A decent website costs anywhere from $3,000 to $15,000 CAD for most small to medium businesses working with a professional agency. That gets you a custom-designed, mobile-responsive site with 5-15 pages, basic SEO setup, and a content management system like WordPress. If you go the DIY route with Wix, Squarespace, or a basic WordPress template, you can launch for $500 to $3,000, but you're trading money for time and likely sacrificing performance and flexibility. The cost breakdown typically includes design work (20-30% of budget), development and technical setup (30-40%), content writing and optimization (15-25%), and project management (10-15%). Sites requiring e-commerce functionality, custom integrations, or extensive content migration push costs higher, often into the $20,000 to $50,000 range. A basic Shopify store might start around $5,000, but anything with custom features or high SKU counts escalates quickly. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we see three common mistakes that waste money: paying for features you don't need yet, skimping on content quality to save a few hundred dollars, and forgetting about hosting, security, and maintenance costs that run $500 to $2,000 annually. A $5,000 website that converts at 3% beats a $15,000 site that converts at 1%, so focus on clarity, speed, and user intent rather than visual complexity. The real question isn't what a website costs upfront but what it costs to run and improve over time. Budget for monthly updates, content additions, and performance monitoring. We typically recommend clients reserve 15-20% of the initial build cost annually for ongoing optimization. A website that costs $8,000 to build but generates 50 qualified leads per month is a bargain. One that costs $3,000 and sits static for three years is expensive regardless of the initial price tag.