What Are the Average Costs to Design a Website?
Designing a website is similar to setting up a storefront for a traditional company. Just like with a physical retail store or office, you need to make the scenery attractive and simple to navigate. Before you start the process of designing a website, take the time to estimate the average costs of this endeavor.
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Common Design Formats
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Before you start estimating the cost of designing your website, you must first decide on the format of the website. One format is a standard website that contains a few informational pages, like an "About Us," "Home" and "Products and Services" page. You could also set up an online store with one main homepage and a series of individual product pages. If you want a blog website, the format is a section for your article with advertisements for your business (or affiliate accounts) around the main content (no homepage required).
Domain Name Registration and Hosting Fees
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The first cost you'll have to pay to design your website is the Web hosting and domain name registry fees. The Web hosting account is required to store the Web files that make up the design. The domain name is like the company sign you would put up to bring people into a physical store. Expect to pay about $4 to $40 per month for Web hosting including domain name registration. In some cases Web hosting companies provide you with free templates to design your website at no cost. But if you want a professional website, you should hire experienced designers to create a custom look.
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Royalty Free Images
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Another key expense you'll have to budget for when designing a new website is the cost of downloading a library of images to use on your website. You must purchase royalty-free images, which allow you to use the image again and again without additional fees. You can find these images for sale at a variety of online image websites. Royalty-free Web images start at around $1 each and go up depending on the size and quality of the image.
Web Graphic Designer
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You need a Web graphic designer to come up with the general concept of the website. The website designer often also does the programming work (such as HTML or PHP coding) to produce the final website. The designer creates the various files that make up the look and feel of the website, then uploads them to your Web hosting account server. The average cost for a Web designer to create a basic template is about $200 as of January 2011, but you could end up paying as much as $5,000 depending on the service and size of the firm.
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