What is the price for a showcase site in 2022?

Do you want to create a showcase site or redesign your current site?

You don't know What price will it cost to create your showcase site and have trouble judging the proposals made to you?

This is normal, the price of a showcase site depends on several factors that we will detail in this article.

Many solutions are available to you to create your showcase site: agencies, freelancers or even website creation tools.

Today, you no longer need to know how to develop in HTML/CSS to create your showcase site. CMS (WordPress, Webflow...) offer many reusable templates.

A Template is comparable to a “skeleton” of a page. Simply change colors, images, and text to fit your brand.

But then, how much does it cost to create a showcase site? And above all, why pay someone if it's so easy?

Definition: What is a showcase site?

As its name suggests, your showcase site must first and foremost present a business.

The user experience must be optimal for the visitor to find the information they are looking for in a few seconds.

It is different from an e-commerce site where you want to sell your products online.

The showcase site is perfectly suited to local shops. It serves as a business card at the local level. You can quite easily place yourself at the top of the search results thanks to your establishment page on Google.

You can also go a step further with SEO strategies in order to reach a larger audience.

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What is its objective?

Your showcase site can have two types of objectives: informative or commercial.

Here are some concrete goals you can set for your showcase site:

• Present your products and/or services
• Present your history and values
• Get quote requests
• Receiving calls

In most cases, you want to fulfill both types of goals. To do this, you must make sure to respect a few points such as:

• The main title of your home page clearly states your value proposition
• Each section is different (services, about, contact...)
• The overall design provides a pleasant user experience
• You place your CTAs (Call-to-Action) intelligently
• Optimize the speed of your site
• Ensure it is accessible on mobile devices

Depending on your goals and the means you want to implement, the price of the site will vary.

For example, if your contact form only collects the person's name and phone number, the price will be lower than if you want a more comprehensive, multi-step form.

The different types of showcase sites

Another price factor is the type of showcase site you want to create.

1- One-Page Showcase Site

As its name suggests, it is a site created with a single page. This type of site is particularly suitable for small budgets because it requires little design, content writing or development.

It allows you to succinctly present the information your visitors need.

2- Professional showcase site

It generally includes dynamic content such as the blog or the portfolio. This type of site is suitable for businesses wishing to do natural referencing and show their achievements to visitors.

It will require design, structural thinking and further development.

3- Customized showcase site

We talk about a custom site when it is created from a blank sheet of paper. The developer thus takes into account the needs, the target or even the functionalities desired by the customer.

For example, it is possible to create tailor-made recruitment sites. Candidates will have access to a complete application process and the company will be able to process applications directly in the back office.

When we create this type of site, a pre-project phase is necessary in order to properly determine the scope of the project and the expected results. This is why the development of such a showcase site is more expensive.

Create your showcase site for free

We are not going to go through four paths, it is impossible.

Setting up a website always requires investing at least in a hosting plan.

Depending on the type of accommodation you choose, the price of your subscription may vary:

Shared server: We usually find offers around €5/month.

Your site is hosted on the same server as other company sites and your resources are shared. We generally do not recommend this type of hosting because you do not control the resources you allocate to your site.

Private server (virtual or physical): Your site is hosted on your own server and you are free to install as many sites or computer resources as you want.

Prices vary widely depending on the performance of your server but generally start at around €30/month.

Cloud server: Your server automatically assigns the performance you need to maintain speed on your site based on the number of users and interactions taking place on your site.

Thus, the price is constantly evolving according to the performance you need.

CMS hosting: Apart from WordPress, most CMS are paid by offering integrated hosting solutions. This allows you to invest little money at the start but quickly becomes unprofitable.

How to estimate the cost of a site design?

By “design” we mean all the steps to be carried out prior to development.

We talk about functional design for architecture, the user journey, the imagination of functionalities. We talk about graphic design when creating site models.

This design stage generally takes almost as long as developing the site because it is in this phase that all the thinking around the project is done.

To give you an idea, we generally count one day of production per page, or around 200€/page at SITIZI.

Delegate the design of your site!

Price of a WordPress showcase site

Create your site with WordPress is the most popular solution today. Indeed, WordPress makes it easy to create modern and efficient sites using themes. In addition, it was created to blog, which makes it a great asset for natural referencing.

Freelance WordPress developers have an average TJM of €300 while agencies charge an average of €500/day.

Chez Sitizi, we charge 300€ for the development day because we want to democratize access to a modern and efficient site for small and medium-sized businesses.

The TJM is not a very revealing indicator because your provider can influence the number of production days he assigns to each task. That's why you should always compare the overall price.

To give you a better idea of the applicable rates, here is an estimate of the development price for each type of site:

• One-page showcase site: from 800 €HT
• Professional site: from 1,600€HT
• Customized site: tailor-made prices

If you want to redesign your WordPress site, your site must be studied to verify that it has been built and that we can start from a clean base.

Sitizi creates your WordPress showcase site!

How much does a Webflow showcase site cost?

Webflow is the second most used CMS for showcase sites.

It makes it possible to create even more advanced designs while maintaining a very good level of performance.

For some time now, many people have been using it to set up their blog, portfolio or e-commerce, even if it is not its primary purpose.

I highly appreciate Webflow personally, but two things keep me on WordPress:

1. WordPress remains much easier to use and offers great autonomy to the customer after delivery
2. The sites Webflow can only be hosted on CMS hosting plans, i.e. we don't choose our host... and it's expensive!

It will therefore be necessary to count around 500€/page + 20€/month of hosting (excluding maintenance).

Sitizi creates your Webflow showcase site!

Make a showcase site from scratch?

Honestly, you have no interest in starting development from scratch for a showcase site, unless you are a developer yourself and want to show your expertise in a particular technology.

It is impossible to define a price because it will depend on the technology used and the complexity of the site design.

What is certain is that you should expect a price much higher than that of developing on a CMS.

The cost of maintaining a showcase site

Maintenance is generally billed as a flat rate and may include more or less.

For comparison purposes, here is what is included in the SITIZI maintenance package:

• Updating the plugins
• CMS update
• Theme update
• Server update
• Security analysis
• Bug fixes

Showcase sites are quite simple to maintain because they do not offer custom functionalities that can be damaged by updates. Thus, a simple check of the health of the site after each update is carried out. We charge 30€/month for this service.

Conclusion: How much does it cost in total?

We reviewed most of the price criteria for a showcase site:

• Design: Template or custom?
• Development: CMS or from scratch?
• Hosting: Server type + Maintenance package

Assuming that you are going to a WordPress showcase site, as we recommend, here is how you can calculate the price*:

• Design = 200€/page
• Site installation, server settings, domain name, etc.: 300€
• Responsive development = 300€/page

* these are only estimates, to be adjusted according to the context of each customer.

We hope that this article has helped you get an idea of the price of your future site!

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