Show Notes

On today's episode we break down how much should a website cost. We discuss four pricing tiers:  

  • $500 - $1,000: Cheaper template websites
  • $2,000 - $5,000: Simple websites. No e-commerce. Custom with simple customizations.
  • $8,000 - $10,000: More complex custom websites with customizations. Some will be e-commerce.
  • $10,000 - $15,000: Usually e-commerce websites. Fully customizable with integrations. 


Christian: [00:00:14] Hello and welcome to another episode. Today we're talking about how much you should spend on a website- Or actually no. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about how much should a website cost really. So we're going to kind of break down some price points and basically what we feel are pretty average industry standard price points. Would you say so, Aaron?


Aaron: [00:00:36] I would say absolutely, and even after doing our research, it kind of just confirmed that we were right.


Christian: [00:00:43] Pretty spot on. All right. So if it's the first time that you're listening to The Marketing Natives, we usually do a sort of by-industry and we kind of tackle it that way, but today we're kind of being a little bit more broad and talking about websites in general and seeing how much they cost. Now if you've been listening for a while and you haven't subscribed yet, make sure that you do that. We publish episodes every Monday. So keep an eye out for that.


Aaron: [00:01:14] All right. And we have about four different areas or four different sections of pricing, and then there's obviously some outliers to that, but the four main areas where we see people buying or building their own websites. Number one- We're going to work from the lowest priced to the highest value and just work in that order. So the first one here is the 500 to 1,000 dollar price point. This is a great starter website if you're not looking for anything that's kind of customized. It's more of a template. Your website may look a lot similar to another person. For example, if you're a dentist and you have another dentist across town, more than likely they would build a similar template. Like this dentist website template that you find online. A couple of places that people look for these types of websites- Even if you hired somebody and they were charging about this price, they would probably be doing it on something like Wix. Another one's Squarespace. There's Weebly. What else would they be on?


Christian: [00:02:19] That's about it. Those are basically the three big players when it comes to do-it-yourself type websites. I mean, if you want a cheaper price point where it's do-it-yourself, then we definitely recommend those three, Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly to build your own website. If you're up to it.


Aaron: [00:02:39] Right. I guess the pro is that it usually can be launched a lot faster. You could probably build that website in a day, maybe a week or so if you knew what you were doing. The cons are- And another pro is that it's obviously a lot cheaper. The con is that you don't have any customizations or features. So you know, maybe even a blog would be a little too much or something or being able to fill out certain forms may be a little less robust. So kind of the break down there and some people fall into that. That is better than not having a website. Which we'll get into some fun stats a little bit later, but that's better than no website.


Christian: [00:03:20] Yeah, exactly. And you might find people who will do website cheaper than 500. I mean, you can definitely for sure say that those are going to be templates. They're already pre-built. Even the text and content for it, it's going to be the copy and paste from someone else which you really don't want that, and you might find a cheaper price point for maybe like a one-page website or a landing page. And I mean, that's totally fine, but keep in mind that as well. Were you going to say something?


Aaron: [00:03:52] I wasn't- I mean, I think it's fine or we should say that it's okay, but I think it's more of a transitionary website. Like it shouldn't be your long-term, this is what we're going to build a company around. So.


Christian: [00:04:04] Right. Exactly. I guess the next series is about the 2,000-5,000 website. At this price point if someone is offering you a website for two to five thousand dollars and they're using something like Wix or Squarespace, I would have my guard up. That would be a red flag, I would say. I don't think a Wix or Squarespace website deserve to- People deserve to charge 2,000-5,000 dollars for a website of that caliber. I'm not saying that they're bad. It's just there's a lot of limitation to what you can do with those type of website builders. So when it comes to the 2,000-5,000 range, these are still sort of fairly simple websites. You can definitely have multiple pages in there. Some people may use a template around this price point just to- Some companies do use templates just because it's a little bit faster and easier to complete the websites. You will also find the ability to do some customization and some features that you want on a website like that. So I guess, yeah, two to five thousand is probably a good price point for any small business. You know, we're talking about dentists. We're talking about maybe a little startup, talking about lawyers, talking about, yeah, any type of- I guess if you're part of the chamber, you should be expected to pay about that price point I guess.


Aaron: [00:05:37] Yes, absolutely. And obviously, the difference there is that the 2,000 is more than likely going to be a template. It's not that it won't look good. So I guess we don't want to confuse that with- There's amazing templates on everything. So it's not always the looks. It's more about the functionality and the features and the user experience. So when your customers go there, you want them to make a decision on what to do and then obviously call you. Anybody could put up a website, but if it doesn't bring you any business then you may have just wasted a bunch of money even if it was that 2,000 dollars or so. So anyway just be thinking about that, and if it's closer to that 5,000 dollar range, you may be getting into some custom work and more features. And I think one last thing with this price point is that you should have the ability, if you want to anyway, where you're able to like edit the text and upload the images and change those things. We called those CMS. So that's just a content management system which means it's super easy for you to do, and in that ballpark, you're going to have a lot of that.


Christian: [00:06:45] Yeah. And usually they're going to be built on WordPress or maybe Webflow. So yeah.


