10 Details That Make Your New Website "Expensive"

At SpinWeb, we sell something rather intangible and mysterious. We deliver enterprise websites and inbound marketing solutions to our clients. While we understand all the ins and outs of these things, it's not always obvious to others what goes on behind the scenes.

Let's open the curtain to reveal what's behind the costs of your website.

Your corporate (or nonprofit) website is one of the most important brand assets and marketing tools that you have. It's where your audience finds you online, learns more about your company, gets timely and critical information, conducts business, researches your products and services and builds trust.

If you're going to cut corners on cost somewhere, your website should not even be near the top of the list. Don't be cheap when it comes to your website.

This being said, there is a huge spectrum when it comes to budget. Usually, most organizations have a sense of what they need. A small business is usually well served with a simple WordPress site or even something cheaper. A "larger" small business or a mid-market company should expect to pay five figures for a platform that will serve their needs. An enterprise company can get into the six-figure budget range for a website that supports their needs.

The problem is when an organization outgrows the cheap route but fails to adjust budget expectations accordingly.

Organizations that have grown beyond the basics have certain needs and expectations. They expect their website to look amazing. They expect to have detailed control over their website content. They expect to be able to use it as a marketing tool. They expect it to be built for SEO. They expect it to be secure and reliable and resistant to hackers and outages. They expect fast and competent support and training. And they expect it to "just work" without worrying about all the little details behind the scenes.

Even so, people (usually the finance people) sometimes ask "why should we pay more?"

It's a fair question. So let's answer it.

There are a lot of little behind the scenes (and sometimes not-so-behind-the-scenes) details that determine whether your corporate website will be an asset or a frustration. Here are a few.

1. Design Quality

How often do we really think about how design affects our credibility as businesses? Do ugly websites hurt business? Turns out, the answer is yes. 

A user's first impression of a website is measured in fractions of a second, according to usability.gov:

"Preconscious judgments take place based on just aesthetics and this occurs before any reading or other cognitive processes take place. The first credibility cues are perceived very quickly. Credibility judgments of a web site, information, and overall content are a critical issue for those presenting information or selling products online. If a website is not perceived as credible, it will not be used."

2. Usability

Website usability experts at Nielsen Norman Group (NN/G) define usability this way: "Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process." These are the five quality components of usability, also according to NN/G:

• Learnability: Can users easily accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: How quickly can users do these tasks once they've learned them?
• Memorability: Do users remember how to do these tasks when they return to the website, or do they have to relearn?
• Errors: Do users make mistakes? How many? Can they recover from these errors, or do they give up? 
• Satisfaction: Does the user enjoy the design and get pleasure from it?

3. Marketing Strategy

I've seen many websites that pass the aesthetic design test but clearly have no marketing or content strategy at work. Your website should be a vital part of your marketing and sales process. How are you capturing leads on your homepage? How does your website, social media, and email marketing work together as a cohesive system?

If your website design agency isn't identifying these areas during the planning process, then you're wasting your money on an ineffective website.

4. Security

A secure website means secure hosting and proper certifications, all factors to consider in your budget. Why security matters: Users expect your website to be secure when they enter their private data. Data integrity means that data can't be modified or corrupted during transfer, without being detected. Security also influences search ranking.

Google has laid out the best practices for setting up an HTTPS right here. These tips include things like what certificate type is needed, how to use relative URLs for resources on the same secure domain, best practices around allowing for site indexing, why you shouldn't use robots.txt and more.

6. Styling

There is a lot of markup and CSS that goes into styling. The small details of the styling process take time. What most users don't think about is how the CSS will change dramatically from a mobile device all the way up to a desktop.

Example: Something that looks like a simple thing, like a table, might not actually be a table. It might be all divs and CSS to make it stack and spread out appropriately across all devices.

This level of detail in styling your website translates to a smooth and pleasurable experience across mobile, tablet, laptop, and large desktop viewports. This is standard responsive design, which we do for all of our websites. If you opt for a fully fluid website, you're looking at even more styling work.

7. Polished Content

Content migration is one of the stickier points in the website design process. Who is migrating the content? How many pages need to be migrated? Who is placing the content, you or your agency? Who is reviewing every page to make sure links work and copy/pasting errors haven't occurred? 

If you're writing new content or re-writing old content, who is responsible for writing it?

All of these considerations are far from minor when you're talking about the cost of your website project. A smooth and professional content migration, final styling, and testing will result in less work for you and a better product in the end.

8. Content Organization

Every part of a website must be accounted for during the planning process -- images, PDFs, resources, directories, external links, third party software, commerce functionality, integrations, and data migration. If you have an extremely content-heavy website, this will be reflected in your website costs.

9. SEO Content and Structure

Do you want a website that is logically structured and optimized for search? Are you sure your agency understands SEO best practices (hint: they'd better be keeping up with the fast pace of these changes)?

SEO means work, experience, knowledge, research and time--so don't be surprised when you have to pay for it.

10. Experience

A mature team with years of experience and a proven process should be a factor to consider when evaluating the cost of your website. You truly get what you pay for when you choose experienced professionals.

Final Thoughts on Budgeting For Your Website

• Account for a website project every 2-3 years (though we're seeing people redesign even more quickly than that).
  
  
• Don't assume your new website will cost the same as your website redesign 5 years ago. As technology advances so do the costs to implement, not to mention inflation and economic factors.
  
  
• Don't forget server/hosting/software/licensing fees. You'll have a project budget just for the website, but you'll likely have annual maintenance fees along with it. 

This post originally appeared on the SpinWeb Blog.

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