What Is Included in a Website Design

Hi, I am Steve Bonin and I run a web-design company in Milton Ontario. Most websites I design today are within the WordPress environment, which makes sense since 35% of all websites on the internet are done this way. WordPress itself is free and there are many free themes and plugins. It can be thought of this way:

WordPress creates an environment
Themes shape or style the environment to look and work in a specific way
Plugins extend the functionality of the theme or the environment in general

What is included in Website Pricing

WordPress

Most website designers include a WordPress installation in their pricing, this takes some time, but it saves time in the long run and gives the client (you) the ability to change things easily in the future.

WordPress Themes

Almost all my websites use the Divi theme. This is a premium theme built by Elegant Themes that costs about $100 per year. I bought an unlimited lifetime license for this theme and all its upgrades several years ago and offer it free to all my clients. I sometimes use a different theme pre-built for a very specific purpose, but usually I can do the same thing with a Divi Layout Pack. Divi allows for a great latitude in design and has pre-built modules for doing most things.

Green-eyed girl holding $20 Canadian bills | Website Design Pricing |HarrisWeb Creative | Milton

WordPress Plugins

I install a series of plugins on all sites that I build. I hold subscriptions to these plugins and again, I offer them to my clients for free. Below are some of the plugins I install on all my websites and their functions. I use other plugins also but the ones listed below go on all websites and would cost my clients significant subscription fees if they were to do it themselves.

All in One SEO (Pro Version)

This is a great plugin that allows you to easily set titles, meta descriptions & meta keywords for each web page. It also creates sitemaps and robot.txt files that are important in ranking your website. There are some other technical things it does to help your website rank

UpdraftPlus Backup & Restore (Pro Version)

As the name suggests, this is a backup application. I generally create a Gmail account for my clients and set Updraft to back up to the google drive for the Gmail account. Currently Gmail accounts have 15Gbytes of free online storage, which is plenty. Upraft also includes a migration utility to move your website from one host to another — I have found this utility to operate flawlessly — not all do!

Custom CSS & JS (Pro Version)

This plugin allows for the addition of custom styling using CSS or functionality using javaScript. The Pro version allows for codes to be placed on a single page only. This plugin pretty negates the need to create child-themes (a different way of customizing themes). It also allows you to place schema markup on each page, which is important in search engine optimization.

Other Things Included in a Website Build

As mentioned above I set up a new Gmail for my clients, this is more than just Gmail, it is a Google account that gives you access to many Google Properties like Google-my-Business, Search Console, Analytics, Data Studio and Tag Manager. These are important properties because they help you to stay on top of your website health and can help you to rank better in search and even understand your customers better. The main properties I set up for my clients are listed below:

Google Search Console - GSC

Google Search Console allows you to register your new website with google and request indexing for your web pages. It can tell you how your website is doing, how your customers are finding you and things like: mobile usability, rich snippet eligibility and who links to your site. I register all my client's websites in Search Console.

Google Analytics - GA

I set up a Google Analytics property for all my clients. This measures and records demographics, user behaviour, devices users use to access your web pages and much more. You can set up goals and track the flow through marketing funnels, clicks on forms, video views, scroll-depth on pages, and stuff you haven't thought you wanted to know. I set this up because most people don't need to know this when they are first starting out, but when the time comes that they do want to know this stuff, they will have already collected months or years of data in their account.

Google my Business - GMB

Google has probably already set up a GMB page for your business using disparate information found all over the web. It is important to claim this listing and ensure the information is accurate. GMB pages show up in the "local pack" above the regular organic results on a search results page. Often users look no further than these listings to find your service. In this way, as a local business, you can out rank the national competition for your type of business or service.

Reviews

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Our Clients Drive Our Business

Here's what they have to say:

Reviewer Published: 2024-11-05
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Paul Dibattista 2020-05-01 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Village Developments Inc. would like to thank the team at Harris Web Creative for the wonderful Web Site created by Steve Bonin. The site attraction is professionally designed to reach out to our potential investors and most important interested renters in the Milton area. Steve’s attention to detail and steady pace to completion made this experience of setting up a web site a pleasure to deal with, we appreciate your involvement in elevating Village Developments Inc. and putting us on the web map.
Thank You
Tom Dusmet 2019-02-14 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I contacted Steve at HarrisWeb Creative to develop a new website for me. My experience with Steve was notable in that he was very responsive to my questions and my ideas. He quickly understood what I wanted and brought it to life on the website with a flourish. I was very impressed with the finished product and would highly recommend Steve as a website designer to anyone looking to contract a local developer for their next web project.
Bobbijo Chumley 2012-03-10 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Steve, I just wanted to make sure that you knew how much I appreciated your work on the new website design as well as my business cards and flyers. Your clarity in communication and understanding of my needs were tremendous. I appreciate your insights, suggestions and most of all your work. Thanks very much... above and beyond expectations."
Carlo Giangrande 2014-04-05 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I contacted Steve to do many things for me, from website design, google maps, business cards, signs and printed forms. Steve is always professional, fast and competitively priced. I have recommended Steve to many of my business associates who have used him happily. I am happy to recommend Steve and HarrisWeb Creative for any website or printing work. Thanks Steve.
Ron Base 2011-10-08 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I came to him because I liked the look of what he had designed for his website and e-mails, and asked him to put together something for me — not knowing quite what to expect. Well, Steve more than exceeded my expectations. He got me onto Mail Chimp, created an e-mail list for me, and most importantly created an eye-catching logo template that I've been able to use on my blog, website, and in my Mail Chimp e-mails. Working with Steve was a pleasure--he was fast, professional, knowledgable, has great creative instincts, and was always available and patient with a sometimes demanding author. Thanks to his efforts, the traffic on my blog has more than doubled. Next, I'm going to get him to redesign my website. I can't recommend him highly enough!"

Website Design Pricing Formula

A Simple Formula to Calculate Website Design Prices

I use a simple formula to quote on website design, its goes something like this...

Home Page - $1000

I charge $1000 for the home page. Often I need to register a domainname and set up a hosting account for my clients. Then I have to set up WordPress on the host, install the theme and plugins. It also includes determining the style (i.e. fonts, colours, layout), the structure (i.e. navigation, how many pages, the importance and order of the web pages) and any global attributes that will be carried throughout the website

Complex Web Page

Examples of complex web pages are pages that have content that is specific to your company's industry. Pages where I would have to go out and look at your competitors, determine a keyword list, find appropriate images and write some custom content. For these pages I charge $500

Simple Web Page

Simple web pages would include a contact page, privacy policy, a landing page for an AdWords campaign, custom 404 error page or an about us page (if you provide me with the content). These pages are about $250 each

Sample Calculation of Website Costs

Given a 5-page website with a homepage, 2 specific content pages, a contact page and 1 other simple web page, the pricing would be as follows

Qty	Type of Page	Price	Extension
Example 1
1	Home Page	$1000	$1000
2	Content Pages	$500	$1000
2	Simple Pages	$250	$500
		Total	$2500

Pricing Guide for eCommerce Websites

E-Commerce websites are a combination of content pages, shopping pages and a shopping cart/checkout system of pages. The most popular method of creating an e-commerce website is to install the WooCommerce plugin into WordPress.

All the foregoing pricing applies to a e-Commerce website plus additional costs listed below.

Task	Price	extension
WooCommerce installation & setup	$1000	one-time charge
Payment Gateway Setup	$250	per gateway
Shipping Classes	$100	per class
External Shipping API integration	$250	one-time charge
Product Category Pages	$250	per category page
Attribute setup per category	$10	per attribute per category
Product Entry	$30	per product

Sample Calculation of eCommerce Website Costs

Using the website in example 1 with the addition of 30 products, broken into 3 categories, category 1 has 2 attributes, while category 2 and 3 have 3 attributes each. PayPal is the only payment gateway and the shipping costs are calculated using the UPS API.

Qty	Item	Price	Extension
1	WooCommerce installation	$1000	$1000
1	Paypal Gateway Integration	$250	$250
1	UPS Shipping API Integration	$250	$250
1	Shipping Class Set up	$100	$100
3	Product Categories	$250	$750
2	Product Attributes for 1 Category	$10	$20
6	3 Product Attributes for 2 Categories	$10	$60
30	Product Entry	$30	$900
1	Cost of content pages from Example 1	$2500	$2500
		Total	$5830

As can be seen from Example 2, eCommerce websites can quickly increase costs for a website build. The upside to this is that many eCommerce websites can be run without employees. Orders can be collected, packed and shipped on a daily basis and with the addition of the UPS API integration, the packed orders can be picked up by UPS on a daily basis, so there is no need to go to a shipping outlet.

Working From a Contract

All my clients are presented with a contract before work begins on their website build. This is a good way to come to an understanding of what will be done, what the client responsibilities are, how much it will cost and what the payment structure will be. This always mitigates and misunderstands that could arise in the future.

If you are interested in obtaining a quote for your website project, please click the Request A Quote button and send me a message

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