Small business website cost

The small business website cost you see on a quote is really five or six separate jobs added together: working out what the site must achieve, writing the words, designing the pages, building them, connecting tracking and forms, and launching without breaking anything. When you know those parts, you can tell whether a price is fair and which corners are safe to cut.

With me, a multi-page business website starts at $3,000 (Canadian dollars), and a single landing page at $1,300. The rest of this article explains what sits inside those numbers, so the figure stops being a mystery and becomes a set of decisions you control.

Where the money goes on a typical project

Here is how the effort usually spreads on a five-to-eight-page site for a local service business. The exact balance changes from project to project, but the order of weight rarely does.

Notice that design, the part most people picture, is only one piece of several. Copy and structure together take more time, and they decide whether visitors call.

Parts you can trim without hurting results

Budgets are real, and not every business needs everything on day one. These cuts are usually safe:

• Fewer pages at launch. Start with your three best services instead of twelve thin ones. Add the rest once the core pages work.
• Your own photos instead of a shoot. A clean phone photo of your actual team and work beats a stock image of strangers in hard hats.
• No blog yet. A blog pays off only if someone writes for it regularly. Launch without it and add it when you have the time.
• Simple animations. Movement looks nice in a pitch and rarely changes the number of enquiries.

Parts you should never cut

These look optional on a quote and turn out to be the expensive mistakes:

• Copy written for your customer. "Quality service since 2009" persuades nobody. Clear offers, prices or price ranges and answers to the three questions every customer has will do more than any design trick.
• Mobile layout tested on real phones. Local searches very often happen on a phone. If the call button is hard to tap, you lose the job.
• Analytics. Without it you cannot tell whether the site or the ads are working. I set up GA4, Google Tag Manager and pixels as a separate $650 service, or inside the Start and Growth packages.
• Form delivery. An enquiry that lands in a spam folder is a lost customer. Forms should go to email and, ideally, to a CRM or your phone.
• Ownership. Domain, hosting and code registered in your name. This costs nothing extra and saves a lot of pain later.

Hidden costs owners discover too late

Some costs never appear on the first quote and show up later as invoices or lost time:

1. Page-builder subscriptions. Paid every month for as long as the site exists. My sites are hand-coded or on a custom CMS, so there is no such fee.
2. Plugin licences and fixes. Common on sites assembled from many add-ons. Each update can break something.
3. "Small changes" billed at a premium. Ask upfront how a price change or a new photo is handled.
4. Rebuilding too soon. A site built only for today may need replacing in two years if it cannot grow. A sensible structure from the start avoids that.

If you are weighing whether to rebuild an existing site instead, my article on signs you need a redesign helps you decide.

Three realistic budgets

To make this concrete, here are three typical small-business situations and what they usually need. Your case may differ; these are starting points for a conversation, not packages carved in stone.

A new trades business, one main service. A landing page with a clear offer, photos of real jobs, a call button and a short form, plus analytics so you know which ad works. From $1,950 in the Start package.

An established local business that wants more enquiries. A business website with a page per service, prices or ranges, examples of work, an FAQ and Google Ads set up from day one. From $4,300 in the Growth package.

A company with several locations or a big catalogue. A large site on a custom CMS with an edit panel built around your content, so your staff can update locations, staff and prices without calling anyone. From $11,900.

You can see the details on website pricing and compare scopes on the business websites page.

Is the cost worth it?

Do a two-line calculation before you decide. Take the average profit from one new customer. Divide the website cost by that number. The result is how many extra customers the site must bring over its life to pay for itself. For a renovation company, a dental clinic or a cleaning business with repeat clients, that number is often small.

Then look at what you already spend. If you are paying for ads that lead to a weak page, a better page can lower your cost per enquiry without adding a dollar to the ad budget. That is often the fastest way a new site earns back its price.

Every project with me comes with a written agreement, deadlines in the contract, payment in three stages and direct contact with the person doing the work. If you want a second opinion on a quote you already have, a free 30-minute consultation is a good place to start.