I am amazed at the number of business owners that refuse to invest in their website presentation. If customers walk into a retail store and see broken displays, clothes on the floor and cluttered retail space, they typically leave without purchasing, and never return. So why would one expect anything less when customers visit their online business presentation?
I most often hear business owners state that they are only looking to spend the least amount possible on their website. The trouble is, many of them simply don’t understand the importance of having a clean, well designed and easy to navigate website that accurately represents the business model and USP. Much in the same way the new customers would leave the poorly designed retail bricks and mortar space, they will react the same when landing on your website.
A solid strategy on investing in your website presentation would be to use a percentage of your annual advertising budget towards the design and maintenance of your website presentation. After all, a website is one of the most important parts of any successful business. The average marketing budget for a company under $25 million ranges from 12.5 – 22% of annual revenue in 2016. That being said the average small business owner will spend far less if any of this budget on their websites.
If a company has a gross revenue of $1.5 million and utilizes 22% towards marketing, then they should be investing a minimum of 10% towards the website, maintenance and updates to their web presentation. This would amount to investing around $33k into their website and internet marketing each year. Although many websites will cost far less than this, we are just basing this on averages for the sake of discussion.
The above scenario makes total sense when viewed as invested money and not money spent. This is a very important point. Because if done correctly, your website will help your business grow and not just be money spent without a return on that investment.
So if your business website is currently a scraped together build-it-yourself type of design. May I recommend having it redesigned by a professional, this will help in your quest to grow your business and bottom line. For those of you trying to get a basic understanding as to “what should I spend on a new website?”. I think it would be safe to say that the calculation above is a good starting point.
If you are a new business start-up that has not yet determined a budget, then it is usually best to avoid the cheapest bidder approach. As you usually end up having it rebuilt down the road and missing out on a large chunk of potential business. The cost savings are far less than the lost business due to a broken or poorly designed web site and downtime.
If you are in the market for a website redesign or a new web design, give us a call for a free estimate.
Please note that we have custom website designs starting from just $499 – so no project is too small. Happy to help any size business with their web design and internet marketing.
TGS Web Design SEO in Albuquerque 505-903-4326.