Aaron: [00:06:55] All right. If you are listening to this for the first time, this is a spot in our podcast where we try to explain a little bit more about us, BitBranding, a creative digital marketing agency in Allen, Texas, and actually speaking on that, I want to kind of educate some people or you guys anyway. We're a little bit different than a lot of agencies in the sense that we do everything for like an ad campaign from the start to finish. Meaning that if you wanted to come up with an idea for a dentist and you wanted to get more leads, we come up with the ideas. So like the video or the images for that ad. We also run the ads, and then we set up the automation and the workflow and the e-mails that go up after that. Some people don't realize that that's actually like three different businesses in one, but we have a design team and a marketing team. So we can really do both parts of that. So some people just run the Facebook ads and they work with other designers, and some people are designers and automation people and they work with other ad companies. And we actually have all of that in-house. So that allows us to create a smooth workflow and generate a better quality product for our client. So I know that can be a lot to handle, but just know that if you need any lead generation, say you're dentist or a home service like a contractor or a plumber, anything like that, we can definitely help with lead generation online.


Christian: [00:08:35] Boom baby. Now we're back to our episode. So the last two price points that we were talking about was- The first one was 500 to 1,000. The next one was from 2,000 to 5,000, and this third price point is going to be about the 8,000 to 10,000 dollar range. And for this you can definitely get a very- Not very, but you know, pretty complex website. So a lot of customization, a lot of features are definitely possible within this price point, and also some e-commerce websites. You're probably talking about maybe- I guess e-commerce websites the price point goes up, I feel like, depending on the amount of products. That's a huge deal with that just because it's so time-consuming to do all that.


Aaron: [00:09:29] I would say even SKUs. Like it could have one t-shirt, but you have 40 different colors of that t-shirt or something like that. That would be crazy too.


Christian: [00:09:38] Yeah. So yeah. Between the eight to ten thousand dollar range, you can definitely find some of those e-commerce websites. Maybe a smaller e-commerce. Maybe you have - I don't know - 10, 15, 20 items. Something like that. That would definitely fall under that category, and then beyond the e-commerce, also if- I mean, if you're a dentist and you- I don't know. I feel like we keep going back to dentists, but if you want some crazy features on your website or maybe you have hundreds of pages, I think you definitely would see yourself in this category between the eight to ten thousand dollar range.


Aaron: [00:10:15] And that range also is like- So we optimize each of our websites as far as SEO, but in most people- Well, actually I don't know if the 500 to 1,000 or the two to five thousand would be optimizing for the pages, but for that eight to ten thousand, at least for us, it's more about making sure that everything is SEO-friendly. There's probably some copywriting that's quoted into the deal, and there may be even some video work or more images or photography taken for the website. So it's all custom. It's actually pictures and videos that are used and pulled from your store or from your location or from your spot. It's funny. We'll just go candid here. The air conditioner has now went out. So just a sidebar there. But.


Christian: [00:11:04] And it's the hottest day of the year.


Aaron: [00:11:05] It is. It is. We're recording this in July. It's like 118 heat index right now. So.


Christian: [00:11:10] Yep. That's dedication right there.


Aaron: [00:11:13] Yes. We wanted to really let you guys know about these sites. So back to the websites, the eight to ten thousand range you're really going to get something that should have a really good ROI for it. We built a website, I would say like 14 months ago, 16 months ago that was about a eight to nine thousand dollar website, but we just met with him- I would say, we met with him last week, and he closed some deals that probably accumulated close to 80,000 for him. Now that's a little- You know, that's an outlier for sure, but he definitely has gotten his money back. And that's- When you pay that kind of price, you expect to get your money back, and you expect to pay for a quality product in that eight to ten thousand dollar range.


Christian: [00:11:54] Mm-hm. Yep.


Aaron: [00:11:54] All right. And our last one here is the 15 to 15 thousand dollar range. This is more than likely going to be an e-commerce site or something that has some complexity as far as a signing in or keeping data or anything that's completely customized to you, whether it's integrating two other systems that you have. This is fully-on customized and completely specific to you. This is something that you're not going to go to like Wix and figure out how to create or go to Wordpress and start from one of the templates.


Christian: [00:12:33] Yeah. Like Aaron said, I guess most e-commerce websites will fall under this category, but yeah, like if you- I mean, if you have- Maybe you're a realtor and you're wanting to do very customized MLS listings and different ways to capture data and leads from your web- We're talking about, yeah, major customization within other systems. We're talking about MLS. You might also have some kind of CRM system in your office that you need that to link up to. So it's basically a lot of moving parts when it comes to this range from the 10,000 to 15,000 dollars.


Aaron: [00:13:14] All right. And a couple of those quick facts for you guys is one, there are businesses- Rather in businesses with 1 to 5 employees only 40 percent of them actually have a website. So if you're listening to this and you're using Facebook or Instagram as your means to collect business or to generate income online, it's time to switch it up and get a website, buy your own domain. Shoot us a message if you need to, and the other one is that there are - just a fun fact - there are over 200 million active websites right now, and as of the start of the internet - I'm doing quotes here - a rough estimate that there have been close to almost two billion websites built. So very cool, but the Internet's only been around a little while, and I see that number going up dramatically. So kind of cool.


Christian: [00:14:00] Yeah. Awesome. All right. There you have it. Another episode of The Marketing Natives. This was how much should a website cost. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to share that with someone, you can go to our website, and you will be able to see all of our episodes right there. We have individual pages with show notes and actual transcripts of the whole episode. So if you want to share that with a friend, you can just go to our website and share it that way. Again if you haven't subscribed, make sure you do that on your favorite platform. We're actually- If you're using Apple podcast app, we're actually on Spotify or on Google Play, Stitcher, Overcast. Basically any other podcast app that you want to try out, we're definitely on there. All you have to do is search for either BitBranding or The Marketing Natives.


Aaron: [00:14:49] Talk to you guys next week.

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