How Much Does a Professional Website Design Cost?

Before we start answering the question “How much does a website design cost”, let us provide you with several quick facts. First of all, it takes users somewhere around 50 milliseconds to understand if they like the website and decide if they want to stay. Even the most useful content won’t be able to impress a user within such a small amount of time, but a good design can save the situation.

Secondly, the first impressions of the website are 94% design-related. Content still matters, but first impressions are mostly related to design — sorry, but that rule saying something like “don’t judge a book by its cover” doesn’t work with websites. Thirdly, almost 90% of users are not likely to visit the website again if they had a bad experience when visiting it before.

You see, the statistics are just unbeatable — your website has to look good! Otherwise, your potential clients will go to your competitors, and your revenue will be extremely unimpressive. Unfortunately, a really good website can cost a lot. So check this article to learn everything about web design pricing! As you delve into understanding web design pricing, don’t overlook the art of estimating software development cost. Mastering both aspects ensures your digital presence not only captivates but also functions seamlessly, elevating your business above the competition.

Professional Website Design Cost: 3 Options to Choose From

Before we start explaining everything about the cost of web design, let us remind you what the word “design” actually means here. Some people confuse design with building a website, but they are different things. While building a website involves getting a domain name, hosting, and other things, the design is built around the following graphic design agency components:

• User Interface design (or UI design) — it is all about your users’ interaction with your site. A good user interface should be clear, responsive, attractive, consistent, and concise.
• User Experience design (or UX design) — sorry for the repetition, but that’s users’ experience when using a website. When everything is fine about UX, the site is easy to use: the navigation is fine, the content fulfills the users’ needs, etc.
• Graphic design. This component is related to images, icons, buttons, color schemes, and so on.

Keep in mind that all these components are important, but UI design deserves the title of top priority. The site should look good, but no one will pay attention to the images and colors if the website doesn’t work well.

Now it is time to tell you everything about each of the 3 ways to design a website. Let’s start with the cheapest one.

Designing a Website on Your Own

There are enough platforms where you can get a more or less nice design without spending loads of money: WordPress, SquareSpace, and others. These sites are pretty easy to use, so you will be able to do everything on your own without deep knowledge and experience in design.

This is how most of these sites work: you go there, check available templates and themes, make your choice, and add some features if it is essential. That’s it! However, you can’t really be creative here — all your creativity will be bound to already existing templates. And what is much worse, you can spend hours looking for a nice template, only to find out that it is already used by another website.

This option can work for a startup with a limited budget or a small company (or individual) which doesn’t need a huge, complicated website. For instance, if you are a photographer, the DIY way will be perfect for your portfolio.

Being a loner: what’s the price?

Again, there is no exact price, as some templates and diverse add-ons are free (the most basic ones), while the others may cost something. For instance, some themes offered at WordPress cost over $100. Besides, there are several plans to choose from. Here they are:

The full list of features included in every plan can be checked here. All the prices mentioned in the table are per month (billed yearly).

Squarespace offers only two plans:

Each plan has two prices, and the difference between them is that, for instance, you pay $12 per month for the Personal plan and the service is billed yearly. If you prefer to pay every month, then your price is $16. The same thing applies to the Business plan. To take a look at all the features available, click here.

Being a loner: how not to fail

Here is a quick tip for you — if you are working on your website design on your own, think about hiring a freelancer (we will tell you more details on this strategy in the next paragraph!) who will customize your site, at least a bit.

This won’t cost a lot, as you will already have a template. Apart from this, you can ask a designer to create some special branding materials for your website. Believe us, the template you got at WordPress will look much better with a unique logo, than without it.

Hiring a Freelance Designer

Hiring a freelancer is among the most popular options, and it perfectly suits companies that don’t need an in-house designer (or those which are too small to hire such a worker). However, cooperating with a freelance designer is a more complicated challenge than doing everything on your own — you will have to explain your idea to another person.

Besides, it is important to make your technical task as detailed as possible. Otherwise, in the end, you may get something really different from what you wanted. Depending on the functionality of your future website, you may also have to hire a developer. This task will increase your web design cost, but you can try to find a person who is a developer and designer at the same time.

Working with a freelancer: what’s the price?

There are three factors which have an impact on web design price when you hire a freelancer. The first one is the workload: the more you need, the more you pay. The second factor is experience: the services of an experienced and skilled designer usually cost much more than those offered by a beginner. And finally, the third factor — the location.

Yes, you can hire a designer from Silicon Valley, but cooperating with someone, for example, from India can cost much less. To understand the market better, take a look at the data we collected for you.

In the table, we provided the average cost of website design in different regions, and the same thing applies to developers’ rates. And one more time — these rates are not exact.

They just show you the cheapest locations in terms of looking for freelance designers and developers. Hiring a person who is a designer and developer at the same time, will cost you more. For example, in the United Kingdom, such a freelancer may ask for around $40 per hour.

Working with a freelancer: how to save a bit

Here is a little tip for you — if your future website is going to have a lot of different pages with the same structure, there is no need for a designer to work on each of them separately. You can simply hire a person to create a unique template, and then add the content on your own.

Cooperating With a Design Agency

Hiring the whole team for working on your website design would be the best solution in case you need a really complex site. When choosing this option, you can usually count on a full set of services. You won’t have to look for a person who is a UX designer, UI designer, graphic designer, content writer, and developer at the same time. No, you will get a team of experts, and each of them will deliver a particular function. Sure, it won’t work like this in case you choose a wrong team, but let’s imagine that you made the right choice, and hired true professionals.

Hiring an entire agency: what’s the price?

Yes, working with an entire agency can cost you a lot, but there is one more huge advantage you should know about. Right after you decide on an agency and discuss with them all the details, there is virtually nothing else for you to do. It will still be essential to check their progress, but you won’t have to spend your time communicating with every particular freelancer, coordinating the designing process, etc.

Team members will do everything on their own, so you will only have to check the results and provide them with feedback. Regarding the prices; the average web design cost for a simple website may vary between $15,000 and $20,000, more complicated projects may cost up to $40,000, or more. Everything depends on the complexity of your website and the experience of the agency.

Hiring an entire agency: how to get the best deal

As usual, here is a little tip for you — before signing a contract with an agency, ask for a price breakdown. This trick will help you to make sure that you will pay only for those services which you really need. Otherwise, you may pay for something absolutely unnecessary.

So, How Much Does Website Design Cost?

You already know that hiring an agency is expensive but at the same time the most reliable and convenient option. Additionally, working on your own is the cheapest way you can choose when it comes to professional web design pricing. However, this way can also bring you questionable results, unless you are more or less a professional designer, or don’t count on anything except the most basic website. We have even provided you with average prices.

But there is one more thing we have to tell you. At the beginning of the article, we have mentioned UI design, UX design, and graphic design. Obviously, all these stages of the designing process do not cost the same. So, here is one more answer to the question “How much does web design cost” — average rates of all the experts you may need. Take a closer look at the table.

Again, we can’t tell you the exact professional web design price — we can only provide you with some useful data and average prices you can focus on when choosing the most suitable design strategy. Apart from this, the final price will be affected by the scope of work you want to be done. However, if you want to learn more details, or already have an idea of a design, don’t hesitate to contact us. We would be happy to discuss your idea, give you a more detailed overview of the project’s price, and help you hire dedicated web designers.

Michal Kapias

Chief Technology Officer

Software developer deep by heart, loves reusable components. Always put client’s needs in a first place, to find a perfect balance for golden triangle: time, money and functionality.