One of the common things that every business needs to ask themselves before meeting up with their Calgary web design firm, is what kind of budget should I set for my website project?

Amazingly enough, this question can be a daunting one.

Depending if you’re new to the market with a fresh idea or if you’re a established business, your need for spending money to get additional exposure increases depending on your focus.  Does your business already have a website and do you need to attain more (or better qualified) traffic levels? Whether you’re needing a website, want to redevelop or expand your website OR expand on your existing marketing campaigns, its always best to plan how much you want to spend, allocate your budget and develop your business so you can focus on making the most return on your investment. Lets look at it in a few perspectives:

Have a great idea and want to start your own business? Fantastic!
Have you been around, but wanting to get your business online or make more money? Fantastic!

As small business owners ourselves, having a great idea and enthusiasm to take your idea to the next level is a great first step! So where do you go from here?

Depending on what you prefer, you could open up your own retail shop (or office) and take on the expenditure of monthly rent, taxes, stock, employees, etc. if you see yourself succeeding with your idea. Naturally doing so can cost a lot of money, and you should do a lot of research in advance before doing so (as the Rule of thumb goes, most business’ tend to get phased out in their first year of business, so its best to approach a physical location carefully and wisely).

For a different approach you can always test out the waters with a website, tailored to your idea and industry as a way of attaining sales without necessarily taking on too much in the initial phases of setting up your business.

When looking at your website and budgets, you should be thinking of spending as much money on marketing as you are going to spend on your website.

Sound a bit strange?

Imagine if you did start your retail store – you’ve spent money on stock, fixtures, your rent (usually 2 months in advance up front), hiring some staff, putting some initial money in the till, etc. Ok, and just for kicks you’ve spent some cash on a sign above your shop. So there you are, all ready to go… but no one is visiting your store. By no means should you think that this means your product or service isn’t fantastic – you just haven’t attracted the right customer.

Same idea goes with your website and your marketing budget.

So how much to budget for your website? Depending what you want to do, you can spend as little as $500 and go as high as say $15,000 (or higher) for a website. Ultimately your website will only be as successful as the money and time you put into it, so we usually recommend spending between $3-$5,000 but ultimately its up to you and the functionality you want to have online. Here are some elements you should consider when thinking of spending money:

  • Registering your Domain Name
  • Getting Hosting for your Web Site
  • Buying a template from a web design company or having a website designed for you
  • Setting up a Database so you can gather information and market/sell to your clientele
  • Determining what functionality you want to have on your website (a blog, twitter feeds, ecommerce, customer/quote management, news, affiliate links, etc.)

So how much to budget for marketing your website? Getting to the top of Google, achieving superior rankings over your competition and building an online community of customers is always an ongoing task and you need to budget both your time and money each month. Its our experience that you should spend a few hours each week posting updates to various media online, building back links to your site and writing useful articles for your customers.

A Calgary marketing firm will probably either provide you with training and support for you to do so, or can help assist you with doing these kinds of updates online. Support for these types of actions, tends to start at $250/month and can go up and down depending on what you’re wanting to do but a good rule of thumb is: spend the equivalent of what you did on your website on marketing and spread it out over the course of several months.

Here are some online marketing elements you should consider (and update) when thinking of spending money on marketing all of which help support your website achieving better rankings in the search engines:

  • Facebook maintenance, customer support and postings
  • Twitter customer support and postings
  • YouTube video posts
  • Blog posts for articles related to your industry
  • Creating sales or product/service ‘features’ on your website
  • Email newsletters to your customers
  • A strategy for creating links to your website from reputable, authoritative sources online
  • Updates to your website to keep it current and fresh (this is UBER critical now with search engines)
  • … and a whole lot more…

So just to wrap up, spending money on your website just makes sense – and even more sense on an ongoing basis. Setting a budget too low will get you out there online, but without the right site for your customers or marketing to get your customers, you might not experience your full potential online. So just to reiterate, when you’re setting a budget for your website its best to think of two things:

  1. How much you want to spend on your website.
    Depending on your needs this is usually between $3,000 and $5,000 – be sure to ask your Calgary web design firm if they offer monthly payment financing
  2. How much you want to spend marketing your website to attract (and retain) your customers
    Be sure to think about spending a few hours each week building yourself online. Take what you’ve spent on your website and spread your budget out over several months or the year. A Calgary marketing company can provide you with consultations so you can succeed on your own, or they can help you succeed at $250/month and up depending on your budget and what you want to achieve.

If you have any questions about setting your budget to your website project, be sure to contact your Calgary web design firm to discuss your project needs further.