One of the main questions business owners ask when seeking website design services is: What is the cost of website development in Adelaide? There is no standard response here and you can expect to pay based on factors like the type of website you need, the complexity, the competitiveness of your industry, SEO considerations, number of pages, customised features included, etc. Most Web Developers will be happy to discuss your project or idea, and give you some guidance on what it would cost to build it with them. This discovery session is typically free and can be valuable information to inform your decision with no obligation.
To get a feel for it and a ball park estimate of what you might be up for, we cover basic business website pricing so you can get an idea of how much to set aside in your marketing budget.
The Quick Answer: Cost of Website Development in Adelaide
Expect to pay anywhere between $2,500 and $15,000 for custom website development in Adelaide. While this may seem high to move around some pixels on a screen, remember the value it can return with additional clients, sales or customers. If each new lead the site brings to you is worth $300, then after just 10 new clients, it would have paid for itself. Unlike paid advertising, the site will continue to work for you long after the last payment has been made. The best part is that using a portion of your annual advertising budget means the web development is likely a tax deduction for your business, so why wouldn’t you invest in this digital asset?
In general, e-commerce and professional websites can cost more due to the time required to setup products—anywhere between $8000 and $18,500. To start out however with a simple website, you can get an affordable web design in Adelaide commissioned for around $2500-$5,000 but again prices may vary. Factors like design, type, quality, and SEO will impact the pricing, so you need to be very clear about what you want the site to achieve for your business. The other aspect is that if you start with a simple site to feel out the marketplace, having a quality built starting point allows you to build on top of this platform as your business expands.
Cheap Web Design in Adelaide: What to Expect
The caveat to this however is that you can find agencies that will build you a website for under $500, but the reality is that these websites won’t achieve your business goals of attracting clients and customers. In our experience, these websites can be very hard to build upon without a full rebuild as they do not include the foundations of a quality website with basic SEO built into them. If you have a brand that represents quality, then you wouldn’t pay $500 to have your logo associated with a template built website with 3 included stock photos and some generic copy writing that simply won’t work. You need a website that is going to speak your customers language, present your unique offering and one that can be readily found by the robots like google. This all takes time and cost to build so let’s break it down into what makes a good website.
Key Factors That Impact Website Development Pricing
Here are some factors to consider when estimating the budget for custom website design:
Type of Website: Which One Do You Need?
There are several options in this category
- Simple website: this website has about 5 pages. It is a static website designed to show a landing page (Home), an about & contact page, and a couple of legal pages (Terms & privacy) which is important to google and your insurance.
- A standard website with CMS—this is an 8 page website with the standard features of Home, About, Contact etc. but now we ae building out several “service” pages to clearly detail the products and services you provide. It also has the potential for blog posting allowing you to create relevant and interesting material for your prospective clients to read about helping them understand your business. This post for example, is one of those types of content that helps answer questions your potential clients may have.
- A Complex site – This would typically have all of the above, but with the addition of an ecommerce store which needs several pages for products, payment, cart, etc. These stores can be complex in nature and always updated. The key point here is that you can setup a store on something like Shopify, but you still want to invest in and connect a quality website behind it so that customers can find your products unless you have an amazing social media profile to market your business on.
Design & Customization: How It Affects Costs
The amount of creative work is not just in the colours and images. The real work is in the words used on the page that not only speak the language of your prospective customer, but also ensures the robots know what your business is about. Finding that language that people are searching for on the internet is as much art as it is science, so having a quality developer who understands SEO is always worth the investment. As a reference, good quality keyword research can take from 2-6 hours to build a keyword bank for use on your website and this is not the place to penny pinch if you are in a competitive industry.
- Basic – Low-cost, affordable web design in Adelaide for average design using a pre-formed template and your stock content. It will look ok, but won’t actually get found on google.
- Better – Standard keyword research to identify high value, low competition keywords that is then formed into a well designed layout structure acting as a sales funnel for your business with clear call to actions in each section. This is the bones of a great website layout, and will ensure you are able to start competing within your industry.
- Best – Comprehensive keyword research to identify high value keywords, competitor research to understand how your competition is acquiring customers and a full website design that is built to follow an optimised process of client conversion. You now have a platform and keyword bank to expand your digital footprint and get to page 1 of google where the buying occurs.
SEO Considerations: Investing in Long-Term Success
- Just want a basic website – It’s ok, not everybody wants to be found on page 1. Some businesses are just needing a quality landing page to give their business a professional credibility. If you have enough clients or sales, then perhaps this might be and option for you, but do you want the option to expand in future? The problem with SEO is that it can take 12+ months to really work, and so if things in your business change, then you are already behind. The cost of turning away business is much smaller than the cost of needing sales.
