BESPOKE WEBSITE DESIGN
WHY CLICK AD AGENCY?
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We are award-winning web design agency who specialise in interactive, bespoke, SEO optimised web design and development. We're an established, experienced and trusted, worldwide team with over a decades' experience in providing bespoke web design solutions. We work through a bespoke 6 phase process from the start to the end of your web design project, ensuring your site is delivered exactly to your specification, creating a unique, cutting edge web presence. Partner We're an affiliated Google Partner.
WHAT'S INCLUDED?
SIMPLIFIED PRICING BREAKDOWN
INTERACTIVE WEBSITE
- Includes all features of small business website.
- Usually for unique or luxury brands or those aiming for unique web presences.
- Includes a researched and optimised user journey.
- Features interactive/animated effects that react when the user loads or interacts with the site, scroll effects, mouse parallax, custom video animated elements etc.
- Creates a 'wow' factor, better user engagement, and a memorable online experience.
Approx $7,500 - 10,000 | Project timeline of 8-12 weeks
ECOMMERCE
- Includes all features of small business website.
- Can support a range of payment online solutions including subscriptions, credit/debit cards, and Apple/Android pay.
-A range of shipping models (including drop shipping).
- Built on ecommerce management system (CMS) with complete control of your store & products.
- Can list up to 10,000's products/categories.
Approx $10,000 - 15,000 | Project timeline of 8-12 weeks
CUSTOM WEB APPLICATION
- A web application with high level of required functionality.
- These can include login systems, a online booking system, directory listing system, comparison site, etc.
- These types of sites are usually complex and require a high level of development consideration.
Approx $25,000 - 100,000 | Project timeline of 12-26 weeks
ENTERPRISE LEVEL WEBSITE
- Includes all features of smallbusiness/interactive website.
- Ideal for larger corporations or enterprises that require large, well thought out and highly optimised websites.
- Usually with multiple locations & possibly multi language.
- These sorts of site usually come with a in-depth brief, extensive brand guidelines and ambitious goals.
Approx $20,000 - 100,000 | Project timeline of 12-26 weeks
WEIGH UP THE OPTIONS
TYPES OF WEBSITE DESIGN
WAYS TO GET IT DONE: OVERVIEW
There are a wide range of options available when building and designing a website. All of which vary in terms of the price, quality of the design and require different levels of involvement during the process. They're best described in terms of a scale; the higher the cost, the better the quality and less time consuming for the client and vice versa.
Looking at the lower end of the scale, a website builder is a template-based tool that requires the individual to build the entire site themselves without having to do the manual coding. Ideal for someone just starting out with very minimal knowledge of website design, who can dedicate their time and needs to keep costs down. However, you won't necessarily achieve a high quality, bespoke site at the end of it. Those with more of a budget might look to hiring a freelancer either in the UK or offshore, who for an hourly fee will design and build the site for them.
Moving to the top end of the scale are established design agencies who build and design your website completely bespoke to your specification. Thus, requiring much less of your time, but you pay a premium for their service because they have a wide range of skilled employees such as a project manager, content writers, designers, developers and so on. This option is possibly more suited to those where the opportunity cost of building a site themselves is not worth it.
THE EXTRAS
ASSOCIATED COSTS
MONTH BY MONTH: MONTHLY COSTS
- Hosting - In order for your website to be accessible online, you will need to 'host' it on a server. Hosting costs can range anywhere from completely free, to $500 a month. For an efficient, unmanaged hosting service you can expect to pay in the region of $10-20 a month, whereas a more premium managed service will usually be priced upwards of $200.00. If you're using a website builder, this will be included as part of your monthly fee.
- SEO - Once you have a website you'll ideally want to market it, which is where SEO comes in. If you want your site to rank well in search engines or you're wanting to make best use of social media by running things like Facebook or. Linkedin ads, then you're going to need an SEO campaign.
- Newsletter systems - Mailchimp for example, though free up to a certain point, requires a monthly subscription to use.
- Plugins - Some high-end plug-ins, such as those found in Shopify, will come with a monthly fee.
- Retainers and care packages - If you require technical support or on-going updates to your website, you'll need to factor this in.
- Social media marketing - Depending on the amount of time you have to dedicate to it, you may require someone to manage and update your social media accounts, and integrate these with your website.
- Licenses - Some assets such as fonts and stock photos/videos require licences that sometimes have an ongoing monthly cost. A service such as Pixelo may help you avoid ongoing monthly fees for site assets like fonts.
ANNUAL COMMITMENTS: YEARLY COSTS
- Domain - In order to set up a website you'll need a domain, which comes with a yearly fee. A domain is registered for a minimum term of one year, which should cost you somewhere between $5-20. Alternatively you may wish to purchase a high-end domain from its existing owner. This can cost a great deal more, depending on the domain in question. In fact, one of our clients recently purchased one in the region of $10,000.
