How much does a website or e-shop cost?

Continue further in this article: Can you ask yourself? — What is the purpose of your new website or e-shop? — Who will create your presentation or business online? — How large is your website? — What does it mean to create a new website or e-shop? — So how much will it cost? — Other aspects of successful website implementation that incur costs

For a meaningful response, it is necessary to carefully consider the purpose of use and other aspects. Otherwise, you will get a range from 10 thousand for a very used Škoda Favorit to 50 million for a new and powerful Bugatti Veyron. Similarly, from 50 thousand for a garden shed from Bauhaus to a friend’s land to 50 million for a modern villa from an architect in an attractive location.

Can you ask yourself?

Where will I drive my car? How often? Who or what will I be transporting? What special features do I need? Do I want comfort or to save money? What are the operating costs?

Where should the house be located? Is it a new build or a renovation? How many floors and rooms will it have? What about a basement, garage, or storage? A garden? What type of heating? Standard of bathroom fittings, furniture, kitchen?

These questions will come to the minds of most of you considering a new car or house. However, it is uncertain how many questions will arise in the role of a website client. Let's take a look at what you should consider.

What is the purpose of your new website or e-shop?

Let's start with the purpose of the website, what its main goal is. There is quite a difference between wanting to display a few of your photos and travel articles from vacation or creating a website to generate inquiries for a company that plans to double its revenue in a few years, has a wide portfolio of products and services, and operates in a highly competitive environment.

In any case, it is essential to set the goals of the website and continuously work with them. Keep the main objectives in mind during the design, implementation, and promotion of the website, and ensure that it allows you to achieve them. In the flood of products and other content, it is easy to forget the main point - that the user can navigate it and always knows where to go next.

We recommend starting with a mind map of the website. It is not necessary to perceive it as the final structure of the resulting solution; keyword analysis for discoverability or the need to maintain certain landing pages for organic traffic can still influence it. However, for a basic idea of what the website should contain to make sense, a mind map is ideal. Include notes on what content you roughly expect on each page and why.

Who will create your presentation or business online?

It is also important to consider who should deliver the website. A website is not a commodity; it is more of a custom service. Therefore, the comparison with a car falls short; a better analogy is building a house. You can also build it yourself with the help of friends or hire a skilled mason, a small team, or a professional construction company covering all trades. We have already elaborated on how to request a website and what to include in the request on our blog. 

Basically, there are four basic scenarios that we regularly hear from clients.

1) You are a jack-of-all-trades or have such a friend

You come up with the website idea, write, draw, program, and test it yourself. Or with the help of a friend. Such a solution can be relatively inexpensive, but it will take a lot of your time and "operational memory." Be cautious about deadlines; friends can be unpredictable, and if you take on the website creation yourself, it becomes a matter of priorities regarding what you will focus on day by day: preparing the website or your regular activities. Expect to spend at least dozens of hours on this.

2) You hire a freelancer

You can find plenty of freelance web creators online. Look into their references and ask them what activities they can cover. Website creation is multidisciplinary, and few people today can perform many roles at a high level. A freelancer will certainly be skilled in their primary area, most often in graphics or coding. However, you also need original texts, photos preferably not from stock libraries, videos, and possibly to connect your website with another system. A freelancer inherently has a problem with their own substitutability, which poses the main risk—your project can easily end up on the back burner.

3) You hand over your project to a small agency

The agency will be a good choice because it has more specialists in-house - ask how many and what kind, or even stop by to see if they really have the team they claim in their presentation. Here, you should already have a project manager at your disposal, whose role is irreplaceable; he will be the one who actually "delivers" your website. If he is also a bit of a consultant, meaning he can constructively challenge your ideas and offer alternative solutions, it will be significantly more pleasant. But still, be cautious and insist on thorough preparation and a budget that realistically covers everything necessary.

4) You will bet on a professional agency

If the website is a key part of your marketing, business, and nowadays even HR, as you are looking for new people, opt for a larger, established agency. You probably know well what you need to achieve, and they will know how. Moreover, they have the backing of a sizable and hopefully stable team, which is really important.

