--- title: How Much Does a Website Cost date: 2019-07-30T05:30:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-4/how-much-does-a-website-cost/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 02 Episode 4 – Jul 30, 2019 42:35 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## How Much Does a Website Cost  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-02/S02-E04-How-much-does-a-website-cost-Master2.mp3) In this episode Sean Smith and Mike Mella discuss how much a website costs and why the real answer is "It Depends" ### Show Notes This episode marks the beginning of Mike joining the podcast as co-host. We start off by comparing a website to a car. This comparison works well because cars like websites have a wide range of costs and it all comes down to the number of features and quality of the final product. We then go into all the parts of a website build that the layperson is not aware of and the opportunity costs of DIY. ### Show Links - [Wordpress.com](https://wordpress.com/) - [Wix](https://www.wix.com/) - [Webflow](https://webflow.com/) - [Why Content Writers Love Craft CMS](https://caffeinecreations.ca/why-content-writers-love-craft-cms/) - [Website CMS User Manual for End Users](https://caffeinecreations.ca/blog/website-cms-user-manual-for-end-users/) - [Mikes Google Analytics Package](https://belikewater.ca/page/packages#fndtn-package-1) - [How Much Should a Website Cost You? A Definitive Pricing Guide For You](https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/building-websites/how-much-should-a-website-cost/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hi, and welcome to the website 101 podcast. I'm your host. Actually, no, scratch that. I am now your co-host, Sean Smith. Starting from this episode, I have a regular co-host who's a past guest, Mike Milla. Mike, welcome back and we're welcome to joining as a regular host. **\[00:23\]** **Mike:** Yeah, thank you. I'm glad to be here. Real excited about joining the show. And yeah, this is going to be lots of fun. **\[00:31\]** **Sean:** So today, it's going to be me and Mike and we're going to be talking about how much does a website cost? Also, in the future, we will be bringing on guests to interview. So it's not going to be just me and Mike into the future. It'll be me, Mike, and various guests. yeah it's not it's not just me forever and who knows it could be like one time Mike hosts by himself or I host by myself but the basic idea is gonna be that it's both me and Mike or me and Mike and a guest right all right so many Many times I've had a friend or a client, a potential client come up to me and ask me how much does a website at cost. My response is always, it depends. **\[01:30\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I was going to ask that. What is your response? So you say, I know that's what you were on, what you're going to be asking me throughout this episode, but just at a high level, what do you say? You say it depends. **\[01:42\]** **Sean:** So it depends on the scope of the site and what they want. So if I get this by email, I'll often ask if we could jump into a phone call or something so that it's easier to go on a back and forth and get details and explain about the scope of your site and what's needed. Are you having a brochure site? Do you have an e-commerce site? How many different types of content, what's all involved, what are all the features that that are needed. You know, if you think about a website similar to a car or a house, how much does a car cost? Well, if you want a little economy entry level car, you can probably get a brand new one for nine or ten thousand dollars. I have a friend who just bought a **\[02:34\]** **Mike:** use car for $2,000. **\[02:36\]** **Sean:** Yeah, well, you can't buy a used website, unfortunately. **\[02:40\]** **Mike:** Well, well, yeah, you probably shouldn't. **\[02:44\]** **Sean:** Unless you're buying a business. In which case, that's a different story. So, let's go with a $9,000-$10,000 car. Or you can go all out and get yourself a high-end sports car or SUV, SUV, like a Range Rover or something, we're looking at 50, 60, $100,000 for a car. They both do exactly the same thing. They get you from point A to point B. Yep. Where does the difference in the cost come from? **\[03:17\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and it's all about features and features that are included in things that you, as the purchaser, and in this case, the website owner, want included in your, you know, car slash website, right? I have a similar analogy I use which is a house. What does a house cost? You know, you could buy, you could build a house for, if you're building like a little cabin in the woods or something, it wouldn't necessarily cost all that much compared to, you know, Drake's house, which could be in the billions of dollars. So, it's all about what do you want included, right? That's how I often present it. **\[03:56\]** **Sean:** Yeah, exactly. And both houses are going to do exactly the same thing. Provide shelter. Yeah, right. But one house will do things that the other house doesn't do. Like, have a swimming pool, have ten guest rooms. Right. Have