As we announced in our last post we have conducted a survey of New Zealand web site design costs. For the purpose of our survey we requested quotes from 24 web design firms from all over New Zealand including Auckland, Wellington, Tauranga, Palmerston North, Whitianga and Napier on the North Island and Christchurch, Nelson and Wanaka on the South Island.
For the purpose of the quote we specified that we were looking for a quotation for a basic 5 page brochure website, that we were supplying, logo, photos and text and that we wanted to be able to update the website via a content management system.
One of the first surprises was the response rate. Out of 24 enquiries we only got 13 replies back to our quotation request, almost half of the web companies did not even respond. Out of the 13 responses we got 10 actual quotes, one replied to tell us they were not currently taking on clients, one referred us to another company and the other one would not give us a quote without meeting face to face.
The next surprise was the wide range of prices quoted to us. The most expensive price quoted to us was a whopping $15,000 (yes that’s 3 zeros) and the best deal we found was $1,200. That’s a quite a range! We sought further clarification of the justification for the $15k brochure website and were informed that they were a ‘top tier’ web design company and as a ‘larger operator’ their costs were higher.
Here are all the prices that were quoted to us in order of most expensive to least expensive:
$15000
$8000 (quoted a range of $7000-$9000)
$5500
$4000 (quoted a range of $3000-$5000)
$2745
$2500
$2495
$2375
$2075
$1200
That’s an average price of $4589 and a median of $2620.
It is apparent that the sky is the limit when it comes to how much you can pay to get even the most basic of websites built. While some larger companies may be able to afford an ‘expense is no object’ approach to having a website built, most smaller companies will need to take a more pragmatic budget minded approach. A professional looking website that checks all the boxes in terms of search engine optimisation and customer conversion does not have to cost thousands.