Starting a small business is a large undertaking. You wear a lot of hats, often have to spend a good chunk of your savings to get the business off the ground and in the midst of running day-to-day operations, you’re always looking for ways to grow.
One area of growth you may be considering is a new, professionally designed website. After all, a 2017 survey showed that your website is the #2 most effective tool for service businesses to find new clients/work, only losing out to ‘referral or word of mouth’. Based on that previous statement, one could argue that a website is your #1 most effective ‘paid’ marketing tool considering ‘referral or word of mouth’, is typically a free marketing channel.
Now you may be thinking, perhaps that Wix drag-and-drop visual editor site that your brothers, cousins, son made in his spare time isn’t cutting it for your #1 most effective paid marketing tool. Yet, you’re reluctant to jump in because of the new website price tag. Why? Today we wanted to introduce a new way of envisioning a custom website budget. Rather than getting sticker shock, let’s break down the costs as a long term business asset.
According to industry leaders, the average website is re-designed every 6.2 years. Some high end websites may be re-designed more often (every 2 or 3 years) while other websites will go 10-15 years without a redesign. For this article, we’ll use the 6.2 number. If you break that down into months, it’s about 74 months.
With that in mind, let’s see how much a website would cost on a monthly basis depending on the quoted price:
- $2,000 – $27 / month
- $5,000 – $67.50 / month
- $10,000 – $135 / month
Now you need to ask yourself, is $27/month or even $135/month for a custom built website, specifically designed for your business and working as your #1 most effective paid marketing tool, worth it? If you’re committed to your business and envisioning long-term growth & success, this should be an easy, YES! If you answer no, one of two things likely apply:
- You’re not sure of the long term growth potential of this business and whether it can afford $27 – $135/month in marketing expenses.
- If you fall into this category you may need to contemplate your business growth potential. For most businesses, $27 – $135/month for your #1 paid marketing channel is very affordable.
- You don’t believe a website is your #1 most effective paid marketing tool.
- There are business sectors where a website will not work as effectively as others in terms of marketing. Even in those cases, a website can be a tool that creates stability and authority over competitors that may not have as solid an online presence. If you fall into this category, you need to weight the benefit of the monthly expense against the benefit to the company.
We hope you enjoyed the article. The main purpose is to avoid the sticker shock that many experience when seeing a custom website quote for the first time. When you sit down and break it up using a monthly budget, it often becomes much more affordable and makes sense from an investment standpoint for a small business.
Ready to get started on your next web design project? Send us a message and let’s get the ideas flowing!
