The quote came in at 95 000 and the budget is 60 000. The company has three options: find more money, go elsewhere, or take something out. The third is the most common and the hardest to decide, because nobody says which parts of the quote are load bearing and which are decoration.
Most people cut by price. They remove the most expensive line, because that gives the most relief. That is precisely backwards, because the expensive lines tend to be the ones that decide the outcome and the cheap ones tend to be invisible to everybody.
This article sets out what can be dropped without consequence, what can wait, and what not to touch even if it means postponing the website by six months.
Short answer
- Cut scope, not quality. A smaller site built properly works. A large site built cheaply does not even work as well as the smaller one.
- Droppable without consequence: a photo shoot, a second language, a blog, advanced features and some of the pages. All of it can be added later.
- Leave three things alone: speed, the content editor and measurement. Those get decided at the start and can only be added by rebuilding, which costs more than doing it once.
- The cheapest way to save tens of thousands is supplying your own copy and photos. It is the single largest item in the project.
- When the budget will not stretch even to the basics, waiting is more honest than buying half a website. Half a website gets rebuilt entirely a year later.
Why cutting goes wrong
Removing the most expensive line from a quote usually removes something that makes the website a website: the content structure, the design, or the content editor. What remains is cheaper and does not stand up on its own. It is buying a car without brakes because the brakes were the expensive part.
It works better to sort the quote into three piles. What has to happen now, what can wait a year, and what need not happen at all. Nobody can do that sorting for you, because it depends on what the site is for, but one rule gets you there.
Whatever can be added later without touching the foundations can wait. Whatever would mean rebuilding cannot.
| Item | When it has to happen | Cost of adding it later |
|---|---|---|
| Speed and technical foundation | now | a rebuild, so nearly the whole price again |
| Content editor | now | rebuilding the content side |
| Visit and enquiry measurement | now | little, but the intervening data is gone |
| Site structure and key page copy | now | a rewrite and a new layout |
| Further service pages | can wait | an hour of work per page |
| Blog or news | can wait | small, and it is planned for |
| Second language | can wait | translation and a switcher, a few days |
| Custom photography | can wait | half a day's shoot, any time |
| Calculator, booking, client area | can wait | a project in its own right |
| Animation and effects | need not happen | any time, and usually unnecessary |
Four things you can save on right away
In order of how much they save.
Copy and photos supplied by you
The single biggest saving and the only one that does not shrink the finished site. Copywriting runs 1 500 to 4 000 CZK per standard page, so twelve pages at two standard pages each is 36 000 to 96 000 CZK. A custom photo shoot is half a day to a day of work.
The catch is that somebody still has to write it. Promise the copy and then postpone it for four weeks and you saved money and paid for it with the deadline. A sensible middle way is to supply the facts and have them written up, rather than writing finished paragraphs.
Page count
A company website does not need a page for each of eleven services from day one. The three most important will do, and the rest gets written once it is clear what people come for. An extra page is an hour of work, so it is an item you can buy at any time.
One caution: pages are easy to add, but the structure of a site is hard to change. How the site is divided gets decided at the start even when half the pages are written a year later.
The second language
An English version tends to be ordered just in case, and then for years nobody checks whether anybody visits it. Yet it is one of the more expensive items: not just the translation, but a second set of copy to maintain for ever.
The sensible order is to launch in one language, watch for three months where the visits come from, and only then decide. If it turns out there are no enquiries from abroad, you saved tens of thousands and, more to the point, five years of upkeep.
Features that should wait for evidence
A calculator, a booking system, a client area. Each sounds like something that will bring enquiries, and each is a project in its own right. Before starting one, there should be at least one number saying somebody wants it: how many people ask about prices by phone, how many want to book outside office hours.
Without that number it is a bet. And bets are placed with money that is left over, not with money missing from the basics.
The budget is short, so we will still do all twelve pages, both languages and the calculator, just cheaper: on a template, without a bespoke editor and without measurement.
The budget is short, so we will do four pages properly, in one language and without the calculator. In a year we will add whatever the measurement shows we need.
Three things not worth saving on
What these have in common is that they are decided at the start and can only be added by rebuilding.
Speed. It is not a setting to be switched on. It follows from how the site is built, what loads and how much third party code sits inside. A slow site does not get faster without touching the foundations. And speed counts both towards Google's ranking and towards how many people stay long enough to see the page.
