What does it cost to buy a website?
Everything you need to know to buy the right website for your business!
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Is it time for you to buy a new website? Do you feel a little confused about which provider to choose and what to consider when buying a website?
Don’t worry, we at Viking Web Development will help you find the right solution in this jungle of website developers.
The prices for buying a website vary greatly. Prices can vary from a few thousand bucks up to many hundreds of thousands depending on the type of design, size, features and number of languages that the website should have.
For many small companies, the price tag usually ends up between 500 and 3 000 EUR for a website, while for larger companies it can end up at several hundred thousand up to several million. Does it sound complicated already? We will go through what it is that makes the prices can vary so much and what you as a customer need to keep track of in order to be able to choose the right supplier and find the right solution immediately!
Contents of this guide:
- What factors determine the price
- Tricks to get the price down
- Different price ranges
- How websites can be built
- What to look out for
Choosing the right web host
You will learn the following:
- Ask qualified questions to developers
- Get the right price when you buy a website
- Choosing the right web host
This is what you can do to lower the price
What you are probably wondering are what tricks can you use to lower the price and pressure the developer?
Here are 10 tips that you can use directly in price negotiation.
- Define the budget. Remember that you often get what you pay for.
- Choose a web host and buy a domain name. Remember to buy both .se .com and maybe .nu to ensure that competitors do not steal traffic.
- When choosing a web host, remember to choose a web host that has fast loading time, good support and plenty of space. Speed is a ranking factor for Google!
- Clearly define what goal the website has so that the web agency can create the right platform for you. Is it about getting new customers, spreading information, selling products or something else? The web design and structure must reflect this in order for the website to create the right effect for your company.
- Which CMS system should run the website? WordPress, Joomla, Wix or self-developed?
- Have footage ready. This is something that web agencies often charge well for both buying and downloading images for you who are going to buy a website.
- Develop text materials, titles, headings and selling titles so-called CTA elements so that they can be quickly incorporated on the website.
- Be clear about what is included in the price and what is not included.
- If the price is too high, you can always ask what you as a customer can do to get the price down.
- What does the continued development of the website cost? Service agreement or ongoing invoicing?
What is it really that makes websites costs vary so wildly?
What you pay to buy a website can vary greatly and depends on a number of factors that we will go through below.
With an insight into how pricing works, you as a customer can ask qualified questions and make it easier to choose the right developer and web agency to meet your specific wishes and goals with the website.
Below are 15 points that are directly linked to what it costs to buy a website.
1. The number of working hours determines the price!
Undoubtedly the biggest factor in what it costs to buy a website is the number of working hours it takes to both develop and code the website. Then you as a customer can pay for web development, image editing and word processing.
2. Number of subpages & scope of the pages
The number of subpages or “girls” as it is also called is the number of pages that your website should have. It could be “Home”, “About us”, “Contact”, “Services” and many more. Depending on how many subpages the website should have directly affects the cost.
If you as a customer can imagine adding texts, images and building your own subpages according to finished templates, the price of buying a website can go down considerably.
3. Tailor-made design or Template-based
Today, there are relatively ready-made design templates for websites that make it much cheaper to develop and buy a website. If you want to get the price down, it is a clear advantage to work with template-based design templates and then tailor compared to developing a tailored theme. This applies regardless of whether you want to develop the website in WordPress, Drupa, Joomla or other CMS systems.
Today, most websites are developed as a combination of template-based and tailored design.
4. Additions, Features & Development
Larger professional web developers offer tailored development of extensions, integrations and themes. In addition, animations and visual parts can be coded. Things that can be coded can be booking systems, payment modules, integrations with business and financial systems, API connections, own extensions and much more.
Developing themes and additions from scratch often costs a lot and it is often an advantage to work with an already fully developed open-source and then adapt it to the customer’s wishes. Integrations and add-ons can often cost more than an entire website.
5. Does Keyword Optimization and SEO cost extra?
To attract traffic and new customers from Google, the website needs to be keyword optimized. When you buy a website, it is therefore important to determine whether the website’s texts and content are SEO-optimized or not. If the page is keyword optimized, ask for which phrases it is optimized for.
Sometimes it can be a point to choose another SEO development provider so that you really get in touch with an agency that really knows SEO and not just web development.