Building a house can involve a good ten professions, and it’s similar with a website - you need an analyst, a UX designer, a graphic designer specialized in website and e-shop design, a frontend and backend developer, a copywriter, a tester, and also a project manager, who is like a construction manager; without his experience and management skills, you would never see the results.

The agency's price will certainly be higher, but as the saying goes, none of us is rich enough to buy cheap things (services). This is doubly true for websites, as it will help you earn for at least three, often five, and sometimes even ten years. Moreover, it is more of a service than a product - and you want to have someone to call if there is a problem in the future.

How big is your website?

When building a house and wanting to know the costs, it's necessary to know the cubic meters of the built-up space for a rough estimate. And of course, the key technologies that need to function in the house - heating, cooling, ventilation, waste disposal, or security.

What pages do you expect on the website?

The same applies to a website. The provider needs to know how many specific pages will be required. It will most likely be a homepage, which can be long and scrollable, and for smaller websites, it can account for a large part of the results. However, for larger companies, it can be expected that we will need templates for

• an overview and detail of the offered products and services, which often have multiple types
• an about us page, which often further branches into subpages like history
• an overview and detail of references
• a page for new employees along with an overview and detail of available job positions
• an overview and detail of articles or news
• a contact page
• a specific landing page, where I can prepare special content for campaigns and include products or services that I want to highlight
• and a general text page, through which I can process everything else

This amounts to at least ten, more likely fifteen, types of pages. Each has its own layout, arrangement of elements, and consists of different parts. These sometimes repeat on multiple pages; for example, a strip with the heads of key people in the company can be used on the homepage, in contacts, or on the about us page. However, a graphic designer should draw all of them, and then a programmer should code and deploy them on the content management system. This will allow us to easily edit the website content at any time and publish all important information for clients and news from the company.

Back to the price - the more templates, the more work for the provider. This applies to both the graphic designer and the programmer.

Beware of Responsive Design

A significant percentage of visits to corporate websites occur on mobile devices. Therefore, it is essential to consider how your website will appear on them. This applies not only to your mobile phone or your wife's tablet. There are hundreds of different types of devices with varying resolutions today. It is a continuum; the size of a mobile phone often exceeds that of a tablet, and a tablet can be larger than many small desktops.

Graphics should be designed within a grid that allows content to flexibly resize and wrap for narrower displays. The designer should outline how some specific elements will look. This is all assuming that the programmer is skilled and has experience with this—then they will handle most of the final work along with a tester who will thoroughly check everything. Otherwise, it is necessary to have the designer create everything for the most typical mobiles and tablets.

What else should the website be able to do?

The last topic regarding "website size" is the number of functions you expect. Just as in a house you need heating and ideally also automated ventilation, you expect a website to perform many tasks for the user—it should filter product offerings, provide the nearest branch on a map, and directly record the data filled in the form into the company CRM. In the case of an e-shop or customer portal, the requirements for functionalities take you to a completely different level.

What does it mean to create a new website or e-shop?

The finale is approaching - what needs to happen for the website to be created, function, and meet expectations?

Website production is a series of interconnected steps that, when followed, will yield good results. These are primarily:

1) Analysis

Measure three times, cut once. Look at who your users are and especially where they come from to the existing website. And be careful not to lose them with an inappropriate redesign. Further, focus on the keywords that users enter into search engines when looking for your services. Also, take a look at the competition.

2) Research

How do people actually behave out there? Do you even know or are you just assuming? User research will help you formulate hypotheses and support them with real data. It is neither easy nor cheap. But it is definitely much more cost-effective than creating a website that won't work. You wouldn't build a house without talking to those who will live in it.

3) Brief

What structure will the website have? What types of pages will it include? What content? How will it be laid out on the pages? How will these pages be interconnected? What specific functionalities? Future website operation? An experienced supplier will draft a very detailed brief that answers all these questions. This will become an annex to the contract for work. Otherwise, each party may view the project quite differently.

