Your website sits at the centre of your marketing strategy and sales process — and if it doesn’t, it should.
Your website needs to do more than provide a good user experience and some information about what you do. In 2023, your website needs to reach your audience, drive leads and convert. If it’s not doing that, it’s not doing its job.
And for businesses where everything happens online, like for tech and SaaS companies, your website means just that: everything. When the average conversion rate for B2B sales website is 2.23%, you need to make sure your site is up to scratch.1 That’s why to make sure it’s done right, it’s crucial to get the experts in. That means enlisting the help of a website agency, with all the expertise you need under one roof.
And while it’s important to pay a fair price, when your website sits at the centre of your entire marketing strategy it’s more important that you don’t skimp. Getting the best website for your needs might be the best investment you can make.
So how much does it cost? Read on for a breakdown of how much a website agency costs in 2023.
The cost of a website agency in 2023
Typically, costs start around £15,000 and reach up go to £90,000. This is a huge range, and the reason is that the range of businesses requires a huge range of services.
For example, a small business with strong website architecture, engaging content and good SEO might need a simple design refresh. But a big tech business with a complex offering or a business going to market might need their entire website parsed over and refreshed, or built from the ground up. This might include custom functionality, an entire marketing strategy, and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) for 25+ pages.
The price you pay also changes on the skills businesses bring to the table. For example, you might have a great copywriter in-house but need an agency for design and development expertise, or have an in-house designer but need help migrating your website.
So let’s break down the costs of hiring a website agency, from the base cost to creating web content.
| Project Size | Small | Medium | Large |
| General Base Cost | £5k – 9k | £9k – 22k | £22k – 55k |
| Website Migration | £2k – 5k | £4k – 6k | £6k – 10k |
| Website Marketing Strategy | £2k – 5k | £4k – 6k | £6k – 10k |
| Custom Template Design and Build | £2k – 5k | £4k – 6k | £6k – 10k |
| Custom Functionality | Varies | Varies | Varies |
| Agency Creates Web Content | £2k – 5k | £4k – 6k | £6k – 10k |
General base cost
Depending on your needs, this base costs of your website project could be building your entire website, or the first steps in the journey to going live.
- Small business: £5k – £9k
- Medium business: £9k – £22k
- Large business: £22k – £55k
At this end of the price scale, you can get a website designed, tested, built and live. But it won’t include other important factors, from creating a marketing strategy around your website to including custom functionality. If you’ve got this in-house or already set up, great: you can pick and choose what you need from an agency’s expertise. But if you don’t, you might need to go beyond the foundations.
Website migration
Increasing your site’s speed, functionality, SEO or improving user experience all depends on the right hosting and the right platform. If none of this is up to scratch, you might need to migrate your website. This can mean a range of things, including migrating from one environment to another or changing the domain name and, crucially, making sure this all goes smoothly.
- Small business: +£2k – £5k
- Medium business: +£4k – £6k
- Large business: +£6k – £10k
It can also include redirecting old web pages to new pages because migration can impact SEO and this reduces any negative fallout. Getting this right is important because:
- You need the knowledge: It’s a process that requires real technical know-how and skills to do well. Agency experts know how to do this right.
- Doing it wrong can cost you more: Amateurish migration might mean the loss of your traffic, which in turn means loss of sales when the new site goes live.
Website marketing strategy
You can have the nicest looking website in the world, but if there isn’t a strategy to make sure it does what it’s meant to — reach your target audience, drive traffic and convert leads — then the investment you’ve made could have a poor return. A website marketing strategy puts your site at the centre of your marketing and of your business.
- Small business: +£3k – £5k
- Medium business: +£3k – £7k
- Large business: +£6k – £8k
This includes:
- Site maps: Ensuring there’s a coherent and well-thought-out conversion journey built into your website’s architecture, so people are funnelled to convert rather than aimlessly clicking about (or go back to their search results).
- SEO: Making sure the right pages are optimised to rank highly in search engine results pages. But this doesn’t mean going overkill; you don’t need to shoehorn SEO into every page.
- Broader marketing: A website strategy for just your site is important, but supporting that with a wider marketing strategy that actually brings people to it can be just as important.
Further reading: There’s a lot that goes into a marketing strategy, and fitting your website design into that is a critical part. For a more in-depth look at just how important it is, check out our guide — Website Redesign and Why it is Integral to Your Marketing Strategy
Custom template design & build
With a unique offering, many businesses want that uniqueness reflected in their site design. Fitting your business into a template isn’t always to express what it does and what your business is about, from what it looks like, to how users interact, to how it’s hosted.
You can expect this to cost:
- Small business: +£3k – £5k
- Medium business: +£3k – £7k
- Large business: +£3k – £8k
Custom built designs and builds, by definition, stray from templates and create something bespoke. This can take longer and require custom skills, which can throw up challenges. Due to the range of people in-house, agencies have the experience in and the skills to overcome these challenges.
