All websites are the same, right? Actually, no. There’s a difference between a good website and a bad website, a difference that will affect your business’ bottom line. In today’s article, we’re going to explore the difference in return on investment (ROI) between a bad do-it-yourself website and a good, professionally developed website for a small business.
Meet Joe the Plumber
Joe’s a local small business owner who owns his own plumbing business. He knows his plumbing business needs a website, but he’s not sure where to start. Joe has settled on two options, either build the website himself using a tool like Wix or SquareSpace or hire a professional to build the website for him.
Let’s assume Joe is making a 30% profit on each job that he performs, which is considered healthy according to industry standards. Joe’s average customer pays between $150 and $350 for a service call, which is the average for common plumbing services in Chicago. For more advanced services, such as installation of plumbing fixtures or a new water heater, customers pay more, usually between $200 and $500 but up to $2000 in some cases.
Averaging things out, let’s say Joe makes on average $350 per service call. Some calls average less and some average more. Now, let’s see what Joe’s profit is.
With a 30% profit margin, Joe is making a $105 profit per service call on average. Joe is looking to build his business, so he wants to add a website to advertise his services and build brand awareness. He’s faced with two options, either build a website himself or hire a professional.
The “Do It Yourself” Route
Joe decides, “how hard can it be to build a website” and decides to build one himself. After all, he’s constantly bombarded with ads for services like Wix and Squarespace that promise easy to build websites that anyone can use.
Joe signs up for one of these services and picks a template. He adds his logo, a couple of pictures and a few sentences about his business. He sits back and waits for new visitors to come to his website and buy his plumbing services.
He waits, waits and waits some more. However, unbeknownst to Joe, he’s made some beginner mistakes while building his new website that are scaring away his customers. Even though the website builder promised to be easy to use, it was easy for Joe to make mistakes that would drive away potential customers, including:
- Not having a clear message about what the website is about in the above the fold area, the area visible to users when they first load the website.
- Using a color scheme that clashes and leads to instances of unreadable text.
- Overuse of center aligned text that is hard to read.
- Lack of clear call to action buttons, encouraging users to call him or book his services.
Let’s assume that Joe isn’t aware that these issues exist on his website. So, he continues to pay the monthly hosting fee for his site month after month, not seeing many results. Now let’s assume that Joe is paying Wix $29 a month for this site and that it very rarely brings in a new customer. Because it is flawed, it only brings in new customer once every three months. People who do visit the site tend to leave it right away since it is hard to navigate and find relevant information about Joe’s plumbing business.
So, assuming that Joe keeps the website online for five years, he spends $29 a month or $348 a year to bring in four new customers a year, with a total profit of $420 per year. So, if we subtract the total profit of $420 from the cost of the website at $348, each year the website brings in a grand total of $72 per year in new business, or a total of $360 in profit over a five year period. Adding in the time and hassle it took Joe to build the website in the first place, hardly seems worth it.
Hiring a Professional Web Developer
Joe decides that he needs a website but he understands that he’s not a website designer and probably should leave building a site to the professionals. Joe hires Your Right Website to build him a website. Joe pays $6,000 for our Premium Custom Website Package and hires us to build him a professional five-page WordPress website, with a goal of solving his small business’ problems online.
We build Joe a beautiful five page WordPress website that he can easily edit himself while ensuring any edits Joe does make to the site won’t make the site look bad with our easy to use custom WordPress blocks. We plan out the lifecycle of Joe’s new website and determine that Joe’s new website will last for a minimum of five years with proper upkeep and maintenance. We also set Joe up with a blog so he can easily add new content each month to promote his business and show off his craft.
Joe also pays $75 a month for web hosting, which includes custom email and website analytics, which allow Joe to track his website visitors and gain insights about their buying habits. All in, for five years Joe pays $6000 for website design and $4500 for five years of web hosting, for a total investment of $10,500. Woah, seems like a lot, right?
Well, maybe not. You see, in talking with Joe about his new website, it was discovered that his most profitable service was water heater installation, which instead of netting him a $105 profit per job, it instead nets him a $350 profit per job. So, knowing this we work with Joe to prioritize water heater installation on his new website, ensuring that this service receives its own dedicated page on his new website.
We also work with Joe to fine-tune the content of the new website to further promote his services as well as ensure the content is SEO friendly. Lastly, when Joe’s new website launches we promote his new website on our website, Twitter and social feeds, giving him an initial boost of traffic as well as a reputation boost for the Google algorithm.
As a result, Joe’s new website is getting a good amount of traffic from users who actually stay on the website and learn more. Since we included a blog with the website, Joe can also write articles about the different services he offers which attract new, organic search visitors. Thus, over the five years the website stays live it continues to grow, with Joe writing two blog articles per month.
Since the website was professionally developed, it’s attracting many more customers than the site Joe designed himself. The site is attracting four new customers a month to his business, at least one of which is purchasing a new water heater. So, Joe is making approximately ($105 * 3) + $350 from customers who found him through the new website each month, or approximately $665 a month from customers finding him from the website.
Taking into account Joe’s initial investment of $10,500, which includes five years of web hosting expenses, Joe will have paid off the website in approximately 16 months. That leaves 44 months where the customers who come from the website are pure profit, netting Joe an additional $9,310 over the five year lifespan of the website.
Now, this is just an example and four customers per month is a conservative estimate. However, you can see how the cheap and supposedly simple website option actually doesn’t turn out to be such a great deal in the long run. Using a high quality website to attract a higher quality of customer can quickly snowball into more customers for your small business, even despite the high initial expense.
If you are in need of a website for your small business, let us help. Book a free consultation with us today where we will get to know you and your business. It’s free with no obligation.
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