- SSL Certificate - In order for your site to appear as https, you need an SSL Certificate. Https is now a requirement for all websites, without one Google will not rank your site well and you will receive browser security warnings. In order to have this enabled you need, as a minimum, a domain validation SSL Certificate. This comes with a yearly fee of around $50.00.
FACTOR IT ALL IN: GENERAL COSTS
- Image/ Video licenses - It's not possible to take images from anywhere you feel like online, so if you don't have your own photography, you'll need to purchase stock images and license them for use. A stock image can cost anywhere from $1-250, depending on the image and where you're sourcing it from. As part of our website builds we offer 20 stock images, based on the spec and the client's individual requirements. For a video license, you should expect to pay in the region of $50+.
- Copywriting - One of the key considerations in building a website is the amount of content that will be required. If you're not literate or good with words and don't have a lot of spare time, we highly recommend you hire an agency or freelancer, who can write the copy for you. A 5 page website as a minimum should be around 2,500 words of fully proofed, well considered content. This is a vital point to consider as content is key when it comes to SEO and rankings.
- Plugin licenses - Sometimes rather than coding certain functionality into a site, it can be quicker and easier to use a plugin. These could include things like sliders for images, booking systems, and payment processors.
- Payment processing fees - If you're running an ecommerce site, then you'll need to consider payment processing fees. For example, if you're using PayPal at the checkout, they will take 3% of all payments that are processed through your account. If someone purchases a product for $100, you will actually receive £97, whilst PayPal receives $3.00.
.COM,.CO.UK,.COM.AU, .ORG,.CO
DOMAIN NAMES
The price for a domain name can range anywhere from £5 - £30 per year per domain. Depending on your specific requirement, you can either purchase a location based domain, such as.co.uk or a top level.com domain, which is not area specific, and will be slightly more pricey. You can register a domain for 1 year, but we would always recommend registering for at least 2-3 years or more if possible. Registering for longer periods, such as 4-5 years is ideal, and comes with an added SEO benefit, as Google will determine that the domain is going to be around for a long time. You can also opt to purchase a premium domain from companies or individuals who've purchased them previously. These will usually be priced at upwards of £100. Once you buy a premium domain, you'll only be required to pay the renewal fee which is just a small % of the original cost. When purchasing your domain, be aware of companies trying to upsell you unnecessary extras, such as 'domain name protection' or 'who is opt out. You could vary quickly find your bill going from £6 to £60 for a domain. Essentially, keep it simple. Unless you're purchasing premium, your domain name should always be a relatively cheap yearly cost.
SIMPLIFIED HOSTING
SHARED WEBSITE HOSTING
This is the cheapest form of entry level hosting, you'll be sharing a hosting space and resources with many other site, which comes with it's pros and cons.
The cons are limited resources and availability, meaning in turn that they are the least powerful. They are also more likely to be targeted by bots and hacking, as shared hosting tends to be less secure and an easier target.
The pros are that it is cheap and accessible, making it a good solution for small websites, with a lower budget, receiving around 500-1,000 sessions per month.
$5-20 per month
VPS
Virtual Private Server - 'virtually' private hosting, which essentially means you're given your own hosting space inside a larger server, which is broken down into 20-30 small VPS's.
A VPS gives you additional flexibility, available storage, and allows you to harden your hosting by having it configured for additional security.
Additionally, there are much more resources and power available to you, as well as root access.
A VPS will be tend to be able to deal with higher sessions, have additional memory allocation, and may allow your website to load quicker (depending on how your site has been built).
$30 - 90 per month
DEDICATED SERVER
A dedicated server is essentially an entire server in a data centre. You can opt for a managed or unmanaged service.
With a managed service, you'll have someone running your hosting for you, ensuring things are patched, running smoothly and kept up to date and secure. With an unmanaged service, you're left to sort these things out on your own.
Dedicated servers are required for websites with a great deal of traffic, very heavy web applications or incredibly large websites receiving 10,000's of sessions a month.
Unmanaged dedicated servers start at around £200 per month, whereas for a managed dedicated server you can expect to pay from £400 to thousands per month.
Whilst they offer a large amount resources and flexibility, they're also costly and can require a great deal of maintenance.
$200-500 per month
CLOUD
With Cloud hosting you don't have a set space available to you, but rather you'll essentially be pooling resources from lots of different locations as and when you need them.
The pros? It's extremely flexible, as you pay per usage. Making it the perfect solution for those starting small and looking to expand. It's also ideal for those who experience large, but predictable, peaks and troughs in monthly sessions.