4) Content

Content is king, we know that. And what next? On presentation websites, content is truly essential. When it is unclear what message the website will convey, it is quite difficult to start creating it. In fact, it makes no sense at all. Therefore, ensure that you have someone on your team who will prepare the content - whether on your side or among the supplier's ranks. And be aware, it's not just about text; you also need photos, videos, and infographics. Everything should be polished and thoroughly developed.

5) Wireframe

A wireframe model, also known as a website prototype, serves to refine the structure, layout, and interconnection of pages. It clearly shows how the website will look and function. Its purpose is not to address the graphic design but rather to redefine almost everything else. It is advisable to fill it with specific content, even if just sample content - it is not necessary to detail all services or profiles of every person in the company; one from each is sufficient, preferably the most comprehensive one possible.

The prototype is a space to test everything, play with multiple variations, and not be afraid to test them on real people. Its advantage is that you can easily, quickly, and therefore cheaply modify it. This cannot be said for a finished website. You also redraw a house with the architect a few times before you dig into the ground for the first time.

6) Corporate Design

Before you start designing the website, make sure your logo is truly in good shape, meaning you are satisfied with its appearance and have it available in vector format. If not, it is good to announce this in time and work on modernization. Subsequently, it is advisable to develop a complete corporate design manual so that all outputs harmonize and it is immediately recognizable that it is you. One of the outputs is indeed the website.

7) Web Template Design

And here we are, where it often begins. The most popular phase for clients is graphics. Its significance is considerable, but in relation to everything else, it is undoubtedly overestimated. Yes, the pages must be beautiful, creative, original, ideally WOW, which is a popular term defining client expectations. However, if we have everything else in order, let’s make this 100% as well. It is good to think about the various states that a user will encounter while using the site - such as how a dropdown menu, button, or banner should look when hovered over, or how a form should appear after entering incorrect data, and so on.

8) Documentation for Developers

At the beginning, there was the tender documentation. Now that we have the website's design created, let's describe its exact functioning so that the developers can produce it correctly on the first try and we can minimize our costs. Since their work will be significant on the project and they are expensive, it is essential to prepare the materials perfectly for them. Again, an analogy - the better the documentation for construction, the less trouble during inspection days or handover. Not to mention the time and financial losses.

9) Development

Yay, let's start programming! Now you, as a client, have a breather - development usually runs without your involvement, and if everything is well prepared, it should proceed smoothly. This includes the implementation of an attractive frontend, which is the part visible to the user, as well as a thorough backend, which is the foundation on which everything stands. The backend typically includes a content management system (CMS), where you manage the website's content, add new pages, and generally create its final form as an editor.

Let's not forget about integration, even though it is not the main focus in presentation websites (unlike e-shops or customer portals). However, if you want to connect third-party microservices, analytics, or if you don't want to waste time transferring inquiries from forms to CRM or enterprise systems, make this part of the delivery right away.

10) Website Deployment

The website is usually developed locally, on the supplier's machines, to which you do not have access. However, at the right moment, it is necessary to deploy it on a testing server, where content can be filled in and tested. The testing server should be separate from the production environment, where the website runs live for regular users. Always test new features and fine-tune them in a separate testing interface.

11) SEO

SEO work on a website never ends. However, if you are building a new site, you can prepare and optimize many things so that you don't have to revisit them later, wasting time and money. The number one priority is the correct structure and content of the website, including titles and meta descriptions for pages and images. Also, pay attention to proper redirects, URL canonicalization, and other technical aspects of on-page SEO - that is, the part you can influence with the website. If everything is in order, you can focus more on building backlinks.

12) Testing

Again? Yes. Testing needs to be done continuously, especially before the planned launch. For presentation websites, this primarily involves testing display on various platforms, devices, browsers, and operating systems. Manual tests are fundamental, but various external tools and automated tests can also help, which you can use in the future to monitor website availability or form functionality.

13) Preparation for Launch

We have already addressed redirects; now it's time to set up analytics, robots.txt, the sitemap, and of course, the domains on which the website should be accessible. Then all that's left is to pop open a bottle of champagne :)

So how much will it cost?