a movie theater inside your own house. **\[04:16\]** **Mike:** Like, yeah. I've heard of people that have trampoline rooms where the whole floor of the room is a trampoline? You ever hear of that? **\[04:25\]** **Sean:** It's just like going to Skyson or something with your kids. **\[04:28\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I guess so. And we're following that analogy so far that maybe we may be losing grip on the actual website thing, but the analogy follows through to the website in the sense that there are different variables that affect the price. So one of them might be the CMS, the content management system that you choose to use. There are free versions available, free CMS is available, like WordPress or now Expression Engine is a good free option. And then there are ones that cost a few hundred dollars, like Statomic or Craft. And then there are CMS's that cost in the thousands of dollars, right? **\[05:09\]** **Sean:** Yeah, enterprise level ones, which I don't recall off the top of my head because I haven't actually worked with those ones. **\[05:15\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah. And I don't, I'm not sure what they offer that the other ones don't, but maybe There's some really great killer feature that they have or something that makes it, makes it worth that price. So it's a question of do you want a system like that and then of course there's plugins and add-ons that you might need in addition to the CMS and those sometimes are free but sometimes they cost money too so that can add up and increase the cost of the website. And that, that's just the software cost. Yeah, that's right. Like one of the, for me, one of the things that may affect the price of a website is not only in the software and like what the features that you're building into it, but also the process that you do in building this site. So like, a lot of clients might, I often recommend things like usability testing, which is where you, we think we've talked about this before, where, you know, you get someone to sit down in front of your website and ask them to perform the tasks you want them to be able to do. And then if they can't do them very well, then you may need to tweak the website or whatever. So I always recommend clients do that. But sometimes they say, you know, well, we know our material and we don't really want to invest in that much in that part of it. So then you have to cut cut that cost. So things like that wire framing, even you might have more wire frame options when you're doing the design of the site, things like that require work, right? The developers doing the work, and that's going to cost you more money. **\[06:44\]** **Sean:** Right. And as the scope of a site increases, you might need to hire in other people, not you might need a designer as well as a developer. You might need a UX designer as well as a designer and a developer or any combination thereof. Right. And not only that, but whoever **\[07:05\]** **Mike:** you get to do those roles, one person might cost more than another person. So like if you get some kid who's straight out of design school and hire him to design your site, you probably wouldn't cost you that much relative to someone like me who's been doing this for 20 years or you, right? Exactly. If you're paying for the experience of the developer or designer, then that could increase the cost as well. Although you get certain benefits, of course. **\[07:31\]** **Sean:** You get what you pay for. I mean, a junior developer or a junior designer is going to do a good job. But there's a cost involved in that. They might not know all the latest best practices or it may take them longer to work on it because they're not at skill. And that's not a knock at inexperienced developers or designers. That's just a fact of life. And if it's something that you're okay with as the website owner, then that's fine, that's fine. And it's just one additional cost of working with somebody who's less experienced. **\[08:12\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and they might have not only just that, you know, they might not be familiar with the latest trends and things, but it could be they haven't had the experience that led them to catch things before they go south, You know, like they may be like someone like me, I'd be able to say, oh, I've seen this happen before and I'm gonna I know what to do to avoid this issue, but if they're the if they're encountering it for the first time, then you know, **\[08:41\]** **Sean:** There could be an issue a problem there, right? Yeah, it's something that will be hidden until it comes up and they didn't even think to Right. Address that or be proactive about it because they don't have that experience. Yeah, mm-hmm. You know, one part that we did miss is website builders. Right. So, we jumped right into CMSs like WordPress and Craft and Expression Engine. But, there's WordPress or website builders such as Wix or Squarespace or Webflow, things like that. And the difference between those and CMS is that you pay a monthly fee, and it could be $10 a month, it could be $30, $50, $100 a month depending on what you want