How much should your web site cost?

The percentage of revenues that you should budget is however, in decreasing proportion to the size of the business above $100,000, in a ratio of .25% / $100,000. So your $200,000 business may only budget 2% for initial construction.

Hosting and maintenance, which form the bulk of yearly web site overhead, should be budgeted at an additional 1-1.5% of revenues. These can be considered fixed expenses, as there is little you can do about them. This provides a decent home for your web site and all of the basic maintenance and basic changes that a standard small business web site needs each year.

One last percentage point (1%) needs to be added for direct marketing of your web site. This is the serious factor that defines casual business web sites and 'real' ones. This money is for pay-per-click and paid search engine listing, and with some advice from your web designer or a good web host, will help your web site attain high visibility. With this 1%, you won't be waiting for visitors. instead, you will quickly jump to the next level of web site ownership, where you don't care so much about the number of visitors, but rather the number of conversions to either more in depth inquiries or actual sales that you can attribute to the web site.

So where does all this money come from? A good portion, in fact most of it, can come directly from your 'real world' marketing budget for the following reasons:

A single 5,000 copy print run of a glossy brochure can cost easily as much as the initial construction cost of your web site. One full page ad per month can cost (depending on your market) anywhere from $300-5000 for black and white, or $500-10,000 for a full colour ad. Radio advertising can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars for three dozen spots (depending on the time of day), and requires a commitment to several months of advertising before any benefits will be realized.

The frequency and size of all of this advertising can be reduced significantly by making liberal use of a web site address. A third of a newspaper page can be reduced to a quarter, and glossy brochures can be reduced in size by at least half. The goal of your advertising then is to act as a teaser to draw people to your web site, where you can really say everything you want and

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