The content editor. Save on how the site is maintained and you have saved on the only part you will personally use. The consequence is not irritation but a website nobody updated for two years because nobody dared.
Measurement. The cheapest item in the quote and the first one people cut, because „that can be switched on any time“. Switched on, yes; but nobody can supply the year of data that passed in the meantime. Without it, decisions about changes get made by guesswork.
A smaller site built properly works. A large site built cheaply does not even work as well as the smaller one
What to do when the budget is short
Five steps that lead to a decision rather than to endless rounds of revised quotes.
- 1Write down one main goal for the site. Not three, one. Everything that does not serve it is a candidate for cutting.
- 2Ask the supplier for the quote broken down line by line with a price against each. A quote with one number cannot be cut.
- 3For each line ask one question: what would it cost to add this in a year? That figure decides more than today's price.
- 4Cut from the bottom: effects first, then features with no evidence of demand, then the second language, then pages, then photography.
- 5If the budget still will not cover the basics after cutting, wait. Half a website for half the money gets rebuilt entirely a year later, so it costs more than waiting did.
When paying more is the right answer
So the article does not read as if cutting were always correct.
- When the site replaces office work. A feature that saves two hours a day pays for itself in months. Here you calculate return, not price.
- When you are in a field decided on credibility. Healthcare, law, technical supply to industry. There a cheap looking website costs you jobs that never even start.
- When you already bought a cheap website once and it did not work. A second attempt on the same budget ends the same way. A cheap solution does not improve by being bought twice.
- When the site has to run five years without attention. Over five years the gap between the cheap and the considered option closes, because the cheap one needs more upkeep and gets replaced sooner.
How we handle it
You get a quote broken down line by line rather than as one number, precisely so it can be cut. For each line you know what it contains and what adding it later would cost.
Three things we will not take out, even if it means a smaller job:
- Speed. It is a condition of launch, not an extra. You can measure it yourself in PageSpeed Insights; we measure before launch and after it.
- A bespoke content editor. Included from the company website package onwards. Without it the site stops being updated, which is worse than a smaller scope.
- Visit and enquiry measurement. Part of the package and it needs no cookie banner, so there is nothing to cut.
Scope, on the other hand, we will happily cut. Four pages instead of twelve, one language instead of two, your photos instead of a shoot. And when the budget will not stretch even to the smaller version, we say so rather than build half a website.
Frequently asked questions
Where can you safely save money on a website?
On scope, not on quality. A custom photo shoot, a second language, a blog, advanced features and some service pages can all be dropped without consequence, because they can be added later without touching the foundations. The single biggest saving is supplying your own copy and photos, usually the largest item in the project.
What is not worth saving on?
Speed, the content editor and measurement. All three are decided at the start and can only be added by rebuilding, which costs more than doing it once. Measurement is the most deceptive: it can be switched on any time, but nobody can supply the year of data that passed in the meantime.
What is the difference between a cheap website and an expensive one?
Usually not the quality of individual parts but the scope and who supplies the material. A small budget buys one page with copy you provide. A large one buys twelve pages, copy, photography, a content editor and measurement. The difference shows in the line items, not in the total.
Is a smaller site better than a large one on a template?
A smaller site built properly, yes. A large site built cheaply does not even work as well as the smaller one, because speed, the editor and measurement cannot be added without a rebuild. Pages, by contrast, can be added at any time for about an hour of work each.
Should I build the English version straight away?
Usually not. An English version gets ordered just in case and then for years nobody checks whether anybody visits it, while it means not just translation but a second set of copy to maintain for ever. It is wiser to launch one language, watch for three months where visits come from, and decide on that.
What if the budget is short even after cutting?
Wait. Half a website for half the money gets rebuilt entirely a year later, so in total it costs more than a six month delay would have. An honest supplier will say so. The alternative is to build genuinely one page, but properly, and extend it later.
Summary
- Cut scope, not quality. A smaller site built properly works; a large cheap one does not.
- The rule for deciding: whatever can be added later without touching the foundations can wait.
- Photography, a second language, a blog, advanced features and some pages all drop without consequence.
- Speed, the content editor and measurement cannot be added except by rebuilding. Leave those alone.
- The biggest saving is supplying your own copy and photos. Just make sure it does not then get postponed.
- If the basics are out of reach, waiting is cheaper than buying half a website.
Got a budget that does not cover the quote
Tell us what you have and what the site has to do. We will break the quote down line by line and say what can be dropped without consequence and what cannot. If the answer is to wait, we will write that too.