out of it. Yeah. There are advantages to that. They have a number of pre-built themes, it's like Dragon Drop, it's relatively easy to build your own site, but you have to learn how to do it, how to work with it, and there are downsides. One of the biggest downsides is quite often there's no way to extract your data. Right. Once your website is in there, if you want to port it over to another system because it has more flexibility or whatever, for whatever reason, it's going to be copy in pace. There's not going to be an automatic way of getting stuff out. **\[10:12\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and that reminds me of another thing. For a lot of my clients, they deal with member accounts where there's people can create accounts on the site and log in and see special information. And they might have to actually submit information about themselves in their account. And if you're using one of these site builders that are hosted somewhere else, usually a Contract sort of stipulation that says that they own the content or there might might be such a thing anyway So some clients may not be comfortable using a third-party service like that because it might mean that whatever their You know user base is submitting to the site is suddenly technically owned by this third-party company that could be an issue Especially if it's in another country **\[11:01\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I could see that as being an issue. You're probably going to be okay like these big companies are probably not going to do Right, they wouldn't do over your stuff, but yeah Because it would hurt their reputation, but the fact is that They own the content that's on their server on your third server and You know when you stop paying for your your subscription your website's dead. Yeah, and there's no way to get your your content out. Mike, are you aware of any, what are the advantages of using a website builder server such as Wix or Webflow or Squarespace? **\[11:44\]** **Mike:** Well, I guess the main thing is they all are pretty easy to actually, it's pretty easy to actually build a site from a technical standpoint. So, you know, you don't usually have to write any code at all. It's sort of drag and drop type thing, which is very comfortable. a lot of people are comfortable working that way. So that's definitely a plus. They also, and further to that, they have these design templates usually that you can use, these themes, where you just sort of pick an existing theme of a website, and you install it. And then you sort of put your own content wherever it sort of fits into that theme. And suddenly, your website looks just like that. So that's a quick way to get one up and running, too. **\[12:28\]** **Sean:** That helps. Have you actually worked with any of these? I personally haven't yet, and I keep thinking I should investigate one on kind of considering Webflow. **\[12:40\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I haven't used any of the hosted ones like Squarespace, or I mean, I've done WordPress stuff, of course, but that's sort of in between, I guess. But no, I haven't used any of the hosted ones. I'd be interested to know what kind of a workflow it is. **\[12:55\]** **Sean:** Right. So we talked about monthly costs, cost of the software, potentially using multiple team, like a developer, designer, a UX designer, and things like that. If I choose to go with a do-it-yourself approach such as WordPress, where it's self-hosted or I could use WordPress.com, or even a website builder like Wix or our web flow, what are the other costs of doing it myself? Like opportunity costs is what I'm kind of looking for. **\[13:39\]** **Mike:** One of the issues I have with those, and this is sort of a more of a philosophical thing, but I really feel strongly that the content of a website, the actual material that you're putting into it should be the first consideration, even like long before you think about a design. So in that sense, I feel like the design should work around the content and not the other way around. But when you're using one of these services that is built on sort of theme themes and templates, pre-designed templates, you're kind of by definition choosing the design first and putting your content into it, like I said earlier, wherever it fits. And that might involve, oh, this paragraph is not going to fit here. You got to cut out some of the lines. I really feel like that's doing things backwards because the most important thing in your website is your actual content. That's what you're trying to promote, so the design should really work around that. So that's one of my main sort of gripes with the theme-based website builders. **\[14:43\]** **Sean:** Right. I've seen many sites where it's like, that's a theme, and you're kind of trying to put **\[14:51\]** **Mike:** a square peg in a round hole. Yeah, exactly. And actually that hits on another issue, which is that the designs, you know, very often when you're looking for a theme on these sites, you're probably going to see them listed in order of popularity, or at least you might even, you know, you might even want to see them in order