Once we have clarified all the activities necessary for creating a quality website with the supplier, we can request an exact price, ideally down to the last koruna and non-negotiable. When we have a good brief, there is absolutely no reason for any additional work, although such occurrences are common in this field, similar to construction.

Beware of the black box

The supplier should then be able to accurately determine how much time is needed for each activity based on the detailed brief. The more this breaks down into small items in your budget, the more you can trust that they really know what they are talking about. Conversely, the larger the units, the bigger the black box, and thus a significant concern that it represents an unreliable budget.

Each item should have a specific price assigned. Ideally constructed as hourly labor multiplied by the hourly rate. Some functionalities may be prepared by the supplier as a ready-made module that they simply connect for you. In that case, they do not need to assign hourly labor but will provide a specific price. However, this scenario is not common - for custom-built websites, even with these pre-prepared items, some adjustments are needed to fit into the specific design.

Hourly rate — a useless figure?

For such a detailed calculation, the supplier should also provide a price list of hourly rates for any future work. As mentioned above, with a quality brief, there is no reason for additional work, but if you want to make adjustments or expansions in the future, it is good to know what prices you can expect for different professions.

Without knowledge of the specific brief, the hourly rate alone is practically a useless indicator. While one agency may have a low rate but bill many hours for the project, another may have the opposite approach. Therefore, it is always necessary to inquire about the total price and support it with a very detailed brief. How to achieve this if you are not well-versed in the field? Ideally, discuss with the supplier about a preliminary study, during which you can collaboratively create the brief.

Other Aspects of Successful Website Implementation That Come at a Cost

We have a detailed brief and an exact price. However, that is still not enough for happiness. Make sure you also have:

1) Timeline

Whether the website is delivered using agile methods or the classic waterfall approach, it is difficult to ensure everything is on track without a timeline. The completion date is not the only important factor; be interested in interim milestones where you should receive ongoing outputs. Ideally, monitor everything on a weekly basis through regular meetings or calls. Essentially, have check-in days like during the construction of a house.

2) Client-side Team and Collaboration

The website is a joint effort between the supplier and the customer. If you expect the supplier to function like a coffee machine, from which a finished product drops out after inserting a payment, you are setting yourself up for trouble. The supplier, especially an experienced one, is a professional in the field, but that does not mean they can create a website that meets your expectations and addresses your customers' needs without collaborating with you. Would you also just leave the architect and construction company to do their job for several months without any input?

A good piece of advice is to define who will be involved in the website on your side, what their role will be, and how they will engage with the supplier.

3) Cooperation, Roles, and Responsibilities

It is good to clarify the collaboration in detail. The supplier should specify what cooperation they will need and when - at what stage consultation will be necessary, when you need to make decisions, in what format, and when you should provide materials and information. Together with you, they will agree on who specifically will be involved in the project from both sides, what each person's role is, and what they are responsible for. Ideally, write everything down in a table, including contact information.

4) Contract for Work and Website Operation

Sign at least a simple contract for the work. It should define both parties and their representatives, including both statutory and those involved in the specific project. Additionally, it should include the total amount and possibly its installment payments, the method of delivery and acceptance of the work, and of course the deadlines - both the overall one and ideally the interim milestones. It is wise to consider copyright issues, and penalties for both parties are not out of place - the supplier should have penalties for failing to meet deadlines for delivering the work, while the customer should have penalties for late payments. A serious contract must also include the definition of licensing terms for the work in case you, as a client, want to change suppliers. This way, you can avoid the disappointment of realizing that the paid website does not actually belong to you.

However, the acceptance of the work does not end the life of the website; it actually just begins - therefore, also address the agreement on the operation of the website. Where and on what it will run, what its guaranteed availability will be, and what conditions the supplier will ensure for resolving errors and future requests.

5) The desire and courage to work on something that intervenes in the entire company

The last, but most important essence of successful website implementation may seem ordinary at first glance, but it is truly the most significant: without internal determination, motivation, and necessary energy, it is better not to embark on the action. On the other hand, if you possess these qualities, you are halfway to success and can enjoy the entire process.

All that remains is to wish you good luck in choosing a supplier.