What Drives the Cost of a Small Business Website in Virginia

A website quote is mostly a count of work: how many pages, who writes the words, where the photos come from, and what the site has to do besides sit there. Booking, online sales, second-language pages, connections to other software and hosting all add to it. Two quotes for "a small business website" can describe very different projects, so find out what each one includes before you compare the totals.

Below is each thing that moves a quote, why it moves it, and what to ask. At the end there's a checklist for putting two or three quotes side by side.

How many pages, and what kind

Pages are the first thing most designers count, but they don't all take the same effort. A contact page with a form is quick. A service page that explains one job properly, with its own photos, common questions and a clear next step, takes real time to plan, write and build.

Say you run a landscaping company in Chesterfield County with four services: design, installation, lawn care and drainage. You work in Midlothian, the City of Richmond and parts of Henrico. A sensible site might be a home page, four service pages, an about page, a contact page, a page of finished projects and one or two area pages where you have real work to show. That's ten or eleven pages. A quote for "a five-page website" won't cover it, and pages added later are often priced one at a time.

Before you ask anyone for a quote, write a rough page list. It doesn't need to be final. It gives every designer the same starting point, which is the only way the numbers will be comparable.

Who writes the words

Copywriting is the line item most often left vague. Some quotes assume you'll supply all the text. Some include "basic copy" that turns out to be a paragraph per page. Some include a writer who interviews you and drafts every page.

Any of these can be fine, but they're priced very differently, and the words do more than the design to decide whether a visitor gets in touch. If you plan to write the text yourself, be honest about whether you will. A finished design can sit empty for months while it waits on the owner's copy.

If the quote includes writing, ask three things: roughly how many words per page, how many rounds of edits, and whether the writer will talk to you or just rework your old site. Service pages are where good writing earns its cost. A plumber in Virginia Beach whose water heater page explains what the job involves, how long it takes and what changes the price has answered the questions a customer would otherwise have to call and ask.

Photos

Stock photos are cheap, and visitors can usually tell. Real photos of your crew, your shop and your finished work cost more, either in your time or in a photographer's day. Quotes handle this in different ways: some include licensed stock images, some include editing photos you send, and a few include a shoot.

If your phone is full of job photos, that's often enough to start. Ask whether the designer will choose, crop and compress them, or expects you to hand them over ready to use. Oversized photo files are a common reason a small site loads slowly on a phone, so somebody has to do that work.

Forms, booking and quote requests

A basic contact form is standard. The cost comes from what the form has to connect to:

• A booking calendar that shows your real availability
• A quote form whose questions change with the service chosen
• File uploads, so customers can send a photo of the problem
• Spam protection
• Notifications that reach the right person, or land in the software you already use

Say you run a mobile dog grooming van serving Ashburn and Brambleton. A form that emails you is one job. A booking flow that checks your calendar, takes a deposit and sends reminders is a bigger one, and it usually means a paid booking service plus the hours to set it up and test it. Ask whether the quote covers setting up any outside tool, and who pays that tool's monthly fee.

Selling online

A store changes a project more than any other single item. Every product needs a photo, a description, a price, stock levels and shipping settings. You also need payment processing, tax settings, order emails, a returns page and a clear picture of how an order gets from the site to your shelf or your kitchen.

Eight products with no options is a very different job from three hundred products in four sizes each. Tell designers how many products you'll have at launch and who will add new ones. Tax settings for online sales are a question for your accountant, not your designer. If you make wine, beer or cider, Virginia ABC regulates alcohol in the commonwealth, so read its current rules at abc.virginia.gov before you plan a store around shipping it.

Pages in a second language

A business that serves Spanish speakers in Manassas or Korean speakers around Annandale may want pages in a second language. Done properly, that means separate translated pages, written or checked by a fluent speaker, with markup that tells search engines which version is which. A plug-in that swaps the text automatically is cheaper, but it often reads badly to native speakers.

Every translated page is another page to write, check and keep up to date, so this adds to the copy and setup work. A sensible start is to translate your main service pages and the contact page rather than the whole site, then add more once you see who uses them.

Connections to other software

Integrations are the links between your site and the tools you already pay for: an email list, scheduling or job management software, an inventory system, a payment processor. Each one is small on its own. Together they can take more hours than the design.

List the tools you use and mark which ones the site needs to talk to. A designer who knows those tools can give you a firm number. One who doesn't will have to guess, and guesses tend to run low.

Hosting, the domain and who owns what

Hosting is where the site lives. Some designers bundle it into a monthly fee with updates and backups. Some hand you the finished site and let you host it. Some build on a platform that has its own subscription. Three questions settle most of this:

1. Whose name is the domain registered in? It should be yours, in an account you can log into.
2. If you stop working with the designer, can you move the site, and what would you need to take with you?
3. Who applies updates and keeps backups after launch, and is that in the quote or a separate monthly charge?

A low build price tied to a monthly fee you can't easily leave may not be the cheaper option. Add up each offer over two or three years with your own numbers before you decide.

Accessibility

A site that works with a keyboard and a screen reader, with readable contrast and labeled form fields, takes a bit more care to build. It's much easier to do from the start than to retrofit. The U.S. Department of Justice enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act; read its current guidance on websites at ada.gov, and ask each designer which accessibility standard they build to. Many name WCAG, the guidelines published by the W3C.

Where our price sits

Our websites start at $400 one time, and each one is quoted per project once we've seen the page list and what the site needs to do. That's one reference point, not a market rate. We can't tell you what other designers charge, and their prices will depend on what they include, which is why the list below matters. You can see how we approach builds on our Virginia web design page.

A checklist for comparing quotes

Lay each quote next to this list and mark every line as included, extra or missing.

• Pages: the count and the names, matched against your own page list
• Words: who writes them, roughly how many per page, how many rounds of edits
• Photos: stock, your own photos edited, or a shoot
• Forms: how many, what each connects to, spam protection, where messages go
• Booking or deposits: which tool, who sets it up, who pays its monthly fee
• Store: products at launch, who enters them, payment and shipping setup
• Second language: which pages, who translates, who checks the translation
• Integrations: each tool named
• Hosting: included or separate, the monthly cost, what it takes to move
• Domain: registered in your name, in your account
• After launch: updates, backups, small edits, and the price of each
• Accessibility: the standard they build to
• Timeline: start date, launch date, and what you have to deliver by when
• Ownership: you own the content and can take the site with you

A quote with several blanks isn't necessarily a bad quote. It usually means the price covers less than you assumed, so ask about the gaps before you sign anything.

If you'd like an outside view of your current site before you collect quotes, fill in our free site survey. It will tell you what is worth keeping, which makes the page list above easier to write.

Judge a website quote against demand and the pages your buyers need: Is SEO Worth It for a Small Business in Virginia?; SEO for Northern Virginia Government Contractors: Getting Found Beyond SAM.gov.