How Much Does A Good Web Designer Cost

Are you thinking about a new website and wondering about the costs?

Are you wondering “how much does a good web designer cost?”

You’ve decided on getting a new website, what do you do next? You may find yourself asking, how much does a good web designer cost? Or maybe you are asking can I build it myself?

If you are looking for small business website design in Orange County, California give me a call to discuss your project.

(562) 423-1691

These are two common options and they each have advantages. If you’re a small business and you have the skill along with the time, I think a do it yourself option will work just fine. If you’re going to be a do-it-yourselfer and you plan on having me help with marketing in the future, please use the same WordPress theme I recommend. It will allow your website to better fit my marketing system. A common scenario with the DIY solution is a small business owner starts to build their own site, then finds the back end dashboard of WordPress overwhelming and confusing. The other scenario is there never seems to be enough time to start or finish building a new website. Most small business owners are busy people. If you don’t have the skill, time, or desire to build your own website, then hiring some to do it for you is probably a good idea.

If you happen to be looking for a North Orange County WordPress Designer in California, that is what I do.

(562) 423-1691

How do you find a good web designer and what do they cost?

Are you shopping for a practical and effective small business website designer in Orange County? The question is, who do you hire and where do you find them? Do you look for the cheapest web designer on Craigslist? A lot of people do this. Or do you hire someone in Pakistan or the Philippines, again a lot of people decide to go this route. They certainly are cheaper. Or do you go with a native English speaker in the States? It’s going to cost more but there is less chance of issues caused because of miscommunication. Or do you get more fine grained and go with a local that is easily accessible to your business location?

It used to be that being local was needed because of ongoing support and training. Now with everyone using Zoom, we can offer support from just about anywhere in the world. Although it is nice to have the choice of on location support if it’s needed.

The cost for a web designer can range widely depending on the skill level of the designer, the amount of support you need, their business model, and what kind of website you’re looking for. Also important is how many pages will the website have? For this article I’m going to use a basic website as a model.

So to answer the question “how much does a good web designer cost?” We also need to answer the question of “how many pages should my website have?”

Many website packages are based on the number and kinds of pages a website has.

For simplicity we will be using what has been the standard five page website as our web design pricing model. As the site gets more complex it gets harder to compare the costs. It’s not easy to even compare the costs of a five page site. There are a lot of variables that go into a website. All websites are made with HTML and often with a Content Management System. In this article we’ll be discussing website designs with WordPress as the Content Management System. So we are looking at a five page website built with WordPress.

Now you ask, what is a five page website?

A five page website is a standard web page format and page structure developed and used extensively since the late 1990s. It’s still relevant today and can be used as a starter website or foundation to be added to over time. These have always been considered the minimal essential pages a business needs to have in order to build an effective presence online.

The 5 page website is a tried and true workhorse of website marketing. Those five pages have been and continue to be the backbone of many service businesses’ online marketing.

What pages are included in a five page website?

I go more in depth into the different pages in the “How many pages does a website need” article.
The old style five page website included these pages:

• Homepage
• About us page
• Contact us page
• Product and/or service page
• Frequently asked Questions page
• Picture/gallery page
• Pricing page

Wait, there’s more than five pages. Yes, some websites start with more and some with less than five pages. Not all websites have all of the mentioned pages. But these are typical web pages one finds in a starter website.

A modern five page website needs to really have at least six pages.
The extra page is the
Privacy Policy page

It is also now common to have a blog page as well.
Blog pages with several Blog categories are now commonly included.

There are also additional pages that are sometimes included in this standard format.
Other pages that are commonly part of a starter website package are:
Picture/gallery/portfolio page. The gallery page can be a little more detailed and sometimes more complex than the old style picture page.
References and Testimonial page

So the starter website can actually be more than five pages.

There are still a few things that need to be clarified. First is this going to be a completely customized site built from scratch or will it use a template? I can build a site from scratch. That’s how this site is built. However, when I first started this site, I used a template that I customized. If you’ve seen my WordPress videos and tutorials you’ll notice all templates have design flaws that need to be fixed. At least every template I’ve seen.

I am going to use a customized template site as part of our pricing model.

So we now have a 5 to 7 page WordPress website built using a customized theme template.

You can probably get an out of the box template website on the low end around $250. Expect a pretty barebones site for this price. It might look nice but it will most likely have some unseen issues. The design problems might not be any big deal or they may cause problems for SEO and even more serious problems by not being in compliance with regulations.

