Purchasing a domain name

Your domain name is the address that is used to reach your website. A domain name is purchased from a registrar. The cost is dependent on the type of domain that you are purchasing, for example: .co.uk, .com or .biz.
On average a .co.uk domain will cost around £10 per year and a .com domain costing slightly more at around £15 per year.

Most good website design companies will include a standard domain name for free as part of their package.
Not sure if a domain name is currently available? Use the WHOIS domain checker tool to find out.
Which type of domain should I choose?
Choosing which domain type is right for your business is an important factor when launching a website. Firstly, you should consider your type of business or organisation. Originally domain extensions where designed to help categorise what websites were related to:

• .com (commercial)
• .net (network)
• .org (organisation)
• .edu (education)
• .info (information)
• .biz (business)
• .me (personal)

The full list of every domain extension can be viewed here.
Generally, global businesses should use .com and businesses that are only operating within the UK should use .co.uk.

Website design and development

The design and development aspect of your website is likely to be the costliest. This cost will depend on a number of varying features, such as:

Number of pages
When costing a website project, most web design companies will work on a basis of how many pages you require to help understand exactly how much work is going to be required. If you have an idea of the things you want to be included on your site when you approach a web design company, it will help them to cost this for you.

Complexity of design
If you are looking for complex design styling with specific features, then this may increase the cost for your site. Alternatively, if you let your web designer know you are happy for a simple design this will help to reduce your costs. Remember simple shouldn’t mean bad.

Content
If you have content (i.e. text and images) that you can supply to your web designer then you will save on costs associated with having to either outsource your content creation or request the service from the website company.

At Business Go Digital, we offer a full content creation service with our website projects. Our team will put together your page content and arrange for any additional services (such as photography) to be included as part of your project.

Integration
If you need your website to integrate with any external services, such as data feeds, video streams or secure access accounts then this will need to be factored into the cost of your web project. Depending on the systems you require, time will need to be spend writing bespoke code to integrate any complex systems into your site which can be costly.

Additional facilities
Additional facilities such as ecommerce, quote baskets or shopping carts will also need to be factored into the cost of your project.

CMS (Content Management System)
If you want to be able to login and manage your website yourself once it has been created you will need a content management system to handle this. There are a number of popular CMS systems such as WordPress, Drupal and Magento which each have their own benefits depending on your requirements.

You should let your designer know how you want to be able to manage your content and to what extent you would like to make changes. If you only want to be able to make minor changes or upload new pages to a blog for example, then they are likely to advise a specific CMS for that. Whereas if you want full control over the template, layouts and design then they may recommend something else.
If you don’t want to make any changes to your website yourself then this can save costs on the original build because the site won’t need to be integrated with a CMS.

Ongoing support and maintenance
A great option for small businesses and sole traders that need to focus on other things are support and maintenance packages. These services keep your site software up to date and your site looking fresh as well as in many cases improving your SEO.
Support packages can vary in cost depending on the services they provide. A standard maintenance package may cost around £20 per month, whereas an integrated SEO support and maintenance package designed to drive traffic to your site could cost around £100 per month.