On the flip slide, whilst pay per usage can be a positive, it can also be unpredictable. For example, if you get a sudden influx of unexpected, not relevant traffic you'll likely be receiving a large bill at the end of the month. It's can also complex and requires a lot of technical set up, meaning it's likely you'll need to pay a professional to do it for you.
Prices for Cloud hosting tend to vary greatly depending on the level of set up and support required, as well as the monthly usage.
ЕРОА
MANAGED HOSTING
You'll likely pay a premium for managed hosting, as it means all the hard work in maintaining the server, its software and ensuring the site is kept secure are managed by a third party host or web agency.
Managed hosting is a good option if you're not tech savvy and the security & performance of your site is critical to you.
In most cases a managed hosting provider will offer a SLA and a high level for support should you experience any issues in the running of your site. We would typically advise managed hosting wherever possible.
$70 - 2,000(+) per month
CDN
Content Delivery Network - A CDN can help to boost your website's loading time by delivering your sites content from multiple servers and locations, reducing latency and speeding up first byte time.
A CDN can also help with optimisin images as they're loaded, which can be a really useful tool for those unskilled in re-sizing imagery appropriately for their website.
Free - $200 Per month
EMAIL HOSTING
Your email hosting needs to be considered, and with a reputable provider, in order for you to avoid running into deliverability issues. In our experience, the best providers tend to be either Google Apps or Microsoft Exchange.
Email hosting is completely separate from your website design, however, given access to the domains DNS is required for web hosting, it often comes hand in hand.
$5 - 25 per email address, per month
HOW WILL IT LOOK?
ASSOCIATED DESIGN
Your company logo and branding forms the foundation of your website and company as a whole. It's important to recognise that these are two completely separate things. Your website is the channel through which your logo and branding is ultimately presented, so you will of course need these things in place prior to beginning the process of designing and developing your site.
LOGO
If you're designing a website then you're going to need a logo.
Generally speaking, your logo will set the colour scheme and typography for the website, assuming your logo contains text.
There are several ways you can go about obtaining a logo:
- The cheapest and quickest way is to purchase a basic logo template online. However this is not an option we ever recommend, given the lack of originality and rationale. It's also likely to still need editing after you've bought it.
- You could hire a freelance designer, which will set you back around $100-400. This can be a great option it you have a freelancer you know and trust to do a good job.
- You can have your logo designed by the company designing your website. As it's such a vital element of your website design, most website design agencies will offer a logo design service, coming in at around $500-700. Although this is the most pricey option, we believe it's well worth the investment, given that it's the only option guaranteed to leave you with a future-proof logo design that you love.
BRANDING
There's a big difference between a logo design and branding. Branding dives into the psychology of colours and words, exploring your competitors and your company's messaging to determine the overall look and feel of your brand. You'll want to carefully consider how much time, effort and resources you need to put into your branding to build your company's presence at this stage. A small start up for example, may look at launching with just a logo in place, opting to explore their branding as their company grows. Whereas for a high value venture, we would highly recommend acquiring a detailed brand strategy and identity, before pressing forward with a website. Branding services can cost anywhere from between $100 for a basic package. All the way up to 10,000+ for a more premium service.
ADDITIONAL ELEMENTS
Additional design elements to consider:
- If you're starting a business from scratch, you're likely to need printed materials designed, such as Business Cards, Letterheads, Comp Slips, Brochures etc.
Social Media
- If you're marketing your business through social channels, you're going to need your logo resized appropriately for each platform, along with profile and cover images to promote your brand.
Newsletters
- Depending on your level of requirement or the type of email marketing you're looking to carry out, you may require design for bespoke email templates, as well as e-brochures or PDFs. Pricing for these elements is obviously highly dependent on your individual requirement. As an agency we commonly design a number of these under our standard hourly rate of $65+gst per hour. Or in cases where a lot of additional design work is required, this may be quoted as a single price at a reduced hourly rate.
LIMITED RISK
NO BIG UPFRONT FEES
Parting with the full project cost can be a little daunting and may leave you feeling a little unsure without first seeing the end product. All our design projects (website design, branding, etc.) work off of a 4 phase payment process which staggers the payment across each stage of the project. This allows you to view progress as you make payment, as well as reducing the financial burden on your business by shortening the time period between cash spend and ROl.
PHASE 1: DISCOVERY
In the first stage, our Designers and Project Manager perform discovery to plan and inform the subsequent phases of the project.
Areas include, but are not limited to:
- Identify demographics for targeting. applicable.
- Research the current website and the - Identify demographics for targeting.
- Limitations/scope of design.
- Identify any value proposition.
- Understand the tasks users will carry out — Analytics data - device statistics, mobile on the site.first design, etc.
- Understand any marketing funnels and - Create a redirect policy.
