How much should I pay for a website?? Isn’t this the question! There are two ways to think about a website. The first is to think of a website like a car. You have an idea what kind of car you want or what features you need. You go to a dealership. The car has a price tag based on the features and the brand name. You might try and haggle with the salesman. You buy the car. You use the car. The car is a tool for you to use.
Your Website Is Your Employee
The second way to think of a website like an employee. Like a car, you have an idea of what skills you need this person to bring to the table. You have goals for the employee. In a good relationship, you nurture the employee and the employee works hard. An employee is a long-term investment in your company, and a good employee should make the company money.
I will always advocate for you to think of your website as an employee, for a variety of reasons. (You should really read the blog post that’s linked above.) One of the reasons is to help you determine how much you should pay for your website. A C-Level employee costs more than an intern because a C-Level employee is expected to bring more to the company and help the company be more productive and make the company more money.
What Are Your Website Goals?
The question you need to ask yourself when shopping for a website is what do you need to achieve through it. Your website should always be tied to specific business goals, and those goals should be trackable and measurable. If you plan to make $10,000 in a year from your website through leads or products or time-saving automation (yes, your time is worth money), how much are you willing to invest in the build?
If you’re a therapist who gets 10 leads per month through the website, and one lead starts monthly therapy sessions, that’s a 10% conversion rate. Now, let’s say you run targeted Google or Facebook ads and that increases your leads to 100 per month. You still have a 10% conversion rate, so now you have 10 new clients! You can see where I’m going with this simple math. Not everything is as easy to track and measure as this example (like reputation and trust), but the principle that your website should make you more money than you spend on it remains.
How Much Does a Website Cost?
So how much can you expect to pay for a website? It’s obviously not a question that can be answered without more discovery into your business goals. Your job, as the business owner, is to understand your business goals. A good web designer will help you translate those goals into a converting website.
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