Most of the WordPress people I would hang out with, before Covid, charged between $1,200 to about $3,000 on average for this kind of site. Some changed more. Online I have seen reasonable prices from about $800 to around $2500. There are several online shops that range from $1500 to $3500. All of these sites look good and their customers are happy with the work. However, under the hood many of them seem to have some problems. I’m not saying to totally avoid them. But you should be aware that there is more to a website than a pretty face. When researching this article I looked at perhaps 40 to 50 websites.

The Highest price I saw from a local Orange County business was $15,000. This was from a full service advertising agency. I am not factoring this into the average price you will find further down the article. In a recent survey it was found that the average price for a website in general was between $2,500 and $5,000. The survey mentioned was not confined to Southern California.

One of the higher prices I saw for a basic site online was $6,500. It looked like this was for a customized template based sight, but it was hard to tell exactly.

Even for an experienced website guy it can be hard to really answer the question “how much does a good web designer cost?” at least simply from looking at who is listed on a Google search and from what they offer in a website package. This is because it’s hard to know if you are comparing apples to apples. The big question is how are they really building sites? I pretty much judged sites by evaluating designers’ sites using the Google evaluation tool. So it was a rudimentary evaluation. I have seen where websites a designer claims to have built are actually better than the developer’s site. But usually it’s the other way around. I did not do a thorough audit of their sites or their customers’ sites. I only did a quick Google audit for speed, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. But from the reports I did run, I have an idea of which WordPress page builders they’re using and if they’re using a template or not. Most page builders and templates have characteristics that act something like a fingerprint.

Prices for local Orange County website design.

All of these prices were observed in May of 2023
First I need to say there is a far higher percentage of Orange County, CA. web designers who have well-built websites than what I usually see with out of state designers. Next, not many local website designers post their prices.

The prices I did find range from $800 to $2,500. Again people I know that aren’t ranking well in search engines are up around $3,000 plus.

Local Orange County web design prices:

• $2000 However, their own website was poor to fair. (I only looked at the Homepage.)
• $1,100. This one looks interesting, their own website was surprisingly good. (I only looked at the Homepage.)
• $2,500 Their homepage was also well done.

One site I checked out looked like it was hacked and had rather nefarious intentions, including trying to get me to download a file. The other website design businesses I checked did not give any pricing information or they were confusing.

From what I can see in Orange County California the average cost of a simple template based website design for a small business is about $2,000.

I need to say it’s really hard for most people to know exactly what they’re getting with any package. There is so much that goes into a website, it’s just hard to tell. You can see what looks like the same package from two different designers, they each have the same features list and components. Each website may even look very good on delivery. However, when analyzed and audited they are quite different. There may also be additional services that are simply standard with one website provider, so not even mentioned. There is also the fact that different web designers use different processes that can influence the actual website build experience. It’s almost impossible to tell exactly what one is getting simply from a description on a webpage.

So how much does a good web designer cost is not an easy question to answer. But I can give you an idea about what my fees are.

Yes, the big question is, what are my fees and do I have a website design package? I offer a basic starter website package with a beginning investment of $1,500 to $2500. However the real value is in the monthly growth and maintenance package that goes with a starter website. You can expect the yearly investment for the website and the growth/support/hosting package to be around $6,000. That’s it, I specialize in one kind of website, in a very small geographical area. For businesses that need more in the way of marketing I do offer additional services that can range from in-person events and promotions to content creation.

While I specialize in one kind of website, not all websites are the same. I tailor the site and interior pages to the business. There can be extra charges for custom work and content, but in general, I am striving to keep the pricing consistent. However, every website is different. For more information give me a call at

(562) 423-1691

I do offer other services, but I am focused on the Minimum Viable Website starter package with a maintenance and growth membership. If you are familiar with the idea of a Minimum Viable Product this approach will make sense in that we start with a foundation product, the website, and iterate as needs are uncovered. With a foundation website we first build the basic site and then improve it over time as we get more information about how your business needs to use the site and how customers use the site.

I can offer a marketing package for those who use a different platform than my choice of WordPress themes and plugins. But there will be a different workflow. Currently, I’m primarily offering the marketing package in combination with WordPress websites to North Orange County businesses. The idea is to create a system where there are some economies that can be provided by this approach while benefiting those I work with.

Visit the small business website design page to learn more about the build process for a website.

If you’re interested in talking about marketing and content creation outside a web design project give me a call. I am open to talking about what I do and what can be expected. I am not opposed to providing marketing outside of a design project, but the workflow will be different.

I can be reached at

(562) 423-1691