October 19, 2006

How Much Should You Spend On Your Web Site

One question I was asked when I gave presentations to SCORE-NY is, "how much should I spend on a web site?". This is a tough question.

You can get a free web site from a blogger service, like blogger.com or free hosted web site design service like Office Live, while it's in beta.

You can also pay $10 or more per month to a web service like Homestead or Yahoo.

You can also pay a web designer a few thousand dollars (maybe a few hundred) or do it yourself for the cost of buying a web site creation program $50 or more (and the time it takes to do it yourself).

If you are considering hiring a web designer, how much should you really pay?

Leverage Blog writes:

It's hard to identify value in an industry that's fairly new. For small businesses, I offer the fairly simplistic rule-of-thumb: Small company: 1%, Medium-sized company:.5%.

I'm referring of course to a percentage of annual revenue. Spending less than 1% of your annual revenue on a marketing tool that is working for you 24/7 is a responsible, smart investment. This is not an annual investment-- this is key-- this is a one-time cost. Unlike recurring marketing costs, once you build a website the bulk of the expense is history. Paid-for. Finished.

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