If you have been doing research on website development and design, you will notice that the cost to have a website put together can be pretty high. But how is this possible? There are hundreds of thousands of websites on the internet, so they must be easy to put together, right? Why are websites so expensive?
The answers to these questions may surprise you. While there are seemingly an unlimited number of websites online, there are varying levels of pricing and quality for each of these many websites.
In fact, while you can save some money with templates, custom-designed and developed websites are actually huge projects. These projects can take a considerable amount of time and skill to put together.
Who Creates Websites?
First and foremost, it is important to know that there are three main roles in website creation – website designers, front-end web developers, and back-end web developers. Some creators have skill overlaps with other roles; however, these are each unique skill sets that people in the industry possess.
Knowing this, you should remember that you might need a full team of people to create your website, depending on its complexity. You may also need other people to get involved such as logo designers or graphic artists, depending on your needs.
As well, content for your website might involve hiring a copywriter, photographer, or even a videographer depending on what you want.
Why Are Websites So Expensive?
We’ve discussed the many roles and specialties in the process of website creation. The truth is, there are many moving parts to the creation of a website and each of them has a cost. Let’s go over the top three main reasons why websites are so expensive.
Planning Can Be Tedious and Involve Consultation
We will get into the specifics of how much time actually building a website can take, but a portion of the process that is often forgotten about is the planning process. This period of time can be very work intensive for a website designer and involve some serious consulting time with a client.
Finding a vision for a website can involve researching initial concepts, competitor websites, branding, and deciding on color palettes. As well, you might have your website designer create logos or graphics that are custom to your website. This process can be extremely time-consuming.
If you want custom design and custom planning, you will be paying much more than if you were to use a template for your website design.
Websites Take Time to Put Together
On average, a website takes 12 weeks to fully build and get off the ground. That’s about three whole months! However, a professional website might take up to six months. Why is that? Well, there is a lot that goes into creating a website. In fact, when you are looking at a website on your computer screen, you are looking at less than half of the website.
There is a complete back end of code that you cannot see that composes that website. That’s right, websites are not just text and pretty colors. They are fully coded and optimized.
As well, you will need to consider the time that it takes to optimize your website for different screen sizes. This is known as creating a responsive website. This additional time expenditure will result in easier use for mobile users, but it’s necessary. Research shows that these days 63% of website users are mobile users.
You will need content on your website which is not written by developers. This will need to be performed by yourself or by a copywriter. Copywriting may seem simple, but it can take time to devise a strategy to help your website be high performing. Your website copy should be search engine optimized and that involves a whole separate strategy and to-do list.
These pieces cannot be worked on at the same time as well. Planning comes first. The design has to happen before development can be completed. Logos and images will need to be completed before they are uploaded. And copy will need to be completed and then inputted by a developer.
Remember to leave time for revisions and corrections and keep in mind that time is money!
Web Development and Design Are Not Easy to Learn
Both website developers and designers need to learn a variety of programs and even programming languages in order to successfully build functional and beautiful websites. This means that web designers and developers are not especially cheap. With all of that education, they desire higher wages, which is understandable!
Front-end web developers must be familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Each of these programs can take a long time to learn and even more time to get good at. Back-end developers have a whole separate set of coding programs and languages, such as Python, Java, SQL, and Git.
Not all website creators receive degrees in web development and design, but most of them have at least professional certificates. Regardless, this is a profession that is skilled in nature, and with high-skill markets, you will pay the price for their knowledge and expertise.
Even a self-taught web developer has invested a significant amount of time into their craft. For example, it can take six to nine months to learn JavaScript on your own. Those that choose coding boot camps (which are expensive and intensive!) are taught the program in 15 weeks.
Remember that JavaScript is just one of many programming languages that you will need to know to make a website and it is widely considered a relatively easy programming language.
The people who are working on your website are skilled professionals and come with the price tag of their profession. This is a large part of the reason why websites are so expensive.
Conclusion
In conclusion, websites are so expensive for a variety of reasons. Website creators deserve wages that reflect their expertise and with the time that websites can take to create, this can mean that the hours of the project can add up quickly.
Be sure to leave us a comment if you have any questions about website creation!
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