Website development
what is it?If you need a website, you need answers to the key questions about web development and choosing a contractor. That is why we created a guide to the core processes of building online projects, described the tasks that can be solved by combining various solutions, and simply explained the components of every website.
Of course, the pricing issue could not be left aside. On this page you will find information on how website costs are formed and, most importantly, — an overview of the “tricks” that can reduce the development price.
We paid special attention to recommendations on choosing a web studio and evaluating the finished product. No theory — the advice can be applied in practice straight away, and you can see that for yourself.
As a rule, large companies need to present themselves, their services and products, and show a large amount of information. This requires large-scale, often individual solutions. Therefore combinations of catalog, business-card, store and promo solutions are used here — and their combination is exactly what a corporate website is. Usually this is custom development — an expensive, large-scale solution that includes integration into the company's infrastructure.
The task — is to present the company and its activity and find new clients. It is solved with standard solutions such as a business-card site, a landing page or a catalog. Combinations of development options let you optimize goal achievement in each particular case. The business-card site tells about the company, its news and services, the landing converts traffic, and the catalog — showcases the products.
In this case tools that generate revenue online are used. As a rule everything comes down to a simple task — bring users to the site and make them convert (purchase, order, view…), while maximizing the commercial metrics. An online store, a landing page or any other solution fits. Its development creates a whole complex of solutions aimed at analytics and experiments, which lets you grow efficiency as you go.
Landing pages, promo sites or even business-card sites fit these goals. A landing helps tell a vivid story, a promo site creates a WOW effect around it and intrigues the audience, while a business-card site — offers a way to tell about the event in a corporate, strict style.
Landing pages, promo sites or even business-card sites fit these goals. A landing helps tell a vivid story, a promo site creates a WOW effect around it and intrigues the audience, while a business-card site — offers a way to tell about the event in a corporate, strict style.
Regardless of the chosen website type (or even their symbiosis), the “components” of a web resource stay the same:
- Design — layouts brought to life with markup and programming.
- Content — everything presented on the site pages: images, texts, videos.
- CMS, engine — content management system: creating pages and their hierarchy, adding content, managing files and much more.
- Hosting — placing the site on a hosting provider's server that makes it available to all internet users.
- Domain — the unique “address” by which users find the site.
All these components depend on each other: without content the design remains a set of empty pages, without a CMS filling the site becomes a real torture, and without hosting and domain nobody will ever see the web resource.
Prices on the market are not formed the way books describe. Every player sets their own price: you have surely seen that the same task can be quoted at 1,000 UAH and at 100,000 UAH. Let us try to explain how the price depends on the studio's subjective state and preferences.
Still, the key factors that influence the cost can be outlined: the scale and the team level (qualification — the higher it is, the higher the salaries and the work price), overheads (office, official salaries), requirements to the final result and quality, and subsequent maintenance.
These criteria can multiply the development cost. That is why, when choosing a contractor, you should balance these factors to define the most optimal path for yourself.
The maintenance cost of an average website is relatively small and consists of the following elements:
- Hosting. The price of a decent “shared” hosting starts at 5 dollars per month and can grow to 500 dollars for an individual dedicated server. As a benchmark you can use the daily traffic: up to 1,000 users per day means hosting within 5–20 dollars.
- Website monitoring systems. Usually cost 5–50 dollars per month depending on the metrics tested. Learn more here:
- Website updates and modernization. Everything depends on the scope of work and the maintenance terms offered by the developer. Usually the maintenance cost does not exceed 100 dollars per month (unless there is continuous modernization, optimization or other work on the project — then the price can be much higher).
- Domain. In some zones its price reaches 100 dollars per year, but most domains cost about 10 dollars, which is roughly 1 to 10 dollars per month.
In total, a turnkey website costs about 11–80 dollars per month. If you also need technical modernization, content and SEO support, the cost will be much higher — conditionally above 200 dollars.
Contractor questionnaire
Lets you ask the right questions (in a meeting or remotely) to get truly correct data for making the right decision.
Checklist
Developer quality control. Even if we are not the ones building your website, go through the items to ensure the proper quality level of the site.
Contractor evaluation summary table
We have seen many selection criteria and decided to prepare the ultimate one, which includes the “right” characteristics for picking contractors.
