Why we charge large businesses & public sector organisations more for website redesign

When I was planning my wedding (sorry, Martin, our wedding). I did the usual stuff like searching for florists, venues, catering, wedding bands etc. And I often received the same piece of advice off friends and family:

“Don’t tell them it’s for a wedding, otherwise they’ll charge you A LOT more.”

I imagine that’s what it must feel like if you work for a larger company. You may think to yourself, ‘Are these guys going to charge me more just because we’re a large business or are well known?’

And you know what, you’re right. We do charge more to larger companies. And by larger, I’m talking turnover of a million+.

Our web design packages start from £4497(+VAT), with the average being around £7,000 – £9,000(+VAT). For large companies, this jumps to £20,000+(+VAT).

But it’s not for the reasons you might think. We don’t sit there rubbing our hands together with glee and pound signs in our eyes when we see you coming. There are genuine reasons why we charge more to larger companies.

In the interest of honesty and transparency and all that malarky, we’ve listed these below.

1. There’s a lot more communication with you

When we work with larger organisations, generally there are more people involved in the process. Yes, we communicate with one, designated person, but this one person has to get input and feedback from the different teams within the organisation.

Often, we’ll have video calls with the different teams to go through what they need from the website, or feedback on the designs, or any particular questions. Each team has it’s own priority. For example, people who work in finance want something different from the website to the people who work in HR.

So, why would this cost more money? Essentially, it takes A LOT longer.

There’s a lot more communication needed when we deal with larger companies. And this isn’t a bad thing. The level of communication with many different members of staff is what will lead a website that serves the company, the individual teams within the company and the customer.

A typical website design project will take us 3 months. With larger organisations, it takes us 6-9 months. When we take on a website design project for a larger organisation, we have to schedule in time in diary, and we take on fewer clients around that time.

The reason we charge more is that you get more of our dedicated time.

2. You need more page designs

All our websites are built from scratch, and we follow a particular process.

The first thing we do is research. We spend time with you figuring out what you need from your website, understanding your brand, your customers, the issues you have with your current website etc.

Once we’ve been through this discovery phase we create a wireframe of the homepage. Once that’s been approved we then design your homepage, and finally, once that’s been approved we move on to building the homepage. We follow this process with every single page on your website that needs an original design.

Larger organisations tend to need a lot more page designs. Not just a homepage, about page and a single service page. Larger organisations sometimes need 10/15/20+ page designs. This is because they tend to offer a wide range of services for a wide range of sectors. This means more time has to go into the project, which is why it costs more.

3. Your website has to serve lots of different people

For larger organisations, a website redesign is not just a way to generate more leads and sales. A website is also a way to make business processes easier and more streamlined. Each team within a large organisation generally has a ‘wish list’ of things they want from a website.

For example, HR might want to make the process of attracting new candidates to the organisation easier. Administrative staff might want the website to do some of the heavy lifting in terms of administrative tasks. The sales team may want an online portal for potential customers to view videos, submit documents, view proposals, etc.

Because each team wants something different from the website, websites for larger organisations usually have more functionality. This all adds to the cost.

4. There’s a lot more integrations/software development

Similar to number three, larger organisations need their website to integrate with lots of different software, for example, relationship management software, apps, internal communication software etc.

We sometimes have to work with software developers too, assisting them in connecting the software to the website.

This all takes extra time.

5. We provide you with a lot more training

One of the main reasons larger companies come to us for a website is, well, they’ve been treated pretty badly before. We’re under no illusion that we’re a pretty unusual choice for a large company – who can have their pick of fancy agencies with big offices, teams of staff and one of those coffee machines we’re super jealous of. Whereas we work from home with our cats, a kettle and a tub of Nescafe Gold Blend.

But all the same, we do attract some large companies and one of the reasons why is because we give them access to the entire website. We don’t force them into contracts where we update their websites for them at an obscene cost. Because, quite frankly, that would bore the hell out of us.

But that does mean we have to provide extra training upfront. A lot of different people in the organisation need to know how to update or access different parts of the website. Marketing wants to delve into the blog, administrative staff want to know how to create intelligent contact forms that send information to specific people in the company, HR wants to see the CVs of potential candidates etc. All that needs explaining.

FYI – Don’t worry, backups mean you can’t break the website. There’s very little you can do to break a website if it’s backed up correctly.

6. There’s often consulting too

Once larger organisations have invested £20/30/40,000 on a website, they often want to know how to get the most out of it too. Makes sense.

So, we often consult on things like SEO, copywriting and content marketing during the project and after it’s live. This all adds to the cost of the website.

7. There’s a lot more content

Larger organisations usually have mammoth websites. There are often thousands of pages, some which need to be culled. This needs to be done carefully and strategically. We don’t want to lose any traffic when the new website is launched, which is why setting up appropriate redirects is important.

The majority of the pages though will need migrating over to the new website. And you may think, ‘oh, this can be done automatically, right?’ Yes and no. If it’s WordPress to WordPress redesign, there is some software that helps you pull over the content from one site to another BUT every single page still needs checking. In our experience, this is never perfect. There’s always missing images or incorrect URLs. This all needs to be fully checked and corrected before the website goes live.

If the original site is not on WordPress then the content will need to be moved over manually, and this is a huge part of the extra cost.

8. We have to consider your ROI

Charging 5k for a website to a company that turns over millions quite frankly does not make sense.  We charge more because you’ll get a lot more in return.

In Conclusion

So there you are. These are the reasons why we charge more for large business/public sector websites. If you work for a large business or public sector company, I hope that’s put your mind at ease. If you’d like more help with choosing a web designer, you can also download our free, totally unbiased, website buyer’s guide below. Of if you have any questions, feel free to ask us on our contact page.

P.s. Do you bid for projects?

We also get asked this a lot. Typically, the answer is no. Although we have done. The reason we generally don’t do it is that it takes up a lot of our time.