How Much Should a Website Cost a Small Business?

I am asked that question a lot, and each time my answer is, “it depends.”

On one end of the spectrum is Jack Gerblick. When Jack recently purchased his second rental property on the Georgia coastline at St. Simons Island, the serial entrepreneur was tired of paying web development companies. So, he cast about for the best way to get a web presence for marketing his properties. After looking at alternatives, he finally settled on a service offered by Homestead, an Intuit company.

For a hosting charge of only $4.99 per month, Homestead provides the tools to build your own site for free. Now, that’s about as inexpensive as it gets. Of course, you have to do all the work yourself, but Homestead is an entry level product made for people who can’t even spell “HTML.”

Despite having to rebuild his site after his PC froze, Gerblick estimates he invested nine hours into developing his own site with Homestead. At $100 per hour, the true cost of the site was about $900. That’s more than $4.99, but still pretty reasonable. You can judge his efforts for yourself at yellowjasmine.com.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are the big interactive agencies, such as Razorfish, Organic and Digitas. The price they charge just to turn the crank can be quite high, and beyond the budgets of most small businesses.

But if you need functionality more complex than Gerblick’s, you need design and development. And if you’re not into doing it yourself, there are plenty of smaller web shops and boutique agencies that can help.

Zer0 to 5ive is a boutique marketing firm with offices in New York City. They build websites and marketing programs for B2B firms. President Michelle Pujadas says that the key for a small business is to match its objectives with the needs of the target customer. “We find that most of the sites that we build are for lead generation—getting prospects to take the next action by either contacting the company directly or submitting their contact information,” she says. “We find that visitors respond best to downloadable webcasts that they can watch within their own timeframe, white papers and Point of View papers. The content must be relevant to the audience, and well packaged and promoted,” she added. Pujadas also stresses the importance of good SEO practice. The sites Zer0 to 5ive builds for small businesses range from $15K to $50K.

I’ve seen good static business websites for as little as $5K using outside firms. But to find a good shop at that price, you will have to interview a lot of candidates. To offer the low bid, these firms focus on production only, and require you to provide all the content, such as photography, illustrations, diagrams, video, and copy—meaning you’ll need more budget dollars to cover the costs of producing those assets. They will also have to skimp on the creative talent they bring to the design process. By way of comparison, we recently estimated a 25-page small business website for $18K. The site included all the content and had some bells and whistles, including a sales configurator (that helped the visitor decide which product was right for them), a Flash product demo and an eCommerce storefront.

I advise small business clients to determine whether their budget is better spent on their own website, or on boosting traffic to the site they have. If you are selling an undifferentiated product or service, such as CPA services, office leasing, or catering, your real battle is clawing for prospect attention and web traffic against the competition. Once an interested visitor arrives on your site, a basic but professional approach will suffice. Bells and whistles on the web site won’t be the factor that convinces them to select you—but your content will be.

On the other hand, if you are selling a more unique product or service, such as medical imaging or interior design services, you may have fewer visitors to your site, but more work to do to entice them to stay. To get the visitor to take action, you will need unique features tailored to their needs, educational content, or an impressive showcase of your work. For example, special shopping carts may be required for visitors to input measurements, or you may have to display and ship fabric swatches. A high-end, B2B product, like a medical device, will need tutorials, white papers, and other scientific content.

Between $4.99 per month and $50,000, what’s the right price for a small business website? It depends.