Website construction

[Jasondb]

Hi fellow business SMEs and others,

I’ve been asked to get a ball park figure for website cost for a start-up company.

It would need to look professional, have support with suggested hours from 7am -9pm GMT.

It would need to contain a lot of product information with downloadable PDFs. This could be over several screens with 2 or 3 PDFs per page.

There would need to be links to generate emails to a company’s staff and also a link to launch into another company’s software.

A domain name would also need to be registered.

FYI - I’m expecting this to cost in the thousands rather than hundreds.

Any recommendations or opinions on what something like this should cost?

 

[Paul Carmen]

We'd need to ask a load more questions to answer this really: -

• What's your business plan for offline & online services
• Aim of site, lead generation, sales etc
• Number of pages needed
• Who's creating the copy
• Do you create the pdfs & the site hosts, or is a pdf creator part of the brief
  
• Do you need the emails setup & IT support
• Do you need marketing & other support as part of the project

 

[ryedale]

It depends on different factors really
The level of product information on each page
How it is to be presented
Will the product pages and content be maintained by people with technical skills. If not then a custom plugin can be created to make it easy to maintain without losing structure.

 

[fisicx]

It would need to look professional.

How the site looks it only a fraction of the cost. In any case 'looking professional' is subjective.

...have support with suggested hours from 7am -9pm GMT.

Support for what?

Everything else seems straightforwards. The core functionality could be put together in a couple of hours. For example, adding the link to the company software takes a couple of minutes to add.

However, like the others have suggested there just isn't enough info to put a quote together. It might turn out only to be a few hundred rather than thousands.

 

[james_firmsites]

FYI - I’m expecting this to cost in the thousands rather than hundreds.

If your going to require lots of design work, like branding and custom graphics it may be this expensive but for most small business start ups it simply isnt the case. Our company charges £35 per month for what you sound like you need (unless I'm missing something!) and there are plenty that work on similar models.

Shop around and don't sign up for anything expensive without being sure you are getting what you pay for, look for past work and guarantees that if your not happy with the end result your not on the hook for a massive bill! This site also has a tenders section for full members.

 

[Jasondb]

Thanks everyone for the insight you have shared to date.


I would see it working like this;


The support for the site would have a SLA with a turnaround of 1 hour to respond to site issues – links not working etc.

Turnaround time to fix – would be in hours suggest 4-6 hours.


In terms of ongoing work and related costs, I would expect changes to be requested on a quarterly basis to the wording of the site as Product T & Cs change, the staff they employ would unlikely be making changes it would be more of sending the changes for the web developer to adjust.


Further thoughts appreciated?

 

[james_firmsites]

Most providers will have SLA's that are not far off, and as long as you are clear with your requirements most could accommodate that. I don't know about others but when we get clients who want us to effectively manage the site (ie make changes for them) that is done at a simple hourly rate normally on a retainer for number of hours per month.

You could easily get this built for the cost I suggested and then the additional cost just depends on how long each month you would need updates, it's unlikely to be masses of time if your looking at things like T&C updates or PDF uploads!

 

[fisicx]

The support for the site would have a SLA with a turnaround of 1 hour to respond to site issues – links not working etc.

If you are using a CMS this won't ever be an issue as links are generated by the database. In any case, it's a job you can do yourself in seconds.

In terms of ongoing work and related costs, I would expect changes to be requested on a quarterly basis to the wording of the site as Product T & Cs change, the staff they employ would unlikely be making changes it would be more of sending the changes for the web developer to adjust.

Again with modern CMS you don't need a contract for this. Most staff members would be able the edit the content. If they can write an email they can edit a webpage.

I think you are vastly overpricing the website. The sort of thing you want isn't ever going to cost thousands. It looks like the majority of the work is adding content. The rest is just a matter of finding a theme you like.

 

[Paul Carmen]

Thanks everyone for the insight you have shared to date.


I would see it working like this;


The support for the site would have a SLA with a turnaround of 1 hour to respond to site issues – links not working etc.

Turnaround time to fix – would be in hours suggest 4-6 hours.


In terms of ongoing work and related costs, I would expect changes to be requested on a quarterly basis to the wording of the site as Product T & Cs change, the staff they employ would unlikely be making changes it would be more of sending the changes for the web developer to adjust.


Further thoughts appreciated?

What do you want the site to do & what size would it be; e.g. the number of pages, pdfs etc?

As fisicx says, if its only a few pages plus T&Cs, About Us etc. then you're talking hundreds not thousands.

However, normally a startup will want their site to be a major driver of leads, if not the main driver. Many people build a website without thinking about their customers, market, competitors or linking it properly to their marketing or acquisition goals.

I'm assuming it's not going to require PPC or be an ecommerce site with lots of landing product/pages? But do the pages/services/products need to rank in a competitive industry or for competitive searches?

The risk is if this isn't joined up & the proper functional requirements, goals & spec set out, the startup ends up with a website that's does very little for the business & isn't found in search engines...