WordPress is an excellent choice when developing a website for your small business. You won’t have to search far for a great example - around 2 out of 5 websites on the entire internet are running on WordPress!
While WordPress offers basic accounts, plugins and themes for free, these limited features just won’t cut it for a small business website trying to stand out, offer full functionality and look professional while doing it.
Developing a website comes with a cost, even when a service like WordPress is there to streamline the process. Read on to learn what can affect this cost, how you can get a proper quote and how a WordPress development team like iVersion can help you build the perfect website for your small business.
What Can Change the Development Cost?
There are several different factors that can impact the development cost of your WordPress website, but the importance of each factor will vary based on the priorities of your business. It’s crucial to consider your individual needs for a website before you try to estimate your development cost.
Size of the Website
It might seem obvious, but a larger website means a larger development cost. The more content and functionality you want for your WordPress website, the more time, coding and design work it will take to accommodate everything.
That’s not to say you can’t develop a large website with WordPress – you’ll just have to consider the higher development cost involved, with your developer working to structure your website and streamline your design to avoid slow performance or bloated content.
Features and Functionality
There are nearly 60,000 plugins available from WordPress with varying quality, price and safety. These plugins can be a quick and easy way to add functionality to your website, or they can be security vulnerabilities, slow your site down or simply not fit with your specific needs as a small business.
A WordPress development agency like iVersion can write custom code for your website, delivering the exact functionality you need with total precision and efficiency.
Complexity of the Design
A simple website designed to display basic content will be far cheaper than a more complex fully-customised design. If a basic website is all you need, you can expect a lower development cost as a result.
Once you start considering eCommerce functionality, UX strategies, security features and future scaling, things can get a lot more complex! A WordPress website can accommodate it all, so you’ll want to consider just how complex your design should be before working with a WordPress developer.
Design Customisation
Generic ready-made themes can make your website look cheap, amateur and boring. You want a website that’s unique to your business, and a professional WordPress development company like iVersion will put your development cost towards a custom design that looks and feels fantastic.
With nearly 60% of all web traffic coming from mobile devices, you’ll also want to ensure your website works just as well on a phone as it does on a computer.
Getting a Proper Quote
With all of these elements in mind, you’ll be better equipped to approach a WordPress developer and explain exactly what you need for your website – this is the best way to ensure you get an accurate quote that’s as close to the final development cost as possible. Once you’re clear about the scope of your project and what you need from a developer, it’s time to choose a WordPress development agency.
Working with a Development Agency
There are two types of agencies to consider, each using different a pricing model for how they charge you when developing your website.
Fixed Cost Agencies
These agencies will have you provide a fixed scope for your website, and then determine a fixed cost to deliver exactly what you’ve described.
This pricing model works when you have a strict budget and know exactly what you want, but the development process can be inflexible and won’t accommodate any unforeseen issues, changes of mind or new ideas you might have during development.
Hourly Rate Agencies
These agencies will develop your website on an hourly pay rate with the ability to change direction from real time feedback.
This is great for a larger site with more complicated features that might need evaluating, or for a custom design where you might want to adjust the look and feel as you go. These agencies also allow for more flexible budgeting, as you can ask for estimates at each stage of development to make cost adjustments when needed.
Additional Costs to Consider
Even during the development stage, it’s important to think about these further costs that might impact how you build and design your website.
Web Hosting
There are several types of hosts for your WordPress website, with many changes to the overall cost based on your expected traffic, if you have a global audience and how high of a security level you’d like.
You can learn more about WordPress hosting from our blog post over here.
Ongoing Maintenance
A professional WordPress developer will rigorously test your site for bugs before it goes live, but small business websites can unfortunately be an easy target for hacking.
Ongoing maintenance is a necessary cost to keep your website safe, including making regular updates to WordPress and any plugins on your site.
Website SEO
WordPress has some great plugins for SEO, but it’s not enough to just develop a website with SEO plugins and hope people will find it. A proper SEO strategy continues well beyond development, so you’ll want to keep those costs in mind for the continued success of your WordPress site.
Develop Your WordPress Website with iVersion
When you’re ready to start developing your small business website using WordPress, contact iVersion here and request a quote today!
