Insights
You’ve decided it’s time for a new website. Maybe you’ve never had a standalone website for your EDO before. Or maybe the one you’re using now is outdated and doesn’t serve your needs anymore. So you start getting quotes, and one thing stands out. The quotes are wildly different from company to company. Some companies give you a clear picture of the price and what’s included, and others provide a broad range. It can also sometimes be difficult to know what your organization needs.
There are many factors that contribute to website pricing. The cost isn't determined by one feature or one design choice. It's the result of dozens of decisions about strategy, content, functionality, accessibility, and long-term maintenance. Having an understanding of the different aspects of the website development process can help you make the purchasing decision that is right for your organization.
Strategy
Most website development projects will begin with a discovery phase to understand your organization's goals and audiences. Every organization has different needs, and understanding those needs shapes every decision that follows.
Once the discovery phase is complete, the website architecture will be developed to anticipate and drive website users to a desired action (such as filling out a contact form). Messaging and content planning will also start to take shape during this period to help both with copywriting and design.
Skipping this step, or not being thorough, can result in costly changes later. A thoughtful strategy will ensure your website is built around your goals instead of redesigned or redeveloped later to retrofit them.
Design
The right design approach depends on your organization's goals, timeline, and budget, and there are multiple options to choose from based on your organization’s specific needs.
Fully Templated: For a fully-templated website, the design and web development investment is minimal, which keeps cost down. There may be some font, color, or minor style changes, but generally, the heavy lifting has already been done. The trade-off is that the overall style choices may be limited.
Partially Templated: Partially-templated websites offer the best of both worlds. Using templated pieces helps keep design and web development costs lower, while having some custom elements give you the opportunity to make the website feel like your own, too. This also gives you the flexibility to add as much or as little customization as you want depending on your budget.
Fully Custom: A fully custom website offers the greatest flexibility to tailor the user experience, navigation, and visual identity to your organization's needs. This could include uniquely designed target industry pages, workforce attraction pages, interactive maps, or property search experiences. Generally, a fully custom website will take the longest to produce and requires the largest investment in design and development.
Branding
Another design consideration is branding. For example, does your community already have branding or workable logo files, or are these things that will need to be created during the design process? How restrictive are your brand guidelines? Some organizations have a lot of flexibility, and others have strict guidelines that impact how design can be completed.
Web Development
Web development is strongly correlated with design. More customization generally means more web development time and testing. Other factors that impact costs are CMS setup, server setup, and integrations such as GIS maps, community data embeds, CRM integrations, and UTM tracking codes.
Accessibility
Accessibility is interlinked with both design and web development, and ensures your website is usable by people with disabilities. For many economic development organizations, it is a critical consideration when building a new website.
Depending on the approach, this may include accessible design, keyboard navigation, color contrast considerations, document and download accessibility, and ongoing monitoring. While the considerations add effort during the development process, they improve overall usability and help reduce risk for ADA complaints or litigation.
Content
Content planning starts early in the website development process. Initial considerations include whether your website will require new copywriting, photography, videography, or content migration. Once the website's structure has been established, existing content must be evaluated, organized, and mapped to the new structure, while new content is developed to better reflect your organization's current strategy.
Because economic development websites serve a wide range of audiences, working with an agency that specializes in economic development marketing can help reduce planning time and avoid unnecessary revisions, often lowering the overall project investment. An experienced team understands how to organize content and develop messaging that serves site selectors, existing businesses, workforce talent, entrepreneurs, and residents without sacrificing a cohesive user experience.
SEO & GEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps search engines understand and rank your content, while generative engine optimization (GEO) helps AI-powered search experiences understand and cite your organization. Clear structure, factual information, strong headings, and well-organized content benefit both.
Optimization also isn’t a one-time task. Content optimization should be ongoing, as best practices for SEO and GEO evolve over time, and incorporating optimization during content development prevents rework later.
Ongoing Maintenance
Website costs can also be impacted by ongoing maintenance. This includes security updates, software and plugin updates, CMS updates, maintaining backups, security monitoring, and broken link or server uptime monitoring.
Ongoing maintenance and support should be considered early on. A website that is unreliable, unresponsive, or inefficient impacts everything from user experience to SEO rankings, making it more difficult for your website to effectively represent your community.
Different Organizations Have Different Needs
The best website for your organization is not necessarily going to be the most expensive. A fully custom website with advanced features won’t be helpful if you don’t have the staff available to maintain it. Meanwhile, a budget-friendly, templated website won’t always provide the level of flexibility or advanced reporting and tracking needed by larger organizations.
The goal is to invest in a website that best supports your organization while aligning with your budget, goals, and available resources.
EDSuite has built our processes around EDOs and their needs. We provide multiple options at a range of price points to help organizations invest in the right website for them.
