Website costs and budgets

When you’re building a website for the first time, you may be wondering how much it all costs - and even if you’re doing it yourself, there’s still some things that you’ll need to pay for.

In this article, we’ll go through the fixed costs, where you can make savings and what you might want to set aside some budget for.

Domains

Every business website needs its own domain name and these range in cost but are generally around £10 or less per year - suppliers are priced differently and sometimes they offer a discount for the first year so check to see what the ongoing cost is, just in case it goes up hugely. Some providers offer additional options like privacy protection etc.

Should you pick a .com or a .co.uk (or something else?

This depends on your market. .co.uk domains specify you’re a UK company - this might be relevant and improve click-through rates if your audience is mainly in the UK.
Some domain choices are more expensive than others - .com domains are more expensive than .co.uk domains and popular keywords, for example like ‘plumber’ or ‘location’ can also add a premium.

If you have budget, get as many variations of your domain name as you can - this stops other people trading with a similar brand name to yours and gives you opportunities to expand in the future.

How do you pick a domain name?

Try to get something short or you’ll be cursing every time you have to write it down. Make sure it’s easy to spell unless you’re going to have a very strong brand. And make sure when it is written it doesn’t accidentally create naughty words like the famous ‘susanalbumparty’ (Susan Album Party) hashtag. Or welshitalianpizza.co.uk

Read a related post here: https://thesmartbear.substack.com/p/how-to-choose-the-perfect-domain

Hosting & Platform

Do you know where you’re going to build your website? Do you need hosting or will you pay a subscription to use a website builder platform?
Read more about hosting, platforms and professional emails, here.

Budgets and funding

Before you build or make any definitive purchase decisions, it’s time to think about how you are going to fund the website. Do you have the money available to get a professional to build it or will you have to do some of the work yourself?

If you do, have you got the skillset or will you need to invest in learning new skills (either in time or money to pay for training)?

Before you make this decision, it may be worth looking around at the costs of professional help or learning new skills, and of course, looking at the fixed costs in the first section.

When setting a budget, consider the following elements:

• The design - what do you want it to look like, do you need a designer? Are their pre-built themes available?

• Images - will you need to buy/commission images and graphics? Or can you make your own?

• The functionality - what do you want it to do - example, a shop function or a calendar booking system?

• The content - will you need help with writing impactful sales content? Will you need someone to check it through?

• Search Engine Optimisation and marketing - will this be included? Would this be something you can invest in later to help growth?

• Accessibility - do you need it to be compliant for people with disabilities and extra needs?

• Ongoing maintenance - will you need someone to look after it?

• Ongoing costs - what will they be?

These things will all affect the overall cost of the website.

Once you’ve established what you’ll need to pay for, you can set a budget and I recommend keeping a log of where you buy everything, and the price. You’d be surprised how easy it is to forget when the renewals come around, or where your domain is held - I’ve made a handy download just for this purpose, download it below.