If you’re in need of a new website for your business, budget is bound to play an important role in the planning phase of your project.
But where do you start, how much do you need to budget for a new website?
To help you, the costs of building any website can be broken down into the following categories:
- Domain and hosting fees
- Theme design and template development work
- Content loading
- Additional plugins and services
- Conclusion
Domain and hosting fees
These are typically paid on an annual recurring basis to the domain registrar and hosting company to keep your website live. Think of it as renting the space your website occupies on their servers.
The cost of the domain itself depends on the type of domain, but the two most common for businesses in the UK are ones ending in .co.uk or .com.
The estimated costs for domains ending in .co.uk are typically around £9-£12 per year, while .com domains are around £12-£16 per year.
Then there’s the cost of hosting the website, which starts at around £40 per year but can get more expensive if you need additional resources, services or support.
Theme design and template development work
Once you have a domain and hosting account set up, it’s time to begin building your website!
Chris Connick Digital specialise in building websites using WordPress. It’s completely free to use and has a very active and supportive community, so it’s no surprise that it powers over 40% of websites on the internet!
It’s also very intuitive and customisable and this is why it’s a go to choice for many businesses. All you need to get started is a WordPress theme to give your site a layout and design, but not all themes are made equal. Where do you even start?
One thing to ask yourself is…
Do you want a bespoke design for your website?
Chris Connick Digital cater for building websites with both bespoke designs and pre-built themes.
What do we mean by a bespoke website design?
A bespoke design means a WordPress theme and layout that is built especially for your business needs and not a one size fits all solution. Despite being the more expensive option, many businesses prefer this option where budget allows as it looks more professional when their website branding matches their other marketing materials.
Pre-built themes are generally the go-to for projects where budgets are tight, or the timescales for launch are more limiting. While in most cases we are still able to customise the colours to fit your brand and logo, additional modifications can be more complicated and costly.
The costs involved here will depend on your budget and what features you require your website to have. Whilst it’s possible to find free WordPress themes and feature rich premium themes from as little as £40, these are one size fits all solutions and often include unneeded features which can slow down your website.
If you want your website to load as fast as possible, and will scale as your business grows and evolves, it’s better to invest a little in having a solid foundation from the start with one of our bespoke themes.
The cost of having a bespoke theme designed and created often depends on the number of different page templates and layouts to be created. We’ll discuss this with you as part of the quotation for your project, as well as whether you require any custom functionality such as contact forms or eCommerce features. Contact us today to discuss your needs and requirements.
Perhaps you already have a website and are looking for someone to totally redesign your website, or just streamline your existing design and content? If so, please do get in touch to discuss your requirements and get a free quote for your project.
Content loading
Once you have a WordPress website set up and a theme installed, you’re ready to start uploading your content and creating pages and posts where everything will live on your new website.
Or, why not have us do it all for you?
As part of your website build, we can create your basic site structure and pages, and upload your written content and images. We can even write additional copy as required. Our SEO copywriting service offers everything you could need for your new website.
Content loading prices vary depending on the complexity of your website and the number of pages it has. We’ll discuss your needs with you as part of your initial website consultation, and during the project we’ll be in touch regularly along the way to make sure you’re happy with how things are progressing.
Additional plugins and services
While WordPress is open-source software, meaning it’s free to use for your website, there may be additional costs associated with the security and maintenance of your website. These can be broken down into the following categories:
Security and firewall services
While your hosting company will have systems in place to protect your hosting account from being attacked, we do also recommend installing a good quality security plugin like Wordfence on your website as an additional layer of security for WordPress itself. Plugins like Wordfence offer both a free version, and a premium version which protects against more threats, and has extra features to protect your website, which are not available in the free version.
Backup services
While we do everything we can to make sure nothing ever happens to your website, it’s important to realise that on the web there is a degree of uncertainty when it comes to security and the ever changing list of exploits that hackers will try to gain access to your website. For this reason, we recommend also installing a good backup service plugin such as UpdraftPlus should something unforeseen happen to your website, which cannot be easily fixed. Having regular backups of your website files and database means it can be restored to an earlier point in time. Think of it as an insurance policy for your website should you need it.
Conclusion
We hope this blog post has been useful in giving you an idea of the main costs involved in building and hosting your very own WordPress website for your business.
If you need a new website and would like us to take care of all of this for you, get in touch today to discuss your needs and requirements.