of popularity. In other words, which themes that they have available are the most popular because they tend to be the best ones, **\[15:16\]** **Sean:** the best looking ones. Well, if you're doing that, then you're to choose a design that doesn't make your website is not going to be unique. How exactly differentiating yourself from your custom, from your competition. **\[15:32\]** **Mike:** Competition, yeah, yeah, exactly. You may end up choosing a theme that's already in use by hundreds of other websites, and then suddenly your website is, yeah, like you said, not unique at all. It's very unoriginal, you know? So that could be an issue. **\[15:47\]** **Sean:** That could affect your bottom line because it doesn't make you any different from your competition, you're commoditizing yourself. Yes, exactly. I was also thinking about opportunity costs. So if you're doing it yourself, how much time do you need to build out a website and make it top of line. If you're using a theme, you're just popping in content but you need to figure out how to use the system. You need to figure out how to customize it the way you want and whether that's using Squarespace or Wix or WordPress themes. Do you really have the time to learn how to use these systems or would it be better for you to use your time building your business? **\[16:45\]** **Mike:** Yeah, exactly. I mean, any of these sites, especially the ones where it's not theme-based and very often a lot of them, you know, they let you install a theme and maybe modify it by, you know, shrinking a particular area of the page or whatever. You can drag the borders of elements around to resize them and that. And that's great, but you still have to do that work, right? So if you're someone who likes to get your hands dirty and really get in there and sort of learn about these, this kind of software, then that's great. But a lot of my clients, the reason they're coming to me is because they have other responsibilities in their jobs. And the last thing they want to do is have to actually manage a website themselves, no matter **\[17:26\]** **Sean:** how easy it is to do, right? Yeah, and if you really think about it, it's not just driving and dropping and things like that, you need to be aware of SEO implications of how things are built on your site. You need to think about the way your call to actions are designed. There's so much involved in a website that the average person doesn't think about. **\[17:58\]** **Mike:** But yeah, it's true, it's like, you're kind of suddenly taking on, well, you're becoming your own web developer, really, I mean, and if that's something, like I said, if that's something you want to take on, then that's great. But usually a lot of people just don't have time to add that into their workload, you know? **\[18:21\]** **Sean:** Right. So Mike, tell me, how, what do you do? Well, I'm the, I approach you for a website, and I say, well, I need, I need a website for my business, and I'm selling widgets. I don't have a storefront. What's your, what's **\[18:46\]** **Mike:** the next step? For me, I guess it's kind of like what you said at the top of the show. more like I just need way more detail about exactly what it is you're looking for, you know, like basically creating a scope for this site, like what features are going to be needed in this site, you know, all kinds of stuff about target audience and that kind of thing. But, and this is going to be the takeaway for me of this episode. If you remember nothing else about what I say, remember this, and that is the true answer to what is a website cost for me is, what is your budget? **\[19:31\]** **Sean:** I don't want to tell you my budget because then you're going to use it all, right, right. **\[19:38\]** **Mike:** This is, okay, so now we're getting into the meat of this, yeah, and I will use it all. I will use all of the money you've prepared to invest. And that's what I should do because by doing that, I'm giving you the best website your money can buy. That's kind of the point, right? Yeah. **\[19:59\]** **Sean:** Well, what if I come back with you for a budget, let's say I have $6,000 available for my website but we've talked about the scope of this site and you feel that it's gonna cost nine or ten thousand dollars what do you do then? For me usually what **\[20:21\]** **Mike:** I do is I'll first of all I'd explain that to the client like you know look the features that you want to include exceed your budget really you can't really you may not be able to afford all these features and I would usually drop a few of the features out and say, OK, if we're willing to cut some corners here, and by features, I mean, like I said, it could be actual features of the site, like blogs and things like that, or it could be features of the build, like usability testing and wire-framing and mood boards and stuff like that. But there may be ways you can cut corners to then reduce the budget, or reduce the cost down to meet the clients' budget. So I would then present them with an option that's like, OK, it's not the full pledge version that you kind of were hoping for, but we can get something that does a great job. And