How Much Does it Cost to Build a Website in Nigeria?

Different Types of Websites

Before we start talking about the cost of website design, we need to understand the types of websites because this also affects their price. Websites vary based on their content, size, and their complexity. They can be broadly classified into the following categories:

Simple Websites

These are websites that can be easily set up without much effort. They can be websites about your small business or company, displaying what you do and how to contact you. The average cost of this kind of website in 2024 is from ₦100,000 to ₦150,000.

Medium Websites

These websites do not require a high amount of technical know-how to build but may have a lot of content. Websites like these can also be for large organizations with lots of departments where each department has some information to display on the site. To build this type of website, you should budget about ₦1,000,000.

Complex Websites

These are websites that have a lot of information to display, and also require a lot of technical knowledge to build. They can include e-commerce websites like Jumia, Konga, etc. These websites are usually very expensive to build and in many cases, require a team of website developers to build them effectively. They can cost millions of naira to build.

Breakdown of The Cost of Website Development

The cost of building a website can be broken down into the following:

Website Setup Cost

This is the first stage in the web development process, it involves purchasing a domain name and a web hosting account and setting them up so that people can visit your website.

• Getting a Web Hosting Account: The cost of high-quality web hosting can be from as low as ₦8,600 per month for shared hosting to over ₦365,000 per month for dedicated server hosting. The amount you will pay also depends on the type of website you want to build. The guideline is: The higher the website complexity = The more expensive hosting

• Domain Name Registration Cost: The cost of a domain name is about ₦2,500 for a “.com. ng” domain and ₦15,000 for a “.ng” domain. There are other alternatives like .com, .net, .org, etc. and their prices vary depending on where you buy from. Meanwhile, when budgeting for the cost of setting up a website, you should keep in mind that these costs are recurrent. Web hosting has to be paid for every month while a domain name has to be paid for every year.

Website Design and Building Cost

This is the main part of the website development process. It involves designing the website pages, styling the website to fit your brand, creating web forms and a database in case you need to collect data from your website visitors, and so on. This can either be done using a free website builder like WordPress for simple and medium websites or by hiring a professional website designer/developer to build the website for you. Sometimes, you may need to hire a team of website designers if your website is going to be large and complex.

The cost for this aspect varies depending on how complex your website is, and also on the rate of the web designer. A simple 5-page business website could cost about ₦80,000 to build, while a more complex e-commerce website can cost up to ₦5 million.

However, if you decide to build the website by yourself using a website builder, you can usually have the entire website built for free, but in some cases, you may need to pay for some widgets or integrations like a payment portal if you want your users to be able to make payments on the website. These integrations can cost as little as ₦3,000.

In addition to that, you will also have to budget for logo design. If you are hiring a web designer, this would be added to the cost of building the website, but if you are building the website yourself and you don’t know how to create a logo by yourself, you will have to hire a graphic designer to create one for you. The price for this usually ranges from ₦7,000 to ₦100,000.

Content Creation Cost

This is the part where you come up with the content that users will see when they visit your website. It includes the menus you will have, the main body of content, the icons and images you will use, and so on. Subsequently, you may want more complex forms of media like animations and videos. These too would have to be budgeted for.

In Nigeria, the cost of content creation ranges from ₦7,000 to about ₦100,000. In some cases, the web designer may agree to handle content creation for you for an extra cost (which won’t be as expensive as hiring someone else just to create the content). If you feel you have a good grasp of what you want your website to be about and you are also good at writing and designing, you can handle the content creation by yourself. Meanwhile, you should keep in mind that this is what will make or break your website, so you need to pay attention to this area. In short, your content has to be appealing and compelling to make users want to visit your website and stay on the site.

However, If you are not creating the content yourself, be sure to hire a professional content writer to do it and review the work when they are done.

Website Promotion Cost

Website promotion is optional but highly recommended. It involves the promotion of the website on different channels to get people to know about it. After all, people cannot visit a website they do not know about, and even if they know about it, they need to be encouraged to visit it. Subsequently, you can promote the website on your social media accounts, pay bloggers to write about it, pay SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts or SMM (Social Media Marketing) consultants for training on how best to make use of social media, search engines and the internet in general to create awareness for your website. Even a low-cost website might still need promotion to be active. The recommended amount to spend on website promotion is about ₦40,000 per month for a small business.

Web Design Training Cost

This may be required if your website was built by someone else and the functionality of the website is a bit complex. You can also pay the person or team who built the website to train you – and your employees in the case of a business – on how to use the website. You may also require training on how to perform maintenance tasks like how to pay the monthly web hosting fee or the annual domain name fee. The cost of this will depend on the person who built the website and how complex the website is. You should budget from ₦25,000 upwards for this.

Website Management and Maintenance Cost

Building a website is not a one-off thing, you need to budget for managing and maintaining the website to prevent it from being unavailable to users and ensure that it continues to run smoothly even as the number of visitors it gets increases. Managing a website involves doing the following:

• Updating the content from time to time and removing outdated content.
• Ensuring that the web hosting plan you selected can cater to the number of visitors your website is getting.
• Paying the monthly and yearly fees for web hosting, domain name, and any integrations you may have added to your website.
• Updating the images and icons as necessary.

The cost of this widely varies. Depending on how your website was built, you may be able to do most of these tasks yourself and not need to pay someone else to do them. However, if your website was not designed to be easily manageable, you may also have to pay content creators and web designers to help you with maintenance. This can also cost from ₦35,000 upwards per month.

Should I Hire a Website Designer or Build a Website Myself?

Since the cost of website design can be very high, you can decide to build it yourself but take note of the following guidelines.

You should build a website yourself if:

• Building the website yourself saves costs.
• Your website is not a complex one, there are many web builders to choose from. You can also test different ones and choose your favorite.
• You want to save costs by fixing issues yourself when they arise.

However, you may want to hire a Professional if:

• Your website is too complex to be built with a web builder.
• You need the website to be completed quickly and there isn’t enough time to learn to build it yourself.
• The website needs to be highly customizable.
• The website is critical to your business and its performance and functionality would affect your revenue or business success.

Website Development Price List

Low-Cost Website Builders

Summary

In conclusion, the cost of website design or development in Nigeria varies widely and it depends on the size and complexity of the website, likewise the amount of technical know-how you have (which reduces how much you have to pay others to do it). The prices can also be affected by location. Since there are more web developers in Lagos and Abuja, there would be competition and this competition can allow the prices to be fair when compared to other places where web developers are scarce.

The average cost of website design for a small business can range from around ₦100,000 per year if you handle all of the tasks yourself, make use of a website builder, and you are also building a simple website. But it can cost around ₦1,000,000 per year if you are building a medium website. Although, if you want to build a complex e-commerce website like Jumia and Konga and you want it to be of high quality, then you should budget over a million Naira for your building your website.