s try to figure out why there is such a spread in prices and why it is impossible to get a good result for 30 thousand.
It looks simple - turning to the studio you rent its employees stage by stage for several months and the whole amount is made up of the number of personnel involved, multiplied by the number of hours spent and the cost of an hour. In turn, the cost of an hour includes all expenses, salaries, risks and margins.
The largest impact on the cost has the number of employees involved, in each company you will receive a different set of services. For those 25-30 thousand, you will get a website on a template and a free management system such as Wordpress or Joomla, which will somehow work and at best will not bring you any customers, and at worst it will scare you away, because for 30 thousand it’s unlikely whether 20 specialists will work for several weeks or months.
I want to note right away that there is a category of sites for which this is a pretty tolerable option - this is called a site for the sake of the site. If your slogan “everyone has it and we should have it” - such a template solution will do for you.
Let's step back a bit and go back to our store example.
You chose the option for 30 thousand, as a result, you got a store on a free control system and a modified template design. You quarreled with the performers very much, because in 90% of cases the deadlines were broken, the result was not at all what you expected and the work was delivered on the hell. For 30,000, these 1-2 people who made the site are not interested in your sales, in your reputation, but in general in nothing but your money, because they need to exist, they are now “businessmen” and “do not work for uncle ":)
And now you have a store, like you can add products and you can buy them, only no one buys anything and doesn’t go to the site. Nobody knows about you, and those who accidentally come in very quickly close the site and the bounce rate reaches 80-90%. It’s very inconvenient to work with the site - it’s impossible to create different sizes for one product, no upload is provided, the text does not change everywhere, etc. etc. The problem is that this is done on the CMS and it does not provide for more and no one thought about the design, it was simply drawn by incompetent people or the template was downloaded at all.
We are approaching the denouement ...
You can’t make a working online store cheaper than 150-200 thousand. This is the bottom line. Why?
You need to clearly analyze your business. Understand your target audience, its behavior, habits. Given this, design the structure, usability, make prototypes of all pages and elements, place emphasis, laying the fundamental foundations of marketing and the psychology of customer behavior there. Draw the design of the entire site, including at first glance inconspicuous things such as icons and other small things that make a lot of sense. Give all the text to copywriters, so that they put them in order. Make adaptive layout or just a different display for different devices, backing it with trendy solutions. Program the whole site backend, test the site on real data, optimize its work. Make SEO-optimization, think about how to further promote your site, where to advertise, what steps to take.
All this will take about two months of work of more than ten specialists in different fields. How much can it cost? By the example of our studio we get the sum of about 200-300 thousand at the moment, but we are growing and developing and the cost is growing.
To a person who has never before encountered the creation of sites, it may seem that this is a lot. This year, the T-studio received a bundle of diplomas for the development of online stores. We occupy 9th place in Siberia and 74th in Russia. With one interesting amendment - in the lower price segment. The entire rating was divided into 4 main parts, 4 price segments:
Our studio is in the lower price segment. The Russian rating believes that for 200 thousand only shops with templates can be made.
Why do others do for 1.5 million what we do for 300 thousand? We return to the formula "the number of personnel involved, multiplied by the number of hours spent and the cost of an hour." If 10 people will do your site with us, then in another studio 50 and the range of services rendered will be much wider. Most often, their price includes full further support, advertising budgets, corporate identity, brand output and positioning, naming, etc.
And the brand of the studio itself and its experience plays a significant role in price formation, as in any field. After all, we are selling exactly our experience, acting as experts in this field. Hence the formation of the cost per hour of the employee. Small companies are ready to work for 200 rubles per hour, if only there are customers and "food". Large market players sell their brains much more expensive :)
Well, of course, the number of hours directly depends on the functionality that you need. Each customer includes a different set of features in the same terms.
First results
No matter how trite it may sound, in most cases, the cost of development is directly proportional to the result and saving is not appropriate here. You can spend 300 thousand, and the site will work for you, becoming an additional business tool that is easy to use, revised, which ultimately pays off very quickly. Or you will first spend 30 thousand on a site, then another 30 on its completion, 20 on optimization, 40 on promotion and advertising, and in the end, after a year or two, still order a normal site, because what you got before this, no one will undertake to modify.
Always check with the contractor what exactly they will do for the money, look carefully at their portfolio, how they implemented similar tasks and, if possible, communicate with customers. Just talk, we all perfectly understand that you need to listen to reviews, and not read.
Of course there are exceptions in the form of studios that ask for a lot of money for a frank shit, but our little tips will help to avoid such comrades as much as possible.
Most often, novice entrepreneurs, like our example, forget that it’s not enough to make a website - you need to make it convenient, functional, promote, advertise, set up a huge business process related to this, hone your logistics and constantly support it. In support, we include ongoing refinement. You can’t make a “sweetie” right away, inevitably, during the course of use, a bunch of functionality is replayed, the project is overgrown with new features.
And finally, the final thing.
Remember that almost any company, not just studios, goes through several stages of formation:
We only work if there is money, we take on any work and ridiculous cost.
We work not for money, but for reputation, sometimes doing work at a loss or for free.
