One of the biggest challenges small and medium-sized B2B businesses have when getting a new website developed is affordability. Few businesses can afford the luxury of having their own website developer build or redesign their website. Most businesses, when faced with the costs associated with website development or redevelopment, just put it off!
Often, the result is that the business ends up with an old, out-of-date website which does not reflect what the business does. The ‘website’ is very much an image of the business some three or four years ago. This can be really limiting for the business, especially when there is no clear solution to get out of this dilemma!
So, If you are looking to create a new website or re-design your existing one, you need a financially viable way of getting a new website.
“So, how much will it cost?”
The answer is, of course, it depends!
It depends on what you expect from your website. It depends upon whether you need to sell products or services through your website. It depends upon whether you expect your website to generate leads and enquiries for you. It depends