Costs

While we often think that the website designers and developers do all the work, and that after a few weeks, they'll deliver a website to us without much involvement from us, that's unfortunately never the case.

First and foremost, the website designer will need lots of input from you and your team when designing the website, to decide things like the purpose and goals of the website, what it should say, how customers will take action, etc.

Then we'll need to work with your team to create the content of the site, which includes all the text and images. Depending on the project budget, we might need your team to provide brief explanations of what they do, the products you sell, how they help customers, some background on the business, and so on.

When the website has been built, it'll also be important for you and your team to test it, to make sure your customers have the great experience you want when using it.

In most cases, you and your team will need to do nearly as much work as the website designers and developers do. That's unavoidable to make a great website that helps grow your business. However, with our experience and expertise, we are able to guide you smoothly through the process.

These days, it's possible to make an entire website in as little as one hour. But that's only possible if you know which software you're going to use, you know what you want it to to look like and how it should be structured, you won't be adding any interactive features, you aren't going to put loads of products on the site, you already have all the content - text, images, etc. - already prepared, and of course, if you're quite tech-savvy.

In reality, websites for businesses often take multiple weeks or multiple months to make from start to finish. And as you might have guessed, only a portion of that time is actually spent *building* the website, The rest of the time is spent discussing and planning it, designing it, gathering or making the content, testing it when it's built, and then launching it properly.

For example, for a business with 20 employees that sells one type of product or service, a website professional might tell you that the site will take around 6 weeks to make. But the professional will also know that the site could take as little as 3 weeks or as long as 12 weeks depending on how organised your team is and no one hold ups the process or doesn't do what's expected of them in a timely way.

So if you'd like the website to be done quickly, ask your website professional "What do you need from me to be able to make the website quickly? And if I provide that quickly, how long will it then take to make?"

That's a really good question, because with any process as complicated as making custom websites, there are inevitably changes that nobody can predict that will affect the price. Some areas to be aware of are:

unplanned rounds of feedback and revision

additional features or sections added to the site

hosting and related technical costs

website software costs, like the theme or plugins

outsourced marketing services like SEO, social media, etc.

outsourced content providers like copywriters and photographers

Ultimately, the website designer / developer / agency should discuss each one with you, and together, you should decide if each of these "costs" should be included in the original quote, or if they should just be added at the end if they happen to be needed.

Websites vary a lot in cost, and can be relatively cheap on the low end, but in most cases, effective websites cost a lot more because they require a lot of work to create, and they require the skills take years of learning and practice to be able to do a great job making them.

The biggest factor that determines the cost of websites is of course the amount of time the designers and developers spend working on the project, as well as their support colleagues (like their project managers). Each of these individuals is highly skilled, and therefore needs to be paid accordingly and varies a fair salary, depending on their experience and which type of company they work for. Imagine hiring a full-time designer and developer for a month or more to build your website, and you'll get a better idea of just that portion of the project cost.

More specifically, in the process of making a website, the team will spend some time on planning and research, iteration of the ideas and website design, website development, and finally optimisation and improvements.

Some things we don't often think about are the time the team need to spend working on revisions of drafts based on your feedback, maintenance of the website when it's complete, managing hosting and migration (moving the site from one web host to another), setting up analytics (to measure website activity), and administration training.

Lastly, we love to meet our clients face-to-face and discuss their project with them, and this cost of travelling and meeting time is also factored into the price. This normally take half a day for each of the team members involved.

If you'd like to learn more, go ahead and read our article on the prices of websites in general, or read our own Pricing page here on our site.

Websites in South African can cost anywhere between R2 000 and R2 000 000 (and sometimes even less or more!). Here at Touchdreams, we charge anywhere from R5000 to R50 000 for a website, depending on your business website requirements.

Go ahead and read our article on the prices of websites in general, or read our own Pricing page here on our site.