then maybe we can talk about adding features at a later date, right? **\[21:17\]** **Sean:** Like a phase two or a phase three, right, right. So I guess at this point, then we need to come up with a list of must-have features would be nice to have features. And I can live without it features. Right. Right. And then prioritize what you want on your website. Yeah. **\[21:36\]** **Mike:** And like you said, you could you could work it in so that any of those features that you get you get that you rule out of the first build, you could say, okay, we're going to plan to build them in six months down the road when there's more money available or something like that **\[21:52\]** **Sean:** as the phase two. That sounds like a good idea to me. Yeah. Okay. So I actually want to switch gears here a little bit. Earlier last month, I received an email through my contact form and I'm going to read the email out and we can kind of talk about this as an inquiry and how we would respond to it. Great. Hi there. I came across your site and ended clicking the link because you had me at caffeine. The name of my website is caffeine creations. Anyway, I'm looking getting a website done for my personal training fitness business. I've explored the idea of creating my own site via WordPress or Squarespace because it's close to being free. But what I want to know is what differentiates a generic WordPress dream from having a website done by a professional like yourself. I want the site to have the following. blog, photo and videos, eStore to sell programs. Members sign up in the future. Let me know what you think, person's name. I don't want to out anybody, so I'm just gonna say person's name. So let's call this person Bob, which is not the name on the email. Alright, so Bob his email me and his the introduction was his intro was a little bit strange to me I came across your site and ended up clicking the link because you had me at caffeine kind **\[23:27\]** **Mike:** of felt spammy to me it does seem like that doesn't it yeah I almost did not respond **\[23:34\]** **Sean:** right from there so I was going to say you did respond to this guy did you I did respond And you know what, why don't you keep looking going? And I'm going to see if I can find my response in my email. OK. So how would you respond to him while I look for this? **\[23:56\]** **Mike:** So he was wanting to know what differentiates your work from a theme-based site like WordPress or one of these ones I've been discussing, right? I mean, I think one of the benefits that I offer by doing custom stuff like this is that you would have a professional, personal relationship with me, your developer. So I like that, I didn't say that, I like that though. Yeah, when you're working with, let's say, I'll pick on Squarespace. Let's say you go with Squarespace and you build a site through them. If you ever need help or you need to reach out to someone, you're going to be getting their tech support agent who is probably not the same agents you got last time you spoke to them and probably doesn't even live anywhere near you and doesn't know anything about your site. But if you're working with a developer like you or me, there, you know, a relationship will form where you suddenly become very familiar with that person's business. Like I can name them, but I can think of at least two clients I've had where I have worked with them so consistently over many years that at one point it got to the point where no one on staff at that organization had been there longer than I was working with them. So like, yeah, even like senior management would have started in, you know, 2009 and I started working with them in in in 2007 or something. Like where I actually had more memory of the organization than anyone on staff. That's happened. You you were the source of institutional memory. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really valuable because it you don't have to go back that far. But like even things like, you know, if they do a conference every year, maybe we're building the site a section about the conference for this year. And then I might say things like, Well, you remember last year when we did the conference, when you, the client did the conference, we had that issue where people were expecting to see this and that and they kept calling in or whatever. And I might have that experience and that memory of these issues that have happened in the past and be able to bring them up again and try to avoid them the next time. But if you're working with a third party website building service, you're just not going to have that relationship. Right? a record of your tickets. You can take a look at your website. Yeah, they say give me a second so I can read through the past and whatever. Yeah, it's kind of like when you contact your ISP **\[26:40\]** **Sean:** or your telecommunications company. So like if I call Rogers about my internet connection, I talk to a different person every time and they have to go and look at the history and and they don't care about me. **\[26:56\]** **Mike:** Exactly, that's the most important thing. They just don't care because they'll probably never speak to you