Gaining experience, stuffing cones, we begin to do more or less worthwhile things.
More expensive orders are coming because already have experience and the company is well known. We do not take up unnecessary work, we do what we can and are constantly improving.
Experts in their field. The main goal is to do cool and convenient things, and money is now just a big, pleasant bonus to the product. As a result - a very high cost of projects, high workload and popularity of the studio.
90% of the development market is at the first stage and will never cross it; these “companies” are closing earlier. It is from here that such a spread in prices and all the slogans “site for 5,000”, “store for 9,999 rubles.” And new-fangled “selling pages with a conversion guarantee”. They only sell them to you.
T-studio has just moved to the fourth stage and is improving, and maybe even at the very end of the third. Companies offering solutions worth more than 1 million. rubles have long been in the fifth :)
That's all.
Have we found out how much the site costs? I think yes. There are no exact numbers, each project is unique, but there is an understanding that it is not cheap and for 20 000 rubles. you are trying to "vparit" frank kaku.
How to choose a studio? Carefully analyze the portfolio, communicate with former and existing customers, look for it in popular ratings and look for information.
Could there be a studio with an impeccable reputation? There is nothing wrong with that either. There are always clients with whom disagreements arise in the process of work. For various reasons, it makes no sense to list.
PS
I would also like to add that most customers argue on the principle of “more is better”, making extra functionality and occupying useful space on the site, generating a bunch of unnecessary text, reducing indentation, etc.
In fact, making a simple and intuitive interface is much more difficult than filling a mess of elements, pictures and icons. And the "air" on the site is now in trend :)
"Good design is the lack of design" (c)
At first glance, the site development market is oversaturated, only in Tomsk at the moment there are about 150 organizations and their number is growing very rapidly, but those who have at least once in their life encountered the problem of choosing an artist know that normal developers can be counted on the fingers of one experienced hand milling machine operator. Anticipating - yes, T-studio is cool, we consider ourselves to be “normal”.
Let's take an example - you have a small company that buys things in China and resells them in Tomsk. For a long time you worked through groups in social networks, a certain client base has accumulated, which is growing at a good pace, and you are tired of constantly answering in messages what sizes are available, what is already sold, what will be available soon, etc. The solution is obvious - you need your own website, where your entire range will be with the ability to order, pay, ask a question, in general, in appearance - a fairly standard online store. You drive into the search engine “create sites in Tomsk” or open 2Gis, send your request to everyone and look forward ... About half will not answer you at all, because these were the guys who decided to “make websites”, added themselves to 2Gis, but ... "The kid was walking towards success, it didn’t work out, he didn’t fartanulo" (c). There are no orders and they have long been engaged in another matter. Another quarter will answer you when you have already chosen an artist. They are probably very busy to answer incoming requests. In the bottom line, get about 15-20 offers.
The price range will turn out simply shocking, from 5 000 rub. up to 3 500 000 rub. Most likely you will choose something close to the lower border, but not the cheapest, the studio which does not have the worst portfolio, thousands for 25,000 - 30,000 rubles. and they have already made several similar stores, with the thought “yes, for 1,500,000 they certainly do a really cool thing, but I don’t need something outstanding, for the 25th normal version”. This is logical, we all want to save money and it is not clear why I should pay 3,500,000 when there are more profitable offers.
Let’s try to figure out why there is such a spread in prices and why it is impossible to get a good result for 30 thousand.
It looks simple - turning to the studio you rent its employees stage by stage for several months and the whole amount is made up of the number of personnel involved, multiplied by the number of hours spent and the cost of an hour. In turn, the cost of an hour includes all expenses, salaries, risks and margins.
The largest impact on the cost has the number of employees involved, in each company you will receive a different set of services. For those 25-30 thousand, you will get a website on a template and a free management system such as Wordpress or Joomla, which will somehow work and at best will not bring you any customers, and at worst it will scare you away, because for 30 thousand it’s unlikely whether 20 specialists will work for several weeks or months.
I want to note right away that there is a category of sites for which this is a pretty tolerable option - this is called a site for the sake of the site. If your slogan “everyone has it and we should have it” - such a template solution will do for you.
Let's step back a bit and go back to our store example.
You chose the option for 30 thousand, as a result, you got a store on a free control system and a modified template design. You quarreled with the performers very much, because in 90% of cases the deadlines were broken, the result was not at all what you expected and the work was delivered on the hell. For 30,000, these 1-2 people who made the site are not interested in your sales, in your reputation, but in general in nothing but your money, because they need to exist, they are now “businessmen” and “do not work for uncle ":)
And now you have a store, like you can add products and you can buy them, only no one buys anything and doesn’t go to the site. Nobody knows about you, and those who accidentally come in very quickly close the site and the bounce rate reaches 80-90%. It’s very inconvenient to work with the site - it’s impossible to create different sizes for one product, no upload is provided, the text does not change everywhere, etc. etc. The problem is that this is done on the CMS and it does not provide for more and no one thought about the design, it was simply drawn by incompetent people or the template was downloaded at all.
We are approaching the denouement ...
