The cost of a website is both the money you invest to create it and also the money you lose if it's not engaging enough and visitors bounce instead of converting into leads.
The cost of a website falls into two categories: 1) Creation (strategy, writing, design, setup), and 2) Ongoing Maintenance (hosting, support, updates). But for the sake of this article we'll discuss the cost of creation.
The cost of a website is both the price to create it and also the money you lose if it's not engaging enough and visitors bounce instead of converting into leads. If you consider the lifetime value of a customer, the second category of money lost is usually much higher. Every day visitors are bouncing, you are throwing away money.
There are a lot of free and low cost options these days which allow anyone to instantly create a website. If you have time to spare and a tolerance for a frustrating learning curve, you can create a functional online presence all by yourself. We have a lot of those clients, and the results are adequate. In general though, if you are hoping to cut through the noise and create an effective hub for all your marketing efforts, which captures attention, build trust, and convert visitors into leads, you are going to need to prevent traffic that "bounces" and also stand out from your competitors. This requires a creative combination of engaging design, strategic planning, delightful writing, clear value propositions and motivating calls to action.
On simply the technology and implementation level (versus our competitors big or small), our website builder creates websites that are superior for small to medium sized businesses, Realtors, Churches and Non-Profits. But no automated platform alone can deliver a website that is "human optimized", that requires a professional, experienced, and creative team to understand your needs and implement a customized solution. The good news is that this is where you can distinguish yourself from your competitors and dramatically increase your conversion rates.
So How Much Should I Invest in a Website?
You should decide how much to invest in your website based on your competition (why should someone choose you) and the ROI of the costs of the work required. If your competition isn't very strong, you don't need to do much to outperform them. But if the competition is strong, and you want customers that are currently going to your competitors, you will need to find a way to convince potential leads to see you as the leader in the industry. We can help you determine where the tip of that bell curve is and where the ROI of the extra investment starts to drop off. That's should be your target budget.
On a practical level you need to consider the Lifetime Value of a Customer (LVC). A typical San Francisco Bay Area Realtor could easily make $30,000 on the sale of a modest home. Visitors are coming to your website because they are in the market to sell or buy a home. If one of those leads bounced because it took too long to find the information they wanted, or they went to your competitor because they seem more successful, you just lost a lot of money. Out of 100 visitors that come to the website, if you are able to convert 1% into leads (contact you), that's a great result. But with strategic planning, beautiful design and engaging marketing optimized language, if you are able to just capture one extra visitor, you just doubled your conversion rate. Which means the cost of client acquisition just halved, and your marketing budget just doubled.
So the question is, how much would you be willing to spend ($1,000, $2,500, $5,000, $10,000) if it enabled you to save one bounce, convince one person on the fence, capture one new sale per year?
Lean Startup - Minimal Viable Product
We follow a Lean Startup methodology in order to help you achieve 80% efficiency for 20% of the costs (the bell curve tipping point). In most cases, when clients are on a tight budget, we recommended starting with a Minimal Viable Product (MVP), so you immediately benefit and capture more leads than you do now, without a long drawn out project that keeps all your investment in inventory. Then you can follow up with additional phases of marketing and content strategy, engaging design, impactful writing, after you know better what you need and can then improve over time.
General Price Ranges
For the Creation phase, in our experience a typical client usually falls into 4 categories that depend on the goals and ROI/Budget requirements of each client. All sites are beautiful and professional, but the number and type of pages, design customization, content, conversion optimization from strategic planning, etc., will vary according to the time we can invest in making something unique and engaging for your particular business needs.
Do-It-Yourself Instant Site - $0
Who & Why: You recognize the value of a website as a lead conversion tool, and you have the time and the competence to plan, write, and build a website all on your own. You are not yet ready to invest yet in professional help to strategize and design a site optimized for conversions.
Site Planning & Content Strategy: DIY
Content Writing: DIY
Site Creation: instant creation based on master site
Add Pages & Content Editing: DIY in CMS with our support team showing you how to edit and accomplish your goals
Design: Free Templates
Design Branding: DIY (add logo, choose colors)
Examples: casasrealestate.com, brandonpaige.com, ameribanker.com, cherrowland.com, davisandburch.com, judydecker.com, hughgroocock.com, dianekneis.com, laurabryanthomes.com, communityrealestate.biz
MVP SITE - $1000-2500
Who & Why: You are on a tight budget, but you know you are losing leads if you do not have a beautiful and professional 24/7 online presence that communicates your identity and values to everyone funneling from both your marketing efforts and random organic search traffic.