again after that call, right? **\[27:03\]** **Sean:** Well, that particular person won't. OK, so I opened up the email that I responded to. And so my response was you responded to Bob. Edit that out, Sean. You got it. OK. I pulled up the email where I responded to the person who sent me an email. The guy we're calling Bob. So hi Bob, thanks for contacting me. Squarespace or WordPress are fine for businesses just starting out or with a small budget. You can put together a site quickly that will work is affordable and easy to update. So I'm not trying to, I don't want to come across negative because I'm not, I honestly feel like these are good solutions for people on a budget. I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah. However, the downsides to DIY are that it requires your time to do that you could be working on your own business. The designs are generic, resulting in a site that doesn't differentiate you from your competitors and often have a bloated code base resulting in a slow site with poor performance which directly affects your Google search results. Nice. And specifically thinking about WordPress in that case, I don't know about Wix or Squarespace, how weather code is like. Okay. What you get when you work with a professional is someone who has a deep understanding of best practices with web design and development, a personalized touch that will result in a website that is custom unique and will help differentiate you from your competitors. You can learn more about the published process I provide here and I link to an article, and also an in-control panel user guide, and I link to another article. Both of these links I'll add into the show notes. And then I end with, what is your budget? Custom websites I build start at, and I included a really low number here, because I'm thinking really brochure site of $4,500. So I was really low number. for a basic site without e-commerce. Yeah, so that was my response. I guess I did hit the personalized touch. I didn't think I had done that. **\[29:26\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's good. No, that was a great response. And I'm glad you mentioned, yeah, about, you know, we obviously we've been talking a lot of trash about these services like you're not getting the same value you would working with a developer doing a custom site, but it's not the case that these are just never the right solution. Sometimes they really are. These kind of do it yourself. **\[29:50\]** **Sean:** A lot of times they are, especially for somebody, just starting their business and they don't have a lot of money lying around to pay somebody. Yeah. Get a site up and running. It's better than nothing. And for a lot of times it will be good, but eventually you're gonna hit a wall about what that site can do when you're using a service like that. **\[30:11\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I mean, it could be a good, you could give it as a starting point for your site then later you'll move to a more bespoke custom solution **\[30:18\]** **Sean:** or something like that. Yeah, going back to our talk about cars and houses, you start off with that $9,000 or that $2,000 used car. When you're in university or you're just out of university, you need a car to get around. Once you've got your financial set up, then you can go out and buy a brand new car for $30, $40,000. And, you know, you'll get everything you want out of it. Yeah, or a house. You could buy a condo, one bedroom condo, but when you get buried and you have kids, then you upgrade to like a little bungalow in the burbs or whatever it is that you want. **\[30:58\]** **Mike:** Right. Yeah, it's true. And like about the budget, I mean, something we didn't mention earlier, very often when you say the word budget to a client, like, what's your budget? They don't want to admit what it is. And we did talk about how they don't want to, they're afraid they'll spend, they'll end up being charged every penny of their budget. And we talked about that. **\[31:22\]** **Sean:** Right, because it brings their defenses right up. **\[31:24\]** **Mike:** Yeah, but the thing to remember is your budget is how much are you comfortable investing in your website? So if you give me a figure of $5,000, and I give you a quote that gives a scope of the project and has it pretty close to $5,000, if that shocks you when you get it, then that means your budget is not $5,000 because you're not comfortable spending that amount. It's actually lower than that, right? **\[31:51\]** **Sean:** It might, you know what? I just, something popped in my head. In that case, what it is, is that's the available amount of money you have. Yeah. Versus your budget, which might actually be $2,000. **\[32:03\]** **Mike:** Yeah, exactly. It's, if spending the entire amount is not, you know, makes you feel uncomfortable, then that is not your budget for the website. That is not what you're comfortable spending, which you want to spend as much less than that. And by the way, I would also add that everyone has a budget. You know, sometimes people say, well, we don't have a budget, we're trying to get quotes and that's not true. I could say to