Affordable web design with the price in writing

With us, a small business website costs from $5,000 + GST up front, then hosting from $400 + GST a year from the second year. That’s our Essentials package, with 12 months of hosting included. As an estimate, a 5-page site costs from about $5,800 + GST over its first 3 years, before any optional care plan. More pages or an online store raise it: Standard is $6,500 + GST and E-commerce starts from $6,000 + GST.

Yes. Every package has a 6-month payment plan. Essentials becomes 6 monthly payments of $833 + GST instead of $5,000 + GST up front, and Standard is 6 payments of $1,085 + GST. The scope and the total stay the same. The plan just means one big invoice doesn’t land in the same month as your insurance renewal or a large stock order.

Ask for 3 things: a written scope, 2 or 3 sites they’ve built, and whose name the domain will be registered in. An affordable web designer can answer all three in one email. Then compare quotes on the same items: pages, feedback rounds, support weeks and hosting. If an affordable web design company can’t put those in writing, the low price may not last past launch.

A good small business website answers a customer’s first questions straight away: what you do, where, roughly what it costs and how to reach you. It loads quickly on a phone, keeps the phone number within thumb reach and gives every page one clear next step. It doesn’t need many pages. Capogreco Winery Estate’s first website, for example, leads with the family’s story and keeps the shop and enquiry buttons close by.

Because people decide whether to contact you from how your website looks and works. A clear layout makes your prices, service area and phone number easy to find. A messy one sends visitors back to Google to try the next business on the list. Design here isn’t decoration: it decides whether a visit becomes a call, a booking or nothing at all.

Copywriting, photography and extra images aren’t included in Essentials. The package assumes you supply your business information, text and photos, with up to 2 images a page. If you’d rather we wrote the words, that’s quoted with the site or charged at $175 + GST an hour. Products and integrations sit in the larger packages: Standard loads up to 25 products, and Advanced adds email marketing and CRM automation.

Up front, yes. A builder such as Wix or Squarespace costs a monthly fee plus your own time. It suits a brand-new business testing an idea, or one that only needs a page with opening hours and a phone number. The catch is the time: planning, writing, building and fixing it all fall to you. If you’ve started one, we’ll tell you whether finishing it is the better buy.

It can, but no website ranks just because it’s new. On every package we write page titles and headings around the searches your customers use and set up the search basics during the build. Ranking above competitors takes ongoing work: our SEO plans start from $1,000 + GST a month, with no lock-in contract. Many small businesses start with a Google Business Profile set-up at $500 + GST.