What a website should actually cost a small business here

Ask three people to quote for the same small business website and you will get three numbers that do not appear to describe the same job. One will be almost free. One will be a few hundred thousand francs. One will be several million and come with a slide deck.

The reason is that "a website" is not one thing, and almost nobody explains which thing they are quoting for. So here is the breakdown we would give a friend.

What you are actually buying

A working business website is four separate things, and they cost different amounts:

1. The pages themselves. What you do, what it costs, how to reach you, some proof. For most small businesses this is five pages or fewer, and it is the cheapest part.
2. Being findable. A domain, a Google Business listing, correct page titles, and pages structured so search engines can read them. This is the part that decides whether the site earns anything, and it is the part most cheap quotes skip entirely.
3. A way to buy or enquire. A WhatsApp button on your real number, a form that reaches a real inbox, prices that are current. Without this a website is a business card that costs money every year.
4. Being able to change it. Whether you can update a price yourself on a Sunday, or whether you have to pay someone and wait three days.

When a quote looks impossibly cheap, it is almost always because it includes only the first one.

What you should refuse to pay for

A monthly fee to keep your own site online. Hosting a small business site costs almost nothing — pre-rendered pages sit on a server that does not think, and a great many hosts serve that free. A large monthly bill usually means the site was built on a platform that charges rent, and you will pay it forever.

A design that takes eight seconds to open. Sliders, video backgrounds, six web fonts, a stock photograph of people in a glass office in a country nobody in your market has visited. Your customer is on mobile data on a phone that cost 60 000 francs. If the page has not appeared in three seconds, they are gone, and the design was worse than useless.

Not owning your domain. This is the one that traps people. If the agency registered the domain in their own name, they own your address. Ask, before you pay: is the domain registered to me? Get the answer in writing.

English only, or French only. Depending on the town and the customer, you need both. Two languages is not double the work if it is planned from the start, and it is expensive to retrofit later.

What the honest number depends on

Anyone who quotes without asking these is guessing:

• How many pages, really? Not how many you imagine. Most businesses need four.
• Do you have your text and your photographs? If we write the copy and organise the photography, that is real work and it costs. If you have them, it does not.
• Are you selling online, or being contacted? A catalogue with mobile money checkout is a different job from a page with a WhatsApp button. Both are legitimate; they are not the same price.
• Who updates prices? Building a site you can edit yourself costs a little more once, and saves you paying for every change for the next five years.
• Do you already have a Google Business listing? If not, that hour is worth more than most of the rest of the project.

The rough shape

Without pretending to quote a business we have not spoken to: a small business site that opens fast, works in both languages, is findable on Google, and lets people reach you on WhatsApp is a one-to-two week job. It should be a one-off cost, not a subscription, and you should own the domain and the code at the end of it. Anything sold as an ongoing monthly fee for a site that never changes deserves a hard question.

Our own entry package is built to exactly that shape, and we publish what it includes and what it does not — including the parts we deliberately leave out.

Two questions that save you money

Before you sign anything, ask:

1. "What happens if I stop paying you?" If the honest answer is that the site disappears, you are renting, not buying. Sometimes renting is fine — but know which one you agreed to.
2. "Can I see a site you built, on my phone, right now?" Not a screenshot. The live site, on mobile data. If it takes six seconds to load, you have your answer, and it did not cost you anything to find out.

That second question is the whole reason we publish our own work with the site itself listed as one of the builds. You are reading the demo.