What Factors Influence the Cost of Web Application Development

Amit Agrawal
5 min readMay 23, 2019

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Websites, today form the integral part of a business’s presence online. They are the online brochure of a company, or its marketing forefront. Today with the increasing number of internet users each year, majority of your customer base is available online and displays a great buying potential. Therefore, any business just cannot ignore the perks of having a great presence online owing to an engaging and functional website.

But before we opt for a business website there are certain parameters that come in the mind of a business owner. These parameters include — the purpose of the business website, the main functionality of the website, the project scope, and the website development company to choose for the service. And one of the main parameters that envelope all your decisions is your budget that you decide to invest on the web application development services. So, you need to know how to decide an ideal budget for your business website.

Here we bring you the list of factors on which the cost of your web development services matter:

1) The Project Scope:

The most important part of deciding the budget of your website development services is defining the actual project scope. For this, you need to be clear about the things you want in your website. This can be the functionality parameters, the number of pages, the main purpose of the website, the navigation that decides the user journey, the design and look & feel of the website, the user experience you want to craft, and the design elements you wish to include.

When we talk about the functionality parameters, more are the functionality features higher is the time required to integrate them in your website and higher will be your website cost. With this, if any third-party integrations are necessary, they also affect the cost of your website.

On the other end, as we come to the design perspective, according to the latest design trends there is the rise of features like chatbots and microinteractions, which help in crafting an engaging user experience for your website, so if you wish to include them for your business website the time and cost will also rise considerably.

On the other end, there is the rise of progressive web applications, or PWAs. These apps work like a mobile app with minimum internet usage and seamless navigation and browsing throughout the app on mobile devices as well as desktop. For progressive websites you need to connect with a professional PWA development company.

You need to research for yourself on the initial part to decide the final project scope of your website and document it down before you go for finding a website development company. Because it is your project scope that will be the primary factor deciding the cost of your website development.

2) The Web Application Development Services You Choose

Not to forget, the important factor that decides the cost of your website development project is the web development service provider you choose. Based on the nature of your business and the critical purpose of your site, you need to be very sure about the web app development service provider you choose.

If you wish to lead among your competitors with your business website, and you wish to sell your services/products from your website, you need to make a purely engaging website with the help of a professional service provider. Therefore, you need to decide an estimated budget and screen between the various options of the service providers, making sure you make the right choice.

Read the blog- Key Skills of Successful Web Application Developers

The service provider you choose, will be able to guide you on what framework and language to choose for your website development project. With this, he would be guiding you on the overall web application development process.

This will include the design phase, the development phase, the testing phase, the feedback resolution phase and the final submission and launch. Based on the number of resources involved and the number of hours in these phase, the total cost of the web development project is decided.

With this, some businesses opt for web development service providers who have less years of experience and generally cost low for their web development services, however the business owners also have to compromise on the quality of the web application they receive.

3) Inhouse Development or Outsourcing

You need to make your choice very deliberately about going for in house development by hiring a web developer or you should outsource to a professional website development company. Some factors that you need to keep in mind while going for in house website development are — the web developer you hire needs to have a thorough knowledge of website development and should be individually capable of bringing your app idea to life; you need to have all the required web development resources in house including the various tools required.

You need to have a QA or testing team which could test the web application simultaneously and in the practical environment to be sure about its functionality.

With this, generally the cost of in house website development is higher as the number of hours required are higher and therefore, you need to compare the rates with the outsourcing option. Because in in house development you need to bare the overhead cost of hiring resources and creating a resource library along with creating a work environment and setup.

Outsourcing web application development services, comes as a right choice for most of the businesses. Generally, business try to outsource to offshore service providers who owing to the currency difference provide great quality services at a lower price than outsourcing in the same country.

With this outsourcing helps you save in the overhead investment cost and the outsourcing service provider has to take the complete accountability of bringing your app idea to life. The service provider has o take care of the resources required for your app and meet the deadlines given by you. Therefore, outsourcing comes up as a more cost-effective and prudent option for web application development.

There are various other factors on which the web application development services depend, these factors include, the time invested in the overall app development, the use of web templates, the part of application that is hand-coded, the customisation required in building a web application, the number of changes in the project scope during the course of development, the experience of the resources working on your application, and the brand reputation of the web development company you choose.

Further if you wish to create a business website that delivers great conversions and great return on investments, feel free to connect with us.

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Amit Agrawal

Amit Agrawal Founder and COO at Cyber Infrastructure Inc which is an custom software development company.