You can’t make a working online store cheaper than 150-200 thousand. This is the bottom line. Why?
You need to clearly analyze your business. Understand your target audience, its behavior, habits. Given this, design the structure, usability, make prototypes of all pages and elements, place emphasis, laying the fundamental foundations of marketing and the psychology of customer behavior there. Draw the design of the entire site, including at first glance inconspicuous things such as icons and other small things that make a lot of sense. Give all the text to copywriters, so that they put them in order. Make adaptive layout or just a different display for different devices, backing it with trendy solutions. Program the whole site backend, test the site on real data, optimize its work. Make SEO-optimization, think about how to further promote your site, where to advertise, what steps to take.
All this will take about two months of work of more than ten specialists in different fields. How much can it cost? By the example of our studio we get the sum of about 200-300 thousand at the moment, but we are growing and developing and the cost is growing.
To a person who has never before encountered the creation of sites, it may seem that this is a lot. This year, the T-studio received a bundle of diplomas for the development of online stores. We occupy 9th place in Siberia and 74th in Russia. With one interesting amendment - in the lower price segment. The entire rating was divided into 4 main parts, 4 price segments:
- premium - stores worth from 1.5 million
- top - from 750 thousand to 1.5 million
- average - from 200 to 750 thousand
- lower - up to 200 thousand
Our studio is in the lower price segment. The Russian rating believes that for 200 thousand only shops with templates can be made.
Why do others do for 1.5 million what we do for 300 thousand? We return to the formula "the number of personnel involved, multiplied by the number of hours spent and the cost of an hour." If 10 people will do your site with us, then in another studio 50 and the range of services rendered will be much wider. Most often, their price includes full further support, advertising budgets, corporate identity, brand output and positioning, naming, etc.
And the brand of the studio itself and its experience plays a significant role in price formation, as in any field. After all, we are selling exactly our experience, acting as experts in this field. Hence the formation of the cost per hour of the employee. Small companies are ready to work for 200 rubles per hour, if only there are customers and "food". Large market players sell their brains much more expensive :)
Well, of course, the number of hours directly depends on the functionality that you need. Each customer includes a different set of features in the same terms.
First results
No matter how trite it may sound, in most cases, the cost of development is directly proportional to the result and saving is not appropriate here. You can spend 300 thousand, and the site will work for you, becoming an additional business tool that is easy to use, revised, which ultimately pays off very quickly. Or you will first spend 30 thousand on a site, then another 30 on its completion, 20 on optimization, 40 on promotion and advertising, and in the end, after a year or two, still order a normal site, because what you got before this, no one will undertake to modify.
Always check with the contractor what exactly they will do for the money, look carefully at their portfolio, how they implemented similar tasks and, if possible, communicate with customers. Just talk, we all perfectly understand that you need to listen to reviews, and not read.
Of course there are exceptions in the form of studios that ask for a lot of money for a frank shit, but our little tips will help to avoid such comrades as much as possible.
Most often, novice entrepreneurs, like our example, forget that it’s not enough to make a website - you need to make it convenient, functional, promote, advertise, set up a huge business process related to this, hone your logistics and constantly support it. In support, we include ongoing refinement. You can’t make a “sweetie” right away, inevitably, during the course of use, a bunch of functionality is replayed, the project is overgrown with new features.
And finally, the final thing.
Remember that almost any company, not just studios, goes through several stages of formation:
We only work if there is money, we take on any work and ridiculous cost.
We work not for money, but for reputation, sometimes doing work at a loss or for free.
Gaining experience, stuffing cones, we begin to do more or less worthwhile things.
More expensive orders are coming because already have experience and the company is well known. We do not take up unnecessary work, we do what we can and are constantly improving.
Experts in their field. The main goal is to do cool and convenient things, and money is now just a big, pleasant bonus to the product. As a result - a very high cost of projects, high workload and popularity of the studio.
90% of the development market is at the first stage and will never cross it; these “companies” are closing earlier. It is from here that such a spread in prices and all the slogans “site for 5,000”, “store for 9,999 rubles.” And new-fangled “selling pages with a conversion guarantee”. They only sell them to you.
T-studio has just moved to the fourth stage and is improving, and maybe even at the very end of the third. Companies offering solutions worth more than 1 million. rubles have long been in the fifth :)
That's all.
Have we found out how much the site costs? I think yes. There are no exact numbers, each project is unique, but there is an understanding that it is not cheap and for 20 000 rubles. you are trying to "vparit" frank kaku.
How to choose a studio? Carefully analyze the portfolio, communicate with former and existing customers, look for it in popular ratings and look for information.
Could there be a studio with an impeccable reputation? There is nothing wrong with that either. There are always clients with whom disagreements arise in the process of work. For various reasons, it makes no sense to list.
PS
I would also like to add that most customers argue on the principle of “more is better”, making extra functionality and occupying useful space on the site, generating a bunch of unnecessary text, reducing indentation, etc.
In fact, making a simple and intuitive interface is much more difficult than filling a mess of elements, pictures and icons. And the "air" on the site is now in trend :)
"Good design is the lack of design" (c)