- High-level SEO consideration – SEO is one of those jobs that is never complete. Every year, we review our websites SEO to ensure they are still aligned with the high value keywords that customers are searching for. Even if we have achieved the perfect keyword bank, the internet moves at such a fast pace that it is looking for fresh content to support your website. Hence, making sure your content is updated regularly and aligned with the best keywords is not only a great user experience for your customers, but shows the robots that you are an authority in the digital landscape.
Website Content: Who Provides It?
This mainly consists of logos, images, and text. Some designers in Adelaide provide the content, while some business owners insist on providing the content themselves. The key part here is to understand what are your requirements and deliverables for the website before you sign up with an agency. Afterall, you are the most knowledgeable person on your business, and this needs to be translated onto the page. You can either achieve this by taking the time to explain the business offering and values to the web designer, or you can write out the content yourself and they just add the SEO magic. Who does what will always impact the cost of the design.
- You provide everything from logos, images, colour scheme and written content — the cheapest option but most amount of work for the business owner
- You have a logo and images but no content – The middle road which can utilise the skills of a copy writer to produce quality content, but which will need to be reviewed for consistency with your business values
- You need everything, including website content, images, and logo – This is obviously the most expensive option as graphic designers, copy writers and images all need to be sourced. It can however free you up to manage other aspects of your business and some people find it easier to review work to make adjustments rather than starting with a blank canvas.
Website Speed & Performance: A Hidden Cost Factor
Website loading time is a critical factor in your google ranking, but more importantly, you don’t want your prospective clients to be waiting for your site to load. A slow site is a poor user experience, and hence you need something that is quick and efficient. The more complex your site is, the more important speed optimisation is due to the long load time of complex pages. So a good Adelaide Web Developer will take the time (typically 4-6 hours) to optimise your site for speed with some settings changes, image compression and custom code.
- A simple website with a basic loading time can be achieved with just a standard installation. The problem however is that your site may be slow to load when compared to your competition and this will reduce your rank in google.
- Fast loading time can take 4-6 hours of work for a developer to achieve with some custom code, optimsation techniques and image file enhancements
Estimate Your Web Design Costs in Adelaide
Total Number of Pages
A website can have between 5 and 10 to over 50 pages. The greater the number of pages, the higher the cost of website design. Each page will need designing, content, keyword optimisation, unique efforts, etc. As a rule of thumb, you can expect to pay around $500 to $1000 per built page with a bit of discount in bulk.
CMS (Content Management Systems)
This can be WordPress or Shopify, known for affordable solutions or they could be high-end ones like Magento. You can also have a custom-built CMS, which costs more depending on the complexity. Setting up the CMS is pretty straight forwards, but filling it out takes time, effort and expertise to do it right. You can expect to pay around $200-$350 per article or product setup depending on who is providing the content.
SEO Needs
SEO or search engine optimisation, involves researching keywords, including content that is picked up by search engines and internal/external linking. It also involves the use of the right meta-data, etc. SEO is typically included in your original build (for good quality web developers) so don’t expect to see additional costs upfront unless it is a website rebuild. If you are serious about growing your website, you might pay a good SEO a monthly payment of $350 to $8000+ depending on how competitve your industry is, how many articles they are using to rank you for keywords, and how many citations they are building in the background.
Content Production
Your site can include a blog or you may need to produce videos to expand your digital footprint and drive traffic to your site from multiple locations. Sometimes, you might need the services of a copywriter to write articles at an average cost of $95 per 500 words. Most designers include content creation in their ongoing SEO packages to ensure you are maximising your digital footprint and easily found by customers.
Others
Your site’s security needs, SSL certificate, firewalls, and third-party integration also need to be setup. Security and speed are major base functions of your site and take time to build out. Again, this should be coupled into your build or rebuild price, so don’t get caught out paying for additional work when it should part of the original package.
Website Development Adelaide Approximate Costs
Here is a list of approximate costs of website development for different types of sites.
- A website with a simple design and about 5 pages: $2500-$4500
- A customised website with about 10 pages: $5500 (average)
- E-commerce design website: $10,000-$20,000
- Shopify website design: $15,000 (including the base business website for authority)
Simple Website Design Cost ($2500-$3500)
A simple website consists of just the most essential features a website needs. This includes a home page, an about us page, a services page, and contact information. This is an ideal option for small business owners looking for affordable web design in Adelaide. Simple websites consist of 5–8 pages and cost around $3,500.
You can choose from a static website, which usually costs less upfront. However, you need to pay for maintenance and upgrade costs, as you cannot make changes to the site without the assistance of a professional website designer.
