What should I spend on a website? 6 reasons to invest wisely.

When you decide what you should spend on a website, it pays to allocate a healthy percentage of your marketing budget to hire an experienced web design specialist. Ideally, you should hire a company with an impressive portfolio and glowing reviews.

Potential clients regularly call us with stories that are the stuff of nightmares. Often, they’ve chosen the cheapest quote available and ended up with a website that’s badly designed, slow to load, unresponsive, difficult to navigate, and has no impact at all. They also frequently report woefully inadequate service levels throughout the build process.

For most professional web agencies, prices will range from £1,500 upwards, depending on your exact requirements. If you’re wondering what you should spend on a website, consider that a basic 5 or 6-page site at the lower end of the scale would typically still take someone at least 7 days to design and create. Of course, you might need much more in terms of functionality, in which case, the price would increase significantly.

Skilled professionals charge realistic prices to reflect the time involved in creating and building a website. They take pride in their work and create sites that their clients are happy with and proud to show to their customers.

Here are 6 good reasons not to be stingy when considering what you should spend on a website:

Your website is your global shop window

Your website expenditure should never be an afterthought. As a business owner, you will likely have a budget for salaries, marketing, accountancy fees, rent, etc., and we would advise you to include your website (including maintenance and development) in your budget. You should never undervalue this key global marketing tool.

Your website should have a professional design

Your website represents your business, so it must have a great design with fresh content and crisp images. An experienced web design agency will consult with you to ensure that your site looks impressive, communicates the right message, and ultimately has an impact on your target audience. It will also be user-friendly with intuitive navigation.

Your website requires technical expertise

A web specialist will have the technical skills and expertise to add functions such as an e-commerce facility with secure payment, an online booking/reservation form, an availability calendar, or styling using clean, well-written code. They will also ensure that it loads efficiently and works properly on all web browsers.

Your website will easily be found on search engines

A professional will ensure that your site is fully search engine optimised to maximise your chances of receiving a high number of visits from potential customers and ranking highly in search results.

Your website will be easy to maintain and update

A great web designer will ensure that your site has an easy-to-use content management system so that you can make simple updates yourself if that’s something you’d prefer to do (if not, then your agency would no doubt be happy to update it for you at an agreed rate).

You'll be getting great value for your money

The money you spend on your website may initially seem like a lot; however, when you consider the impact that it can have on your business, it is easier to justify. When wondering what you should spend on a website, you should consider the value of your website based on the predicted sales/turnover that it may generate for you over time. We encourage you to think about the costs of your products/services and consider the potential revenue that the initial and ongoing investment in your website could bring in.

Of course, you can try to build one on your own, but unless you have design and technical skills, it could take you weeks or even months to create, and it’s unlikely that your website would have the impact it would if you hired a professional. And, if you’re spending weeks or months designing and building your website, you won’t be focusing on your business or utilising your own skills. Doesn’t your business deserve the best website it can have?

For further information on our services, please feel free to contact us. You can get an idea of our pricing for Squarespace websites here.