There’s nothing worse than starting a website project and realising mid-project that the website costs may change from what we’ve initially agreed. Whilst it doesn’t happen often, it can happen.
You may be wondering how that could happen.
I hear you loud and clear. We hate having to change the website cost, even by a small amount, but occasionally we simply have to.
Most of our website projects go ahead as expected, around 90%, where the price we quoted at the start of the project is the price paid at the end.
That does, however, leave a 10% gap where some of our clients end up paying more than originally quoted.
Still wondering how that could be? Don’t worry. In this post, I want to explain why this happens and how it can be prevented.
When we display our fees, we do everything possible to be completely transparent. You’ll be clear on what you’re getting and what the cost will be upfront with no hidden fees cropping up mid-project.
As a guide for how much we charge, most of the websites we build cost between £2500 and £5000, but occasionally some websites cost upwards of £8000.
The pricing above depends entirely on what the project requires, the goals you’re hoping to achieve and how long it will take.
Before we start the process of putting a cost together for your website, we have a clear discovery process mapped out to extract all of the key information from you and your business so we have a clear picture of what you’re aiming to achieve from a new website.
Completing this process at the very beginning positions us in the best place possible to providing an accurate proposal for the project and avoiding variances in costs later down the line.
During our discovery process, we’ll ask you about:
We put in the extra time and effort at the beginning by asking these questions as every answer you provide could change the direction of the project quite dramatically and the amount of work involved.
The more information we can gather at this very early stage, the more accurate our proposal can be.
You may still be wondering, if we spend so much time asking questions to provide you with an accurate proposal, how could the costs possibly change?
I’ve broken down the main reasons why this might happen below.
This is one of the main reasons a website’s total cost can increase mid-project. Adding extra features or services to our original proposal will understandably increase the price.
We understand that things may change slightly during the project and you may want to make some tweaks which is why we try to be as flexible as possible.
However, some things do have to be billed. For example, we may start the project and the scope of work is for a website to advertise your business. After starting the project, you decide you also want to be able to sell products online with a shopping cart. This will need to be charged separately as it’s something which wasn’t included in our initial proposal and would take more time and resources to implement.
Or, you may now require a booking system for taking appointments via your website. We may require third-party tools to operate this and therefore there will be additional costs for us to configure and implement this.
The same principle also applies to:
Essentially, if it’s something that wasn’t agreed at the start of the project, it could increase the final price for the website.
Before starting the website project, we aim to establish how long the process may take. Most of our projects complete in 8-12 weeks but this depends on a lot of factors surrounding the project scope.
As we’re building a website for your unique business requirements, it may be sooner than this or may take longer. Either way, we’ll be able to give you a good indication of the project duration at the start of the project.
Once the website project has been started, we’ll work with you to set a launch date for the new website. This date will then be added to our calendar and other projects will be scheduled around this so your website has our upmost attention during this phase and ensure everything is ready for launch.
If we do agree on a launch date and you decide to change it, it may increase the final project price.
For example, if you wanted to bring the launch date forward and go live sooner than originally planned, this generally means we’ll have to rearrange our calendar and block out additional time to work on your website. Where this is the case, the project price is likely to increase.
Before we start building your website, we aim to take every precaution to get your website exactly how you want it.
After the initial discovery phase, we’ll move on to the design stage. This involves us mocking up the page designs for you to review before we go into building them.
This will let you see the designs and provide feedback. You can let us know what you like, what you don’t like and what you want to see changed, added or deleted.
Based on your feedback, we’ll make changes to the designs and send the revisions to you for review. Once the designs have been approved, we move into the development phase and get the pages built.
During the design phase, this is your opportunity to let us know about any changes you wish to make before we make these into a functioning website.
If you change your mind on the design AFTER they’ve been approved and we’ve started building the site, we may have to charge extra depending on how much needs to be rebuilt in order to accommodate the changes. This doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to make changes. There will be tweaks you’ll want to make and if they’re relatively small, we will be able to make these without additional costs.
However, we do always recommend that you make sure you’re happy with the designs before we move into the development phase to avoid any unnecessary fees.
If your business is on a strict budget and you need to ensure the project doesn’t go over the initial proposal we provide, please take the time to plan the project as much as possible before proceeding with us.
Download our free 5 Steps To A Winning Website Project guide to set yourself on the path to a perfect website and where you can learn the secrets to a successful website project.
This ensures you’re fully aware of the areas to consider before we have an initial conversation.
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Hopefully, this has provided you with a better understanding of why the project price can increase during the build. Whilst we don’t charge for every small change (some larger agencies do), we do have to charge where more time and/or resources are involved.