Custom functionality
Most websites come with interactive functionality. Boxes move, icons change colour, graphics pop up. But you might want custom functionality to highlight certain parts of your site, highlighting what you want visitors to see and focus on. Gaining custom functionality can set you apart: up to 70% of small businesses don’t use these interactive functions on their website.2
The cost varies depending on a business’s needs, with more or more complex functions coming in at a higher cost than standard template functions.
Creating web content
Creating content for your website can’t be underestimated. With 44% of respondents saying they consume 3 to 5 pieces of content before even engaging with a business, you need to be on top of your content game.3
- Small business: +£3k – £5k
- Medium business: +£3k – £7k
- Large business: +£3k – £8k
This means
- Creating the right content: Content writers work alongside your business to understand which topics to produce content on, from blog to video content.
- Using SEO: This gets people to your site in the first place by ranking highly in search engine results pages. Not every piece of content needs SEO, but without it, you’ll be relying on paid advertising tactics to drive people to your content and site.
- Converting: Content needs to be interesting and engaging to fulfil its goal, whether that’s getting someone to sign up to a mailing list or make a purchasing decision.
For SaaS businesses in particular, which take elements of or fully pursue a product-led growth strategy, your website is your knowledge base, so it needs content that attracts new customers while retaining the current customer base.
Pro tip: Great web design takes time and experience, but for some industry tips on what works and what doesn’t, check out our blog — 5 B2B Web Design Practices You Need to Deploy.
How much does it cost to hire a freelance web designer?
If you think an agency might not be for you, you could consider the freelancer route. Estimates for freelancer fees range from a daily rate of £100+ to £750+ per day,4 to around £1,000 to £4,000 for a simple website. However, you’ve got to remember that a freelancer is one person with a limited skill set. If you hire a freelancer to create a website from the ground up, you won’t get the varied expertise you need to make your website your growth engine.
There’s always an option to build a freelance team. But the difference here is that you need to find all the right people for the job, individually. And once you’ve found them, you’ll need to be a project manager to coordinate their work.
How much does it cost to do it yourself?
Building and maintaining a website yourself is the cheapest option, ranging from as little as £12 to £40 a month. Website builders like Squarespace and Wix make it relatively straightforward, and cheap, to provide a simple website.
But while it’s cheap, it’s not free in effort, time or money. Doing it yourself can take much longer than it would with external help. And the biggest potential cost is the sales you could lose from a site with limited functionality and reach.
You might know how to build a website, for example, but have no experience writing content, a marketing strategy, or be able to understand when web migration would be a good idea. In reality, if you want a website that will do everything you want, you can’t do it all yourself.
Why use a website agency?
From designers to copywriters, agencies have everything you need for building the right website for you — but it’s not a one-size fits all. A web design company offers a whole range of services to help get the specific expertise you need.
Get the right people
That means getting the right expertise plural. Drawing on the expertise listed above, you can see that you’ll probably need more than one person to create a website that can truly sit at the heart of your marketing. That means enlisting the help of web dev and designers, as well as conversion rate optimisation strategists, content marketers, copywriters (the list goes on).
Plus, unlike DIY or with freelancers, at an agency everyone is working together, likely in the same office, helping them reach the shared goal and maintain that big picture view.
And get them at the right time
You only need this expertise temporarily: during the build of the website. If you’re going to do it yourself, you’d need to bring the experts in-house so you can oversee their work. With freelancers, you might end up with a whole troop of different people — a copywriter here, a marketing strategist there — while making sure their availability matches up. A website agency on the other hand, helps provide the expertise you need, in one package and when you need it.
And to keep your website agile and easy to update, you can keep whatever skills you need for the long term, while bringing expertise back in as and when you need it. As your website iterates, web developers can make sure it stays up to date, content writers can keep your information up to date, and designers can add custom functionality.
Pro tip: To help figure out what your website needs and how to budget for it, check out our blog — How to Budget for Your Next Website Redesign.
Put your website at the core of your marketing
In 2023, a good website agency needs to do more than build an attractive website with a good user experience. A good website agency also needs to be a good marketing agency, putting your site at the heart of your overall sales and marketing efforts.
Agencies make sure your website has crucial elements, including:
- Clear architecture: Optimised for usability and SEO, creating a clear information hierarchy.
- Great user experience: With quick speeds and an easy-to-understand site that moves seamlessly across desktop, tablet or mobile.
- Conversion optimisation: From landing pages to optimised CTAs, agencies make sure your website guides your customer to the right place.
- Domain authority: Using SEO strategies, your website can gather authority and rank higher.
Freelancers’ experience is limited and amassing a team can be expensive and unorganised. Doing it yourself is cheap but, in most cases, just not enough. A website agency can provide the services you need in an organised way and for a fair price.
Gripped is a B2B website design agency with experience designing and building sites for a range of clients. Providing value for money, and expertise you can rely on, we provide all the web solutions you’ll need. To see how we can help, get your free website audit today.
1 B2B Conversion Rates Explained with Numbers – UpLead
2 20+ Web Design Statistics You’ll Need to Create the Perfect Website for 2022