A Website Budget Picked as a Round Number

Where the number came from

Ask how a small business arrived at its website budget and the answer is often a round number: five thousand dollars, ten thousand, whatever was left in the marketing line for the year.

Sometimes it is what a friend's site cost. Sometimes it is what the last site cost, six years ago. Rarely does it come from what this site has to do.

The number itself is not the problem. Choosing it before anyone knows what it has to buy is.

What goes wrong

• Building to the number: the quote fits, and the important part gets cut.
• Scope fights: features one side assumed and the other never priced.
• Spending to the number: money goes on extras because it is there.
• Quotes that cannot be compared: each supplier pictured a different site.
• Nothing left for photographs, writing or the first year of upkeep.

The fourth wastes the most time. Three quotes for three imagined websites cannot be weighed against each other, so the decision falls back on price, or on whoever explained themselves most confidently.

Start from the job

Every site has a main task: phone calls, quote requests, bookings, sales, or fewer questions at the counter. Write it down in one sentence before any figure.

Then describe the visitors and what they must know before they call, book or buy. A caterer's visitors need menus, minimum orders, the delivery area and price ranges. A plumber's need the service area, response times and a phone number.

The pages and functions follow from that, rather than from a list of what competitors' sites happen to have.

List the pages and functions

Turn the task into a list. Name each page: home, each service, about, contact, gallery, and whatever else the visitors need.

Then name each function: a quote form, a booking calendar, online payment, a members' area, a link to software you already use.

Functions are where budgets break. A contact form is a small item. A booking calendar that checks real availability, takes deposits and sends reminders is a project of its own.

Mark each item as needed at launch, needed later, or nice to have. The launch list is what gets quoted first.

The parts nobody lists

Some costs turn up in nearly every project and almost no first budget.

Writing the words for each page. Photographs of the real premises, staff and work. Moving old content, with redirects so old addresses still work. Analytics and conversion tracking. Training someone to make small edits.

Each gets paid for, done by someone at the business with time they do not have, or skipped. Skipped is the most common, and the site launches with filler text and borrowed photographs.

A worked example

A banquet hall with three rooms, used for weddings, company dinners and community events, set aside ten thousand dollars for a new website because a restaurant down the road had spent that.

Three quotes came back far apart. One was a five-page site with a contact form. One added an online availability calendar and deposits. One proposed a custom booking system well beyond the figure.

Each designer had pictured a different site. Nobody at the hall had said what the site was for, so each filled the gap with their own idea.

The manager then wrote down the task: enquiries for weddings and corporate events, with enough detail on each room that the first call could be about dates rather than capacity.

The list that followed was short: a page per room with capacities, floor plans and photographs, menus and packages with price ranges, an enquiry form asking for date and guest count, and a gallery.

Online deposits went on the later list. Quoted again on the launch list, the three prices came close enough to compare on substance.

The hall set its figure from that list, with separate lines for photography and the first year of upkeep.

The yearly cost of keeping it running

A website has running costs, and a figure that covers only the build leaves them to chance.

Hosting, domain renewals, a security certificate if the host charges for one, yearly licences for premium themes and plugins, and backups.

A WordPress site also needs its core, theme and plugins kept up to date, by someone who checks afterwards that nothing broke.

Then the content: new photographs each season, price and menu changes, staff changes, a page for each new service.

Put a yearly figure next to the build figure. Together they are what the site actually costs.

A range with priorities

A useful budget is a range with an order to it: what the launch list should cost, what the later list might add, and what the site costs each year to keep.

Give suppliers the list and the range. A good one will tell you which items cost more than they are worth, which is advice a single round number never invites.

If the range is genuinely fixed, say so. The honest conversation is then about what fits now and what waits for next year.

Comparing quotes on one list

Quotes built on the same written list can be compared line by line, and the gaps become visible.

The lowest total often leaves out items the others included, such as writing, photographs or moving old content. Ask each supplier to price whatever is missing, and the spread usually narrows.

Ask what happens after launch, too: who updates the site, at what rate, and how quickly a small change gets done.

The counter-case

A round number is sometimes the right starting point. A business with a hard limit on cash should say so at the outset, and a good supplier can shape a site to fit.

A refresh of a site that already works, such as new photographs and rewritten service pages, can reasonably be bought for a set figure.

In both cases the task is known. The number limits the scope, rather than standing in for it.

Write down the job, list the pages and functions, and add the yearly running cost before settling on any figure.

Before setting the budget

1. Sum up the site's job in one sentence.
2. Describe the visitors and what they need.
3. List every page and function by name.
4. Add writing, photographs and migration to the list.
5. Mark each item launch, later or optional.
6. Estimate the yearly running cost.
7. Ask for quotes on the same list.

Step three is where the budget becomes a decision rather than a guess. Once every page and function has a name, each one can be priced, questioned or moved to the later list.

Timing the work so a new site is ready before the busy months is covered in a website year planned around your busy season.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.