6. What images should the website have?
An often time-consuming and crucial aspect of web design today is images. Often web design is completely dependent on the images used as they express much more information and feeling than text, or code for that matter does. Often a combination of “Stock images” and real images of the company and staff is a good combination to create a sense of trust and “authenticity”. Relying solely on Stock images from Shutterstock, Adobe, or iStock can be a cheap solution to begin with, but often gives the website a little “fake” feel.
7. Is mobile-adapted design (responsiveness) included?
Google rolled out Mobile First Indexing a few months ago, which means that Google rewards websites that are mobile-friendly in Google’s search results. In addition, today rich 55% of the traffic comes from mobile devices. So if the website is not mobile-friendly, you as a company will lose great digital customer potential. When you buy a website, it is therefore crucial that a mobile-adapted version of the website exists. Does this cost extra or is it included? Is therefore an important issue to have with you. In addition, it is important to bear in mind that the website should look different on the mobile version and the desktop version as the user behavior on mobile versus desktop is quite different. Therefore, ask your developers how they work with mobile adaptation and how their philosophy for different user behaviors across different technical platforms affects their design style and website structure.
8. Will the website have SSL?
When you buy a website, it is important to decide if the website will be equipped with an SSL certificate. SSL-certified websites have the extension (s) after http so the website has https. Google favors websites with SSL and it is therefore an advantage to start with that. Many web hosts also offer the installation of SSL certificates with a single click. It usually costs a few hundred bucks a year and this is something we at Viking Web Development strongly recommend. SSL certificates give customers increased confidence in the website.
9. Who creates texts?
A website consists of a large amount of content and it varies between industries and the purposes that the website creates. It is often thought that a website is only design and code and that the cost is related to this alone. A large part of a website’s scope is the texts and something that is often time consuming is precisely the development of texts. To bring the price down, you as the customer can ensure that all texts are fully developed. Otherwise you have to pay a fee to the person who creates the texts.
10. Is image editing performed?
Image editing is something that takes place outside the website in, for example, Photoshop. Is this included in the price or is this something that is added?
11. Is a Graphic Profile Created?
Sometimes companies take the opportunity to develop their graphic profile in connection with a new website. If this is the case, the price of the website can rise significantly as it is a process that causes the development of the website. In short, a graphic profile consists of color profiling, brand, logo, imagery and the emotions thatthe graphic should create.
12. Is a Logo developed in the price?
Sometimes it also happens that companies for a new logo in connection with the development of the website and this can be an aspect that is included or should be added to the price of the website.
13. Ongoing Costs & Service
Once the website is fully developed, costs for Web hosting and domains will be added. Web hosting costs anywhere from SEK 30 / month to several hundred kronor / month. Domain costs around SEK 130 / year. If you are in need of service and continuous development of the website, many web agencies offer service agreements on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis.
It is important to calculate the total cost to determine which provider actually offers the best value for money!
14. Value for money
The cheapest is not always the best. We all know that, but we often stare blindly at price. Think about what it is that you want the website to generate and find out if the solution that the supplier offers fits that purpose. If you want the website to create more than a nice website, it often costs more when you pay for keyword optimization, special functions, graphic profiling and strategies and more.
15. How to choose the right web host!
Once you have chosen the supplier when you are going to buy a website, the next step is also to choose a good web host! How should you think then? Well, a crucial aspect is that the website is hosted in the country in which you have your business. If the visitors to your website are in Sweden, it is crucial that it is in Sweden. For Swedish websites, a .se domain is best suited, but .com also works well. Companies often buy both and direct their .com domain to .se.
What is the difference between web hosts?
What determines the price of different web hosts is the server’s performance, structure and hardware. Depending on the amount of traffic your website can be expected to receive, the website size or the need for fast loading makes the web host cost more. A simpler website for a craftsman or small business, the cheaper accounts are often enough, but if you run an online shop, you should definitely pay a little more.
The price difference mainly consists of the web host’s performance, support and the amount of traffic and data included per month.
Do this if the website is tough!
We have recently seen that the performance between different web hosts can differ drastically even if the cost is the same. You can test the speed of your website yourself with the help of free tools such as Pingdom Tools and GTmetrix. One factor that can never be affected by optimizing the website is the server’s response time, but only a better web hosting or Hosting better.