First question - do you really have the time to figure out how to design a website for yourself? Can your business afford the time it will take you to learn from your mistakes?
Chances are you will want to employ the services of a web professional. Why take valuable time away from the important task of running your business, to try your hand at designing a website, when there are web professionals who are already experienced at delivering online results you can call on? Finding the right web professional is important. You want someone who will take time to understand your business in detail. Who will take the time to understand what is required for your business to succeed online and look at your business with both an expert eye and a customer’s perspective of the goods and services you provide.
You should spend sufficient time with your chosen web professional to ensure they know not just what you want, and allow them to make valuable recommendations on what is required to take your business where you want it to go.
In order to achieve this, the level of effort and additional research required is considerable and will provide the solid foundation for a successful project. Bearing this in mind, you should be prepared to account for this time as part of the overall project cost.
Next, set a realistic and sensible budget for your project.
As a general rule of thumb, and every business is different, you should look to spend about 5% of your turnover on marketing to keep you where you are and around 10% for a steady increase of turnover.
This cost will be spread across all of your marketing, however if you take into account that a website project once delivered will last for 3-4 years, the investment should be spread across that time.
So a business turning over £ 500,000 with a target of £ 750,000 at 10% a sensible number would be £ 50 k for a Marketing Budget. The following is a sensible split
- Website Design & Development 20% £10,000 (£30k every 3-4 years)
- Events & Offline Marketing Ads 30% £15,000
- Search Engine Optimisation 10% £5,000
- Email and Content Marketing 20% £10,000
- Online PPC. 20% £10,000
Make sure you have sensible expectations of cost before engaging with your web professional
Our next article will be about planning your website project and how to think about your business as an outsider would.