Site Planning & Content Strategy: Basic 2 hour consulting to understand your goals/audience, suggest best practices for structure and pages for MVP site, guide project to stay on track.
Content Writing: DIY - provide us with all written content
Site Creation: instant creation based on master site
Design: Free Templates
Design Branding: our designer installs logo, chooses colors and fonts
Add Pages & Content Editing: our support team will add up to 2 landing pages (5 modules each), plus 20 additional pages (profile, properties, communities, etc). Additional pages you can add yourself in the CMS with our support team showing you how to edit and accomplish your goals.
Examples: sancarloshills.com, taradonohue.com, hillhousegroup.com, kimcolehomes.com, kerwincowperthwaite.com, gullixson.com, kenbrownhomes.com, urbanpmi.com, bestsfhomes.com, nickspeninsulaproperties.com
*Some of these sites paid for extra upgrades at the time of creation or over time.
Professional Site - $5000
Who & Why: You need a beautiful and professional website that is human optimized to engage attention, earn trust, and clearly communicate your value propositions to each audience, so that you funnel more visitors from your sales and marketing efforts to become leads. Just increasing visitor conversion rates by 1% can double your marketing budget.
Site Planning & Content Strategy: In depth site planning and content strategy consulting to craft a highly optimized website that communicates clear, conversion optimized value propositions to communicate calls to action for each audience and is optimized for conversions. We provide you a Sitemap and Content Writing Guide for your team to produce the content required, and we guide you and provide feedback on your content.
Content Writing: DIY - you provide us with all written content, or hire us to do a stand alone writing project.
Site Creation: create site and add pages based on your unique sitemap
Design: Free Templates with hybrid changes
Design Branding: our designer installs logo, chooses best colors and fonts
Create Pages: our team will create up to 4 landing pages (5-10 modules each), plus 100 additional pages/modules based on your unique sitemap and strategy (profile, properties, communities, testimonials, etc). We will make sure that each page looks beautiful.
Page-by-Page Designer Polishing: our designer will spend up to 5 hours customizing individual pages (e.g. selecting best curated design options, polishing styles, find good images, etc).
Examples: danaweiler.com, carriedavisrealestate.com, geoffreynelson.com, anniewatsonrealty.com, susanvl.com, stevelessard.com, hillsboroughblog.com, ringoforalameda.com
*Some of these sites paid for extra upgrades at the time of creation or over time.
Full Service Custom Site - $10,000-20,000+
Who & Why: You need to confidently demonstrate that you are a leader in the market and you want to set yourself above all competition. When leads evaluate you and your competitors, there is no question who is a more successful and trustworthy partner.
Site Planning & Content Strategy: In depth site planning and content strategy consulting to craft a highly optimized website that communicates clear, conversion optimized value propositions to communicate calls to action for each audience and is optimized for conversions. We provide you a Sitemap and Content Writing Guide which we help source and write the content.
Content Writing: we write all the content for each critical landing page of your website, so that it is engaging and in a "voice" that communicates your brand/value proposition to clients. You provide us content for other secondary pages (e.g. bio, processes, etc) and we will edit and improve as necessary. Additional content writing can be contracted if necessary.
Site Creation: create site and add pages based on your unique sitemap
Design: Full Custom Design — we strategize the style that is best for you, create mockups and finalize a design that will be fully unique to your brand, your audience, and your content strategy.
Design Branding: our designer installs logo, chooses best colors and fonts
Create Pages: our team will create all the pages and content necessary to meet your goals.
Page-by-Page Designer Polishing: our designer will polish every page on your site, selecting the best images and colors, custom icons and bullet lists, adding subtle animations and transitions to make your website highly engaging and unique, etc.
Custom Layouts: our team can create custom layouts for pages (as necessary to meet your goals, to order, prioritize, add functionality, etc) e.g. unique property landing pages, unique team profiles, etc.
Examples: butchhaze.com, chaddziegler.com, danagreenteam.com, sybariterealty.com, mcnairgroup.com, theskyagency.com, pattydwyergroup.com, carolnicoleandjames.com, gutensite.com
*Each of these sites paid for different levels and types of customizations within this range. The results vary depending on the goals and desires of each client.
