A rough guide to website design prices in Bristol

As virtually every business needs a website these days, the question often asked is how much should you pay for a website to be designed and built for you? (Take a look at Bristol Web Design Examples)

Assuming you will not do it all yourself using the build-your-own services available on line, the answer is it depends. What do you want from your site, how do you want it to look, what functions do you require it to have and what support are you looking for going forwards.

Simple Brochure Website

If it is a simple selling site for a recognized product – herbs and spices perhaps or DIY tools, you may require a simple, easy to navigate site containing information. In this instance, you might just need your website built for you to be able to add content and be looking to manage it yourself.
You would be looking at guide costs of mid – high hundreds.

Ecommerce & Bespoke Web Design

However, if your business is in a design sensitive/lifestyle selling field, such as fashion, architecture, boutique hotels etc, where image is extremely important to the visitor, or if you are in a field where quality of the product is to be stressed – expensive cars, an exclusive restaurant, exotic foreign holidays, high end handbags etc and this needs to be reflected in all aspects of what you do and nowhere more so than your website, your shop-window to the world, then you may well want to pay for a fully integrated design, that has a smooth flow and oozes quality on every page. A good designer can help you with quality of images and presentation help sell products and services use of moving images, design and other clever devices would help to illustrate the ambience of your product or service, your ideas, achievements and concepts.

These sort of uniquely designed sites, where everything from the typeface used is carefully considered by a professionally trained designer, is more likely to be up to £1000 – £5,000 range for a smallish client.

Sites that are for on-line businesses and which, therefore have the potential to grow hugely and which will involve not only slick and efficient ecommerce but also further marketing functions such as recognition of the visitor with items such as ‘you may also like’ and ‘people who bought this also bought this’ type functions, can cost thousands. Beyond a certain point – where you pay for a thoughtfully created attractive core design – it is the complexity of the sites functions that dictates the cost.

Given the huge variation in website design prices, when you are briefing website designers/builders and asking them to quote it is essential you do not ‘compare apples with oranges’, in other words always say exactly what you are looking for to each possible candidate in order to get a properly accurate estimate and properly comparable prices. Consider up front, not only what you want for your site now, but what you may want if as organization grows. Assess also the sort of ongoing support you will require, SEO ranking help, Graphic Design and on-line marketing techniques etc. There is no point in having a lovely looking site if no traffic visits it.  A good web-designer will discuss such matters with you in preparing your estimate, as well as visualizing and story-boarding the site with you.