How much does a website cost? Well ...

– Robert Kruger 13 May 2010

I have a feeling this topic will continue to come up here because we hear it so often. I’ll call this the latest edition in a series.

Buying a website is like buying a car. Hold your dead horses, ‘cause I’m really gonna beat this one.

What kind of car do you drive? Big or small? Flashy or conservative? Luxurious or practical? These are the same questions that we ask our customers in Discovery. Are you planning for a compact brochure site, or do you need to haul a ton of content? Are your customers impressed by your style, or do you just need something to convey your message in the simplest way possible?

The analogy is even stronger if you think about buying a car for your company. I have a friend who is a regional sales rep. His company buys him and five other reps a new car every two or three years. They buy practical, comfortable cars with enough room to carry some luggage and product samples. The cars probably average around $25k each. So every three years, this company spends $150k on “a car”. To build a website that does what these field reps do, they would need to catalog hundreds of products with numerous additional options, integrate the website’s database to several manufacturer/supplier accounting and CRM systems, integrate with dozens of distributor offices (who do not all run the same accounting software), integrate with their own internal CRM and fulfillment solutions, provide unique access privileges for all of their distributors to allow for pricing variances, and assure everyone of tight security. So what would their website cost? It might cost about the same as the cars.

What if you run a landscaping company? You don’t really need a company car; you need a truck. It needs to be big enough to carry a lot of plants, and it needs an extended cab to carry a crew to job sites. You want to buy a new truck for reliability - you don’t want to miss appointments with your customers because your truck breaks down. Branding is also important, so it’s worth spending more to get your logo and marketing message professionally applied to all visible surfaces of the truck. The website equivalent is a data-driven site (to haul a lot of plants and a crew), hosted with a professional hosting service (to provide prompt, consistent service to your customers), that is designed by a talented and experienced interactive agency (the web version of fleet graphics). Again, the truck and the website could cost about the same.

Even the simple, brochure-style website can vary in cost based on what is important to the site owner. An agent for professional athletes may drive a Lamborghini because they want prospects and clients to have unwavering confidence that they are there to make money. An architect may drive a hybrid to reinforce their commitment to green design. Both of these people could do their actual work while driving a Hyundai, but they both spend more on their car as an investment in their business. A small brochure website can cost very little, but if spending more on highly refined design and effects translates into more revenue, it is a good investment, even if it’s tens of thousands of dollars.

Most business owners can conduct the analysis needed to buy an appropriate vehicle for their company. The process of budgeting for a website is only complicated if no one within the company understands how websites are built. An experienced internet consultant makes the task as easy as car shopping.

We know the business side of the internet. Let us share our extensive web business experience to help you grow your business.