Responsive Website: How Much Do They Cost?

There is often a lot of confusion as to what a responsive website is and the difference between a responsive website and a normal website. A responsive website is built with a coding language that is designed to detect the screen size of the device a visitor is using to view the website and adjust the website’s structure and design to accommodate the screen of each user, whereas a normal website does not adapt to different screen sizes. This website feature is on pace to become the new standard in web design as mobile device usage increases worldwide, and as any website pricing calculator will demonstrate, responsive websites have become extremely affordable as a result of their popularity.  

The fact is, ensuring that your website is built to be both responsive and structured to accommodate mobile users is probably one of the most important investments you will ever make in your business’ online presence. This point is demonstrated by the fact that over 50% of all search engine queries were submitted from mobile devices in 2016, and recently, Google has seen huge increases in mobile search traffic for certain terms. For example, mobile searches for “24/7 customer service” have increased 400% from 2016 to 2018, and mobile searches for online shopping increased 180% during the same time period. As these statistics demonstrate, customers are now using their mobile devices as a primary means of viewing websites and locating businesses online – a major industry challenge and topic of discussion for digital strategy executives at GDS Group’s marketing summits. As such, every website should be built to be responsive, but there often misconceptions about how much it costs overall to build a responsive website and structure it properly for mobile users. As such, the web design team at OTM has compiled an outline of how much it typically costs to build and properly structure a responsive website.

Responsive Website Costs

As with any website, there are certain costs associated with building the structure of the website itself. These costs can vary based on the type of website you are having built, but you can generally anticipate paying $2,500-$3,500 to have the structure of your website built, which includes one year of hosting services that will ultimately cost $19 per month after the first year.

Moreover, at a minimum, you should purchase both a secure website certificate, which will cost $175 annually, and a domain registration that typically costs $25 annually. So, you can expect to pay between $2,700-$3,700 to have the foundation of your website built.

Content and Image Costs for Responsive Websites

When you are having your responsive website built, you always have to keep in mind that your website will be viewed on both desktop computers and mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. As such, you need to have a healthy amount of content and images to keep your website visitors engaged. Typically, professionally written content will cost $100 per page and stock images will cost $25 per image. Moreover, you need to employ a web designer that uses specific techniques to optimize your website to load quickly on mobile devices and accommodate the browsing habits of mobile website visitors. These techniques include:

• Writing content that is primarily comprised of small descriptive paragraphs that are easy for mobile and desktop users to read and consume
• Using images as part of an overall strategy rather than placing multiple images on every page
• Using images that are compressed and embedded in a load-friendly format
• Testing different image resolutions for quicker load times
• Actively testing mobile load speeds to ensure optimal results

Custom Responsive Website Features

In addition to the elements referenced above, there are certain custom website features that should be incorporated into each responsive website to encourage users to engage with your website and allow you to operate your website efficiently as well as increase the likelihood that your website will rank well in the search engine results of major search engines like Google. The features you choose to incorporate into your website can vary based on the type of product or service your business sells. The type of feature and the cost of including each feature in the overall design of your website is listed below:

• Image portfolio or product catalog – $400
• Social media feed – $250
• Automatic translation plugin – $100
• Advanced product filter – $300
• Related products feature – $250
• Custom payment gateway – $500

Features such as a social media feed encourage customers to engage with your website by posting about it on social media while features such as an advanced product filter and a custom payment gateway create an effortless browsing and conversion experience for both desktop and mobile users. As such, adding additional custom features to your website can not only increase its ability to attract online traffic but also add value to your business by yielding a superior conversion rate. One of the most reliable ways to determine a website’s cost is to plug options into a website pricing calculator.

Build your Responsive Website Today!

The responsive web design specialists at On The Map Marketing have helped hundreds of business owners build a responsive website that adds value to their business and attracts new customers. So, if you are looking to build a responsive website for your business, give the responsive web design team at On The Map Marketing a call today to find out how our web design specialists can help you.