The rules of business have changed due to the spread of digital technologies. The digital revolution has turned the old business playbook upside down. The online presence of any business can have a massive impact on its success.

More and more people search websites for what they want, solutions to their problems, compare prices, or get information about the store, restaurant, and company before buying. As a result, a website is necessary today to avoid losing business to competitors, attract new customers, and prioritize your online presence. When developing a website, there are plenty of ways to about it. For example, you can hire a freelance web developer or full-time programmer for your business.

Before we dive into how much a website costs, deep dive into why you need a website; here is why you need a website.

Expand Your Market: A web page allows you to reach more customers; even if you have a local business, you can achieve greater presence and visibility, improving business opportunities and attracting potential customers.

Best Customer Service: The website serves as a communication channel between customers, suppliers, and employees. A website helps you better serve your customers by providing all the information they need without waiting for a brochure. Contact forms allow customers to send their questions or suggestions to the company quickly. You can also conduct online surveys to learn about consumer satisfaction to improve your service. You can hire a freelancer for website development if you need any customization.

Available 24 Hours: Once your website is created, it will always be available to provide information 24 hours a day, which would not be possible otherwise due to the limitations of business hours.

Professional Image: A website allows you to advertise and promote your business with worldwide exposure thanks to the great reach of the Internet, even reaching new markets.

Become More Competitive: A website allows you to be more competitive. Being online allows your company to be competitive by being more visible, allowing you to expand your customer base and generate more income, encouraging users to buy your products.

Generate More Sales: It is a sales tool. For example, consumers tend to research the Internet before purchasing a product or contracting a service. That is why your business must have an online store where you can present your offer so that potential customers can consult the information they need before making a decision, either through a mobile device or a computer.

Save Money on Advertising: By having your website, you save on advertising since it serves as a permanent showcase for your products, saving on printing brochures or catalogs. In addition,

you can display your products, offering detailed information and photos to your potential customers.

Now that you know why you need a website, it’s time to discuss key factors that affect the cost of building a website. Here are a few variables that come into play when buying a website.

Domain Name: The very first thing to starting a website is a domain name. It is your website’s identity, and buying a new domain would cost you from $10 to $15 a year. However, this can vary based on several factors, such as choosing the registrar. There are many registrars in the marketplace which offer you a variety of packages and features. Next is choosing a top-level domain like “.com” or “.io. The price of your domain and hosting also depends on the length of the commitment. It means the longer the commitment, the lower the price, and short will cost you more.

Website Functionality: Choosing the functionality is a key determiner of the website cost. It means the more functions you opt for, the more cost you will incur. These functions can range from basics to integral business options to improve user experience. Here are some of them.

E-commerce Functions. It means all the necessary functions required to run an ecommerce website. This site must have various design features to help customers purchase products. For example, basic store design includes payment processing, delivery options, and order fulfillment.

Membership Portals: These gated portals are meant for registered users only. These portals provide content credibility and a great user experience for the visitors. A membership portal can range from $90 to $400 per year.

Subscription Services: These types of functions are made for subscription model-based sites. They offer regular replenishment services that require recurring deliveries of products.

Custom Programming: Usually, a small business website does not need custom solutions; however, some businesses might require complex designs and functions on their sites. For example, web portals handle a large amount of data and customize user access. Therefore, hiring freelancers online is necessary when dealing with such a type of architecture.

Website Maintenance: Website maintenance is key in ensuring that your website remains functional and secure. At the same time, many people consider this as cost while mapping their budgets. Here are some of the tasks of the website maintenance include:

• Patching server software issues
• Fixing broken links
• Testing functions of the website
• Fixing security issues
• Regular backup of the website

Specialized agencies or web developers usually handle such types of tasks, and the cost is based on the complexity of the website.

Size of the Site: This topic continuously evolves as the devices evolve. The difference between the cost of building a large website and a small one is big. Not only does the number of features and web design contribute to the website cost in many cases, but the website’s size can also be a big factor.

Building a website with 500 pages requires significant time and effort, whereas a simple website with few pages is easy to make.

Choosing The Website Hosting: Website hosting is renting a server (or space on a server) that allows you to publish websites and applications on the Internet. A host provides hosting, that is, the company that provides the service that makes its website accessible to all who wish to visit it.

Types of Web Hosting

Before accepting any proposal, the smartest thing to do is assess the type of accommodation you have or the one you could hire. Let’s see below the different options that exist:

Free hosting | Hiring a service at zero cost offers as many benefits as possible; limited and full of advertising. This option could be worth it if you are learning and want to set up a website to do tests.

Shared hosting | It is a web hosting service that shares resources with other users who are also customers. You share expenses, with the drawback that the reputation of your domain can be affected by the misuse of third parties (for example, by spamming). It may be enough to have a WordPress or a small website with moderate traffic.

Virtual hosting (VPS) | These virtual servers work as if they were not shared, reserving your resources to avoid running out when other websites receive traffic spikes. These share, in turn, resources with the real server. This option is becoming interesting for stores with more than 10,000 products or more complex CMS.

Dedicated hosting | This is one of the most exclusive options you can hire for your website since you have all the resources available to host content.

Cloud hosting | It is a very flexible option in which you pay for what you consume since the resources of different web servers are combined through virtual technology.

Specialized web hosting | It is also known as managed hosting, for example, by a CMS such as WordPress or Joomla, which offers you its content manager in addition to hosting your site.

Final Words:

Creating a website can be expensive, but many options fit any budget; you can hire agencies or freelance designers or do it for free. However, it is important to know the objective of your project, the functionalities you need, and the available budget to decide on the best way to create your page and to know better what the work costs will be before starting.