6 Aspects to Consider While Determining Cost of Healthcare Website Development

Hassle-free online healthcare services through websites and apps allows patients to seek medical care and appointments easily.

Healthcare website development is an effective way to to build an online presence, nurture patient experience, build communication, boost marketing, and enhance brand recognition.

Before designing a healthcare website, one of the crucial components to decide is the budget or costs, this article will help to plan a budget based on all the aspects essential for building a professional healthcare website.

Aspects That Influence Costs of Healthcare Website Development

1. Time Element

The more complex a website design and scope is, the more time it will take to build it. On an average, experienced freelancers charge between $20 to $80 per hour, and an established web designing company charges up to $100,000 for the whole project (depending on the complexities and the time required to complete it). The more time a website development consumes, the more costlier it gets.

The time required to create a medical website varies on the basis of experience, skills, and expertise of the development team. Timeline for developing a healthcare website encompasses several stages, and the time spent on each stage varies with complexity and objectives set.

Consider discussing an estimated timeline with the website development company for drawing out a budget. This timeline depends on how long each developmental stage lasts, there are six essential website development phases – vendor selection and planning, UI/UX designing, development, testing, review and feedback, and launch.

Each of these stages require varied timelines, for instance, one week – one month for vendor selection and planning; around one week for UI/UX design; and approximately a day or two for testing and launch. It’s recommended to keep track of the time period while developing as it’s proportional to the estimated budget.

2. Goal Behind Website Development

Goals and objectives behind website creation acts like a roadmap throughout the process, assuring that the development team is on track. This helps to calibrate progress report of the website project as well. For a medical website goals can be either a simple website with enough space or a sophisticated one with more functionalities for patients and staff.

Choice of selecting a platform for building website, based on the goals and objectives, directly affects costs or the budget. There are multiple free and paid website building platforms available with features, plugins, templates, and more for creating an unique medical website, for example Wix, WordPress, Weebly, SiteBuilder, and more.

Each of these website builders are known for exclusive functionalities, so users can create website as per their goals, for instance WordPress is flexible with all types of websites, especially blogging; Weebly is known for its drag and drop function; Wix is preferred as AI website builder, and more.

These website builders help to create affordable websites , however it fails to give a credibility factor which is needed for professional and authentic fields such as healthcare.

Generic templates in web builders may not work on mobile outlook and may lack SEO components as well. Customized healthcare websites adds extra effectiveness and authenticity as compared to templates that look inadequate if targeting for a professional outlook.

Templates on the above mentioned website builders restrict the use of space by limiting adding images and content to certain spots on a web page, therefore making it hard to standout in the crowd.

For a healthcare field, customized website works because it brings out additional features that can be added to improve uniqueness and build a brand recognition as well.

3. Content

Content is a powerful tool that attracts visitors and the target audience to websites; it helps to build company reputation and brand, along with driving users to take action.

For medical websites, content development requires a dedicated team, which can either be an in-house or outsourced team. A separate budget apart from website development will be needed for recruiting a content team.

If planning for an in-house content team, ensure to cover aspects such as salaries, recruitment costs, overhead, taxes, and more while planning a budget.

Outsourcing a content team eliminates these expenditures as there’s no payroll to keep a track of, and payments are made as per work, time, and agreement on a monthly or weekly basis.

Consider outsourcing when there’s inadequate knowledge about content, have no experience in SEO, out of time to create content, or the internal team needs additional help.

4. Template Vs. Customized Design

To create a professional medical website design, both templates and customized designs are suitable, however they come with their own limitations.

A template design is preferable when budget is tight as templates are either free or cost very low. Consider going with template designs when on a stricter budget than waiting to afford online presence.

Further, templates are easy to set up, offer creative flexibility, and ensures that the site functions with mobile layout too. However, limitations of templates are they aren’t original, have customization restriction, and lack SEO. Templates from site builders as mentioned above can work for other types of businesses, but for the healthcare sector, a customized website is the way forward.

Customized designs are costly and is recommended to consider it when it is well within budget limits, or find a vendor that’ll customize website in a small budget.

Customization highlights a brand, makes it standout when a patient is searching for medical assistance, and builds a reputation as well. Multiple revisions are required for building a customized medical website and it leads to added expenses, but the final outlook helps to establish an authority in the healthcare field.

For healthcare industry, customizing a website works because then developers can create a HIPAA compliant website from scratch, cover all the necessary components such as obtaining SSL (Secure Sockets Layer), getting a BAA (Business Associate Agreement), and ensuring that all data is encrypted.

HIPAA compliance is ingrained in the website development process, hence choose a development company that follows it like Arkenea!

HIPAA and HITECH rules are strictly adhered to while developing a website, thus leaving out chances of legal penalties or data breaches; and this is possible through a custom we development.

In addition to this, UI/UX plays a crucial role while developing a personalized healthcare website as it helps to ameliorate efficiency. Moreover, UX/UI functional designs helps users to reach results quicker, thus boosting productivity.

Involvement of UX/UI in custom software development saves time and cost because an UX design can be replicated for future reference or usage.

5. In-House Vs. Outsourced Development Team

According to Glassdoor, on an average a US employer spends around $4,000 and 24 days to hire a new employee. For finding an outsourced company, the time required is around one – four weeks. One of the biggest expense while developing a website is time, as its directly proportional to expenditure.

Another risk while hiring a development team, be it outsourced or in-house is a bad hire, because as per the US Department of Labor, a bad recruitment costs about 30 percent of the individual’s first year earnings. Outsourcing is preferable for small companies or those who wish to cut down costs due to a tight budget.

Furthermore, IT projects outsourcing is cost-effective because it allows to get the work done effectively at a low cost. There’s a vast difference in salary patterns and the same kind of work in the USA is costly. One doesn’t have to spend money for training an outsourced team as they’re an expert in their field.

For an in-house team, expenses rise due to additional costs such as training (for freshers), bad hires, and payrolls. However, an in-house team is beneficial because the team is familiar with the company, brand, and can focus solely on one project at a time.

Managers have more control over the in-house development team as compared to no control over an outsourced one. Hence, projects can be monitored closely, deadlines can be met, and corrections can be made quickly.

6. Functionality and Integrations

The more functionalities and integrations a medical website needs, the higher the costs. By integrating components and functionalities such as message board/chatbots, forum, registration systems, webforms, calendar, or a photo gallery increases expenses.

Free plugins and modules are available for certain functionalities such as BirchPress – a booking plugin in WordPress. Free plugins can be customized to meet the standards and needs of a medical website, this in turn will affect time and costs as well.

Healthcare API (Application Programming Interface) solutions are useful for building a remote healthcare platform in times when digitization is reaching newer heights.

High performance APIs are designed to contact patients virtually, gather consultation charges, give appointments, offer digital healthcare, and send reminders. Healthcare APIs are an effective addition to the website, however its recommended to be mindful of the budget while integrating these APIs.

Develop a robust online presence by targeting the interests of and attention of patients. To create an informative, easy-to-use, professional, and eye pleasing medical website (which is also budget friendly), get in touch with Arkenea – experts in healthcare software development.