How profitable is your website?

One of the things that still amazes me when I talk to business owners is that often they have no idea how valuable their website is.

I’m not talking about some vague notion of value that a marketing salesman might try and reel off in an attempt to see a new website design… No, I’m talking about the tangible monetary worth of their website.

These business owners have done amazing things; they’ve raised their empire from the ground up and created brilliant products and services that have a solid place in their market niche – and yet they don’t have any idea how much money their website generates or what can be improved to grow.

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A free tool

To go some way to solving this, I created a simple spreadsheet that can give a rough indication of the worth of your website. You can download it here.

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How much should you spend on your website each month?

How long is a piece of string? At the very least, you should have a budget for things like security, maintenance and marketing.

Marketing Budget

Marketing is all about consistency: you should set a budget that you can maintain. Even as much as £1 per day on paid ads or an hour per week of your teams time to post links or updates is very worthwhile.

Of course the more you spend, the more impact your marketing will be. If you are paying for adverts on a platform like Google, and you get your maths right, you might be able to turn £1 of spend into more than £1 of profit… In which case, the sky is the limit with your budget, since it directly generates you a positive return. Some of our customers therefore spend thousands and thousands on their digital marketing as a result. We can help you calculate and plan this.

Security & Maintenance

We’re often encouraging our customers to take out a website support plan here at Web Wise. From as little as £20 per month, they allow our team to maintain security and updates for you. It still amazes me that some small business owners consider £20 per month as ‘out of budget’ for something so valuable as their website!

Well, with this spreadsheet tool above it should be clear: if your website generates more than £20 per month of new business (which it ALWAYS does or else why bother?!) then you can’t ignore the importance of investing in continuity and security.

Try the tool out and let me know what you think.

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About the author

Dan Wiseman

Founder & director of Web Wise. He writes about web design, marketing, entrepreneurship, investing and games. Dan regularly speaks on these subjects and is available for coaching and consultancy.

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