what a small business website actually costs — and what moves the number

the most common question we get on a first call is some version of "what am i looking at, roughly?" — and the most common answer in this industry is a deflection. we'd rather explain the mechanics, because once you understand what moves the number you can judge any quote you're given, including ours.

the price is mostly a question of how much doesn't exist yet

a website quote is not really priced by page count. it's priced by how many decisions and how much raw material have to be created from nothing. two businesses can both want a five-page site and be a factor of three apart, because one of them arrives with finished photography, a written list of services, and a logo, and the other arrives with a phone full of blurry shots and a rough idea.

so when you're comparing quotes, the honest question isn't "how much for a website." it's how much of this do i already have.

the four things that actually move it

• photography. the single biggest swing. if we're shooting your space, your products, and your team, that's a production day plus editing on top of the build. if you have usable photos already, that line disappears entirely.
• copy. writing your services, your about page, and your headlines from scratch takes interviews and drafts. if you can write a rough version yourself and let us edit it, you've cut real hours.
• functionality. a brochure site that sends an enquiry email is one thing. online booking, payments, a member login, or a product catalogue with inventory are each a different order of complexity — not because the pages are harder to design, but because they have to be tested against every way a customer might break them.
• page count, last. it matters least of the four. the tenth page on a site costs a fraction of the first, because every decision has already been made.

what you should get regardless of budget

there's a floor below which a site isn't cheap, it's just incomplete. whatever you spend, these should not be optional extras:

• you own the domain, the hosting account, and the code — in your name, not the agency's
• it loads in under two seconds on a phone on mobile data, not just on office wifi
• real page titles and descriptions, a sitemap submitted to google, and https
• you can edit your own hours, prices, and services without paying anyone
• it works properly on a phone, because that's where most of your visitors are

if a quote doesn't mention who owns the domain, ask before you sign. that one question separates most good deals from most bad ones.

three quotes worth walking away from

the one that's suspiciously cheap and monthly. a few hundred up front and a monthly fee forever, where the site stops existing if you stop paying. you're renting a template and you'll never own it. for the same total spend over two years you could have bought something outright.

the one with no fixed number. hourly billing on a project with a defined scope shifts every estimation risk onto you. we quote a fixed number before starting, and if the scope genuinely changes we re-quote it with you rather than sending a bigger invoice.

the one that promises page one of google. nobody controls google's rankings. a site can be built so that ranking is possible — clean structure, fast, correct markup — but anyone guaranteeing a position is either guessing or planning to game something that will eventually be penalised.

the actually useful question

instead of asking what a website costs, work out what a customer is worth to you. if your average job is $400 and one in twenty visitors calls, you need a fairly small amount of traffic before the site has paid for itself. if your average job is $40, the maths is completely different and you should probably spend less on the site and more on the thing that drives repeat visits.

we'll happily do that arithmetic with you on a call, even if the answer is that you shouldn't build anything yet.