- Engagement statistics.
- Analyse user behaviours.
- Mapping of pages (sitemap & structure).
- SEO initial review.
- Review content for pages where
25% Deposit Due
PHASE 2: WIREFRAMING
Prior to prototyping the designs, we create wireframes for all page layouts, from which point we can assess the feasibility of the proposed structure and functionality of the site. Depending on the individual requirements, we'll create wireframes for desktop, tablet and mobile, taking into account the user needs and journey. The aim of the wireframe is to create a visual understanding of a page and all pages of the site in relation to one another before the creative process gets underway, potentially saving considerable time and money in the testing and amendments phases later on in the project.
PHASE 3: DESIGN
Once the discovery process is complete and the wireframes have been agreed and signed off, we draw on the information gathered to determine the look and feel of the website, creating a design prototype in photoshop. The homepage is created first and once signed off will form the design basis for the remaining sub pages of the site. These are then delivered via the Invision system, which allows the client to comment on any revisions that may be required. Communication is vital at this stage of the project, in order to ensure the final site design is in line with the client's requirements, taste and branding. A dedicated design process is one of the key areas you miss out on when using a website builder.
25% Deposit Due
PHASE 4: DEVELOPMENT
During this phase, the graphic elements from the final design prototype are used to develop the actual functional, digital version of the site. Similar to the design process, the homepage will be developed first, followed by the sub pages. Once the front end of the site has been developed, the back-end will be coded onto the CMS and the website is then ready to be populated with content. Elements such as interactivity, contact forms, ecommerce and so on, are all made functional during this stage.
25% Deposit Due
PHASE 5: CONTENT POPULATION
Phase 5 is where the site really comes to life, as we populate it with content In cases where the client is providing their own content we utilise Content Snare (a content gathering tool). This allows the client to easily add appropriate content and drop in assets and media files, in a simple drag and drop format. In the case of a website redesign, we can also source content from a previous version of the website. At the end of this phase, the client is provided with a staging link to their website, which they can use to view the final version of the site and request any final tweaks necessary.
PHASE 6: TESTING & LAUNCH
Once the client is happy to sign off on the website, it will move into the testing phase prior to launch. As an agency, we carry out a thorough quality assurance assessment on every site we build. This involves checking that the site is operating optimally across all devices and screen sizes, as well as testing all of the functional elements of the site. We'll also review GDPR compliance and ensure that all necessary privacy and cookie policies are in place.
Again, one of the vital elements you miss out on with a website builder is a thorough quality and interoperability testing process. If the agency you're working with doesn't have one, then they're probably not worth the asking price! Once the testing process is complete, the website is pushed live, on either the client's hosting or on our own, with a 2 week grace period, should any issues arise or amends be required.
25% Deposit Due
MARKETING
PROMOTE YOUR NEW WEBSITE
You're unlikely to see SEO or online marketing as an associated cost on most articles about the cost of a website, but it's an incredibly important thing to consider. After all, what's the point of a website without an online presence?
SEO
If you don't know what SEO stands for, then you're probably not ready to build a website. SEO isn't technically required to build a website, but without a level of SEO your website will have no/little visibility online. If you're planning on handing out business cards or brochures with your website address, or you're going to be relying on people searching for your brand name on Google (provided it's unique) then you don't have to worry about SEO. It's very likely that this is not the case, and you're going to be relying on people searching for terms such as 'accountants Surrey' to find you online. "Build it and they will come" simply isn't how it works anymore - SEO is something you need to consider if you're serious about your online presence.
You'll usually find that SEO is only considered after the website has been created, which isn't ideal as it means that your website will not be prepared to rank in search results, or worse, the structure you have decided upon may actually be detrimental. As such, you need to be prepared and be ready to consider SEO as an important associated cost of a new website. If you're considering a website builder, it's likely that this will already be well optimised in terms of technical optimisation (loading speed, etc). However, you will need to consider things like keywords, on page content, and how you're going to lay your site out to accommodate SEO. Website builders will typically provide tools within the website, which will help you to achieve a very rudimentary level of SEO. These rely on a pre-existing knowledge of SEO - which takes years to learn how to do properly.
Freelancers and agencies, on the other hand, are more capable of taking care of your SEO for you. If you're serious about your rankings, you'll need to consider an SEO company, SEO freelancer, or a website agency that offers SEO such as Click Ad Agency.
PAID ADVERTISING
These ads come in many forms, the most popular ones being Google Ads and social ads including Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin. Time should be spent determining which platform you'd be best placed for, e.g. whether you should be advertising on Instagram or Linkedin (or both) to reach your target audience and demographic. You'll also need to consider the expense of the ad creatives/graphics, as well as the cost per click/impression charged separately by the advertising platform.
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