Website for print and signage: options, configurators and what it costs
A print or signage website that shows your range properly and brings in enquiries is a step 03 build: EUR 1.500-3.500 for 4 to 7 pages, a CMS, service pages and a contact flow, over 3 to 6 weeks. The moment the site has to configure a product, return a price for the exact options chosen, take the artwork and take the money, it is step 04: EUR 3.500-7.500, over 6 to 12 weeks.
That one distinction is the whole budget question for this trade. Everything below is detail on which side of it you belong.
A range is products multiplied by options
Print and signage is not a list of products. It is a list of products multiplied by choices. A banner is a size, a material, a finish, an eyelet spacing and a quantity. A fascia sign is a substrate, a cut, a depth, a fixing and an installation. Business cards are a stock, a weight, a finish and a run length. Every product you sell carries a small grid of decisions behind it, and how the website handles that grid decides the step.
| Catalogue, step 03 | Configurator, step 04 | |
|---|---|---|
| What the visitor does | Reads the range, sees the options written out | Builds the exact product on screen |
| What the site gives back | An enquiry carrying their choices | A price for that combination |
| Artwork | Sent by email after you reply | Uploaded, checked and stored against the job |
| Paying | Invoiced the way you do now | Payments and checkout on the site |
| Your next move | Quote it and reply | Produce it |
| Price | EUR 1.500-3.500 | EUR 3.500-7.500 |
| Timeline | 3-6 weeks | 6-12 weeks |
A fixed quote always follows scoping, so treat these as the shape of the answer. The whole list of steps, including the step 01 landing page at EUR 600-900 and the step 02 mini-site at EUR 900-1.500, is on packages.
What actually makes a configurator step 04
Not the dropdowns. Three things: the pricing rules, the artwork, and the money.
The pricing rules
Your price is a formula. Square metres against a material rate, a setup charge, quantity breaks, a minimum order, a surcharge for a rush, a different rate for trade accounts. Right now that formula lives in your head and in a spreadsheet, and it bends whenever it needs to. Putting it on a website means writing it down exactly, including every exception you currently make by instinct, and then keeping it correct when a supplier changes a price. That is an admin screen with rules you maintain, which is engineering work, not a design detail.
The artwork
Customer files are where jobs go wrong, and a website that accepts them inherits that problem. Upload, size limits, storage, whether the site checks dimensions, bleed, colour mode and resolution, and what a customer sees when their file fails the check. Each of those is a decision with build time attached, and the strict version costs more than the permissive one.
The money
Payments and checkout, tax handling, an order record, and an output your production team can read without translating it. Payments are the clearest marker of step 04; a site that takes money is a site that has to be right about states, failures and refunds.
Those three are why a configurator sits in step 04 alongside login, dashboard, API, CRM and chatbot work, rather than at the expensive end of step 03.
What a step 03 site can still do for you
- A page per product family, with photographs of work you produced, not stock images of a banner somebody else printed.
- Every option written out: the sizes, materials and finishes you actually stock.
- A from price, written by you as content and changed when you decide, so nobody arrives with the wrong idea of the budget.
- An enquiry form that carries product, size, quantity and deadline into your inbox in a readable shape.
- A CMS so you add a new product or retire an old one yourself.
What it will not do is hand the customer a number they can act on without you. If your prices move with supplier costs, that is arguably the feature rather than the limitation.
Process and timeline
Scoping comes first and produces the fixed quote. A catalogue site then runs 3 to 6 weeks. A configurator runs 6 to 12 weeks, and its pricing rules have to be agreed during scoping, before anything is built. Step 05 work, a platform at EUR 7.500 and up, only gets quoted after discovery.
This is the part that waits on you. Photography of your own installations and print runs, the exact option lists, and, if you are going to step 04, the pricing rules written down as rules rather than described in a meeting. Signage is a visual trade and the pages fail without real photographs, so book the shoot early.
When to spend less
- Your work comes from walk-ins, local businesses and repeat trade accounts. Then you need to be findable and reachable, not configurable. A step 02 mini-site at EUR 900-1.500 with a contact flow and a basic CMS, plus SEO foundation as a one-off at EUR 450-750, is the whole job.
- One product carries the business. If vehicle graphics or roll-up banners bring in the enquiries, a step 01 landing page at EUR 600-900 aimed at that one product will outwork a wide site nobody reads to the end.
- Your range keeps changing. Put the money into the CMS inside step 03 rather than a configurator whose rules you would be rewriting every time a supplier moves.
- You want the configurator eventually. Build step 03 first with the product data structured properly, then add the configurator when enquiry volume makes the self-service version worth the money, with payments as an add-on at EUR 600-1.500 and the quote confirming the scope. Sequencing it is not a compromise, it is how you avoid paying for rules you have not settled yet.
Questions buyers ask
Can customers get a price without contacting us?
Yes, once the site holds your pricing rules and calculates the combination the customer built: step 04 in a new build, or added to the site you already have, with the quote confirming the scope. At step 03 you can publish a from price as ordinary content and let the enquiry do the rest. The deciding question is whether you are willing to commit your pricing to a rule the site follows without you.
Can the site check artwork before we print it?
Yes, and this is scoped by how strict you want it. Accepting a file and storing it against the job is straightforward. Checking dimensions, bleed, resolution and colour mode, then explaining a failure clearly enough that the customer fixes it themselves, is a larger piece of work and belongs in the step 04 estimate.
Do we need a full webshop?
Only if you sell fixed items in fixed sizes. A hosted shop platform is built around a product with a price, and your products have a price only once the options are known. If every job is configured, you are buying a configurator that happens to take payments, which is a step 04 build.
Who owns it, and who hosts it?
You own the code, the repository and the database. Hosting is agreed per project, and we can host it. That gets decided while we scope rather than assumed. If your artwork files live in the system, where they are stored is part of that same conversation.
We have a designer already. Can you build only?
Yes. Bring the screens and we scope the engineering against them, which is set out on design and engineering. The stack is Next.js, described on Next.js development.
Send us your product list and say whether customers should see a price on screen, and you will get back a step, a timeline and a fixed quote after scoping: start here.
Building something?
JP Studio designs and builds websites, storefronts and product interfaces.