How much should you spend on a website?
In this blog I will explore a very comment question people grapple with and that is how much should you spend on your website.
I think the most obvious place to start is with what can you afford? There is no point spending money you simply do not have.
But before I go into what kinds of websites you can have and why you need to think about this I feel I need to outline the importance of your website and why it needs to be done right.
Now you may use email marketing, or social media or even paid services like Pay per click and display advertising?All of these are designed to drive traffic to your website in most cases. But why or earth would you drive traffic to a website that does not designed and built around converting? Now a conversion is not always a sale. It could be a download or a email signup or lots of other micro conversions that all lead up to a main conversion in most cases a sale.
By driving traffic paid or otherwise to a site that is not clear, simple and enables visitors to find what they want and fast its all a waste.
So as much as all the other elements of digital are important and they really are, they are far less effective if your website is wrong.
So to the point in hand, how much should you spend. There are a few different models on the market today the normal quote for design and build and sometimes an on-going fee for support. And there is also a slightly newer format of paying monthly with no upfront cost. There are of course pros and cons to both.
There are also some massively different price scales out there from a few hundred pounds to a few hundred thousand pounds if not more.
I would suggest basing the budget on your turnover and size of your company. The other to consider is what do you want from your website? With technology today you can do so much more than just create an online brochure.
For example there is no reason why your website provider should not be able to provide you with a system that will tell you who visits your site and how often. Systems that can collect progressive bits of information from your prospects are no expensive and also notify you when visitors complete certain actions. This is what is known as marketing automation. I think this is a must for small business owners. I also believe you should be creating user journeys on your website and understanding what your prospects want.
Now you maybe looking for an E-commerce site where you are looking to sell things direct from your site? These site will generally cost more than traditional websites. Getting a well designed site and continually improving and testing is the key to an E-Commerce site and finding the right relationship with a provider is key.
So how much you spend is a bit of an open ended question, I would first talk to various different suppliers and get a real understand of what you want and what your prospects and customer want from your website. Do you want more leads, more sales, more email sign ups and all of these? By understand the size and complexity of your proposed website you should after speaking with a few providers get a bit of an idea. I have worked on projects both very small, like my own, and more recently very large with values over £100,000.
If you want some advice or some information on any of the above please drop me a line at david@davidmarkshaw.com I would be happy to point you in the right direction.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Author- Speaker - Consultant. Passionate about all things digital.