you, well, would you spend, I don't know, $1,000 on your site? And then a lot of my clients would say, yeah, definitely. And I could say, would you spend $5,000? And they'd say, yeah, maybe. And if I said, would you spend 50,000? They would, my clients, a lot of them would say, no, we're not spending 50,000, that's too high. So we all know now that it's somewhere between five and 50. And then I could go, you know, well, is it 40,000? Well, no. And eventually we get to a figure somewhere around 10,000 or whatever, which is, okay, that is the roof of what we're prepared to invest in this. And then that is your budget. So then we'll start talking about what features can you get? What can you, what can that money buy you, right? **\[33:09\]** **Sean:** Exactly, that brings me back to when my wife and I were buying a house. This is about five years ago. So we were looking for a house. We got our pre-approved mortgage for X number of dollars, which was more than I wanted to spend. My wife wanted to spend the maximum mortgage. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. That's too much. So our available cash was X, but the real budget was Y, which was about 15 or 20% less than what we had with our deposit. So what ended up happening is we ended up with a house that I like a little bit more than my wife does, but there's definitely some downsides. Now, the market kind of dictated what we got, we didn't get the neighborhood that we wanted, we got a nearby neighborhood. So, you know, budget versus available cash. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I could have had an awesome house in the neighborhood that I wanted, but I felt that it would be stretching our finances too much. I didn't want to have the monthly payments associated with that. **\[34:19\]** **Mike:** Yeah. So, yeah, that's where we ended up at. Yeah, and I mean, with this whole fear that clients sometimes have of like, well, if I give you this budget, then you're just going to try to make me spend every penny of the budget. And I said earlier, you know, that's what you should do because then you're getting what you pay for. There is sometimes a danger where, and I guess this is what a lot of clients are afraid of, where you might be hiring someone who is basically giving you the same services that he gave his last client, but he's charging you more because you had a higher budget. Like that is a valid fear, but the solution is not to hide your budget from the person. The solution is don't work with someone like that, because the term I use, I'm going to call in a phrase here, the term for someone like that is not a web developer. It's a web assembler. It's someone who kind of just installs... **\[35:17\]** **Sean:** I love it. **\[35:18\]** **Mike:** Web assembler. Did you just install WordPress, download a theme, change the colors and put your logo in, and that's it. It's done. exact same process for every client. But for me, I think that a good web developer should be able to adjust the services he offers you based on what your budget is. I think that before you even start talking about money, you should be able to ask your developer, what are some of the things that I would be getting if I had a larger budget, and that I wouldn't necessarily get if I had a smaller budget? And he should be able to give you a list, I have a list right here that can, some of the things that I offer is I have multiple rounds of revisions, maybe I'll offer more if you have a higher budget. I have a Google Analytics package that I sometimes do, where I create these goals in Google Analytics to streamline your SEO and create a custom analytics dashboard to see your visitors and stuff. Things like that, more technical stuff, structured data and stuff like that, that improve usability, maybe a backup solution. Maybe I'll automatically backup your site every week. You don't have to worry about backups. So things like that are features where I can say, if your budget allows for it, I might include these, but if it doesn't, these are things we can cut out, right? **\[36:42\]** **Sean:** Another more concrete example would be, let's say your business has multiple locations across the country, or across your state or province or city, whatever, you got multiple locations. You want to store locator. Well, your budget, if you're low budget, it might be a page where you list, you have a picture of the branch and the address and a phone number and that's it. Yeah. Or you could go a little bit further and then you click through a branch and now you have a Google map with a pin and some directions. Or you could go even further. And on your store locator branch or store locator page you could have a search option or filtering by postal code or zip code or province or whatever and the map could include multiple pins and when you filter it those pins get reduced and the map changes so that you see what fits within your filter. I've done all of these options. And there's a big budget difference between the last option and the first option. Massive budget difference. A couple of thousand dollar difference. And that's just for one feature on your website. Yeah, and various clients