Some simple website design packages do not include the cost of copywriting, logos, and visuals. So, when you discuss the costs with a website designer, please ask about the exclusions or line items that are not included in the package.
eCommerce Website Cost ($10,000-$20,000)
eCommerce sites can cost between $10,000 and $20,000. A simple e-commerce site having checkout, shopping cart, payment pages, product pages, and payment integration pages can cost about $10,000. If you want a detailed website with custom integrations with third-party apps or sites, then expect to pay over $15,000 to $20,000.
wooCommerce Website ($10,000-$18,000)
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin and an ideal choice for small to medium-sized enterprises. It lets you integrate your shop front into your existing website and share the authority that you have built with quality SEO pages.
WooCommerce websites provide an online store where you can list products, monitor inventory, manage orders, and accept payments with ease. It also lets you list your products in different languages. It can cost between $10,000 and $18,000 to build a simple WooCommerce website. Custom WooCommerce websites can cost a bit more due to the setup costs and sometimes custom code.
Shopify Website ($10,000)
Shopify is a great way to create your online store if you have a tight budget. This makes it one of the most popular platforms in Australia. You can create the online store for as little as $29 a month. Thus, you can get started for minimal costs upfront, but can then be expensive to advertise for the store itself through paid advertising on facebook or google. If you get a professional to create your Shopify store, it can take about $10,000 to setup both the store, and link it to a website that acts like a sales funnel. We find that this is a better cost to value ratio in the long run as your website attracts the client, and your store closes the deal.
Getting the Best Value for Website Development in Adelaide
You can choose this option if your business needs a highly specialised website. This option is recommended for businesses that want to showcase their brand’s identity visually across various platforms. Sometimes, ready-made templates are not able to show unique features or functionalities, in which case, custom website development Adelaide is the route to take. These websites cost more because a highly trained professional builds them from scratch.
Request a free discovery session with us to find out what your website idea could become. On the other hand, if you have a website that isn’t performing as expected, we can give you a complimentary SEO audit to better understand why your site is not ranking.
Website Cost in Adelaide FAQ
How much does website development in Adelaide cost?
Website development in Adelaide typically ranges from $2,500 to $25,000, depending on factors like design, functionality, SEO, and custom features. Cost is just one aspect however and instead you should consider the value. If a $3,000 website build brings in an additional $30,000 in revenue per year, is it expensive or cheap?
What is the most affordable web design option in Adelaide?
Some agencies deliver basic websites for under $500, but professional, affordable web design in Adelaide starts at $2,500 for a functional business site that will actually be found on google. Unless your business is incredibly unique with almost no competition, then you need to invest in a quality website foundation.
What factors influence website development costs in Adelaide?
Key factors include the number of pages, SEO optimization, CMS, design complexity, and whether the website includes eCommerce features. Make sure you factor in the cost of your time and effort to setup a website as well. Would you rather invest your time in a quality site, or take the cheaper option and spend twice as much time on it?
Is custom website development in Adelaide worth the cost?
Yes! A well-designed website is a long-term digital asset that attracts customers, improves credibility, and increases sales without ongoing ad spend. The best part is that it is tax deductible, and unlike paid advertising, it keeps working long after the last payment is made. Your website should be viewed as the hub of your online marketing where all other social profiles etc. direct people back to it, so you need to get it right!
How much does an eCommerce website cost in Adelaide?
ECommerce website development in Adelaide typically ranges from $8,000 to $20,000, depending on product listings, payment gateways, and SEO requirements.
What’s the difference between a cheap and a professional website?
Cheap websites often lack SEO, mobile responsiveness, and scalability. To put it bluntly, they might look ok to a human, but the robots will never show it to a prospective customer. A professionally developed site ensures higher visibility and better user experience which is what robots like google are trying to match with their search users.
How can I get an affordable business website in Adelaide?
Look for agencies offering website packages that balance affordability with essential features like SEO, fast loading speed, and a CMS. We at Amplify are happy to book a discovery session with you at no cost to better understand your project and provide some costing guidance. There is nothing to lose from asking more questions!
How important is SEO in website development?
SEO is crucial—it helps your website rank on Google, attracting organic traffic and potential customers without relying on paid ads. Otherwise, you will build a website that you can access with a direct link, but that no one will ever be able to find on the web.
Do I need ongoing maintenance for my website?
Yes. Regular updates, SEO adjustments, and security patches keep your website running smoothly and ranking well on search engines. This can start from $49 per month to simply host the website on a server, or around $139 per month for regular updates, backups and maintenance checks etc.
Can I upgrade my website later if I start with a simple one?
Absolutely! Starting with a simple website built on a quality SEO foundation allows you to test the market and expand with additional features as your business grows. Sometimes however if you have tested the market cheaply, then we would need to rebuild the site on a better foundation, but it will be worth the value in the long run.