might **\[38:11\]** **Mike:** not need that feature. Some of them might not feature Y and the other one. Yeah, and somebody may **\[38:17\]** **Sean:** want that really cool, filterable Google map listing, but they don't have the budget for it. So they go with the first option or the second option. And then later they come back and say, oh yeah, we've got **\[38:30\]** **Mike:** have this. So they find the budget for it. Right. There's nothing wrong with the option that **\[38:35\]** **Sean:** doesn't have that filter roll map. It works perfect. People can still find you. They get the addresses, everything's there. But it looks it's much fancier. It's like having your how driving a Ford versus driving a Ferrari. Yeah. You know, one's like utilitarian and one is like people look at you when you're driving me down the street. That's right. What do you need? Both get the job done, but one's **\[39:06\]** **Mike:** a little flashy. And that goes back to the phase two thing. Just like you save up for anything else, if you want a new smartphone or something, you might save up for it and budget for it, so to speak. And it's the same thing. You could build that original version where you just list your various locations on the page and then save up to do the more complex version as a later phase. **\[39:32\]** **Sean:** Right, you're just wait till your fiscal year turns over and you've got more budget. **\[39:35\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah. **\[39:37\]** **Sean:** There's a number of different ways. So yeah, overall, this has been a really good episode. I hope that this has addressed anyone's questions that they might have. I'm gonna link to a couple of the articles we talked about. There's another article that I'm going to link to as well. It's how much should a website cost you? A definitive pricing guide for you. So I'm going to link to this. I printed it up. It's like 16 pages printed up. So it's a pretty long article. Some of it I disagree with, but for the most part, I think it addresses a lot of the same things that we talked about here. Mike, did you have any final thoughts? **\[40:17\]** **Mike:** No, I think that's a pretty good link that you were talking about the one that articles is very thorough. So, yeah, I won't point out any particular articles or whatever, but yeah, there's plenty on the web, if you search in, what is a website cost, I'm sure everyone wants to tell you. And they'll echo a lot of the stuff we talked about today, I'm sure. **\[40:39\]** **Sean:** Absolutely. Anyways, Mike, welcome to the show as a co-host. So we'll be hearing from Mike in most of our upcoming episodes for the rest of this season and future seasons. Yeah, I can't wait. Alright, thank you. Thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed this show. I'm Sean Smith, your co-host. You can find me at my company website, cappingcreations.ca, on Twitter at C-A-F-E-I-N-E-C-R-E-E-E-E-8-I-O-N, on LinkedIn. My username is Caffeine Creations, or you can search for Sean Smith based in Toronto. You should be able to find me there. **\[41:20\]** **Mike:** And I'm Mike Mele. You can find me at my website, belikewater.ca, or on LinkedIn. My username is Mike Mele, that's M-I-K-E-M-E-L-L-L-A, and I'm on Twitter Twitter.com slash Mike Mele. **\[41:34\]** **Sean:** And don't forget to subscribe to the show and share it with your friends on social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn, you can find us on Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts. **\[41:48\]** **Mike:** And we're always looking for a topic and guest suggestions, so if you have any, hit us up at website 101podcast.com slash contact. Excellent. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for listening. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 02 - 1 [ Season 2 Introduction](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-1/season-2-introduction/) - 2 [ Web Hosting 101](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-2/web-hosting-101/) - 3 [ How to Choose a Web Developer or Agency](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-3/how-to-choose-a-web-developer-or-agency/) - 4 [ How Much Does a Website Cost](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-4/how-much-does-a-website-cost/) - 5 [ Web Jargon Part One](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-5/web-jargon-part-one/) - 6 [ Web Jargon Part Two](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-6/web-jargon-part-two/) - 7 [ Website 101: MVP Strategy for Effective Web Development](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-7/minimal-viable-product/) - 8 [ Copy Editing and Copy Writing](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-8/copy-editing-and-copy-writing/) - 9 [ Photography and Stock Photos](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-9/photography-and-stock-photos/) - 10 [ Ecommerce with Shopify](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-10/ecommerce-with-shopify/) - 11 [ Season 2 Recap and Season 3 Teaser](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-11/season-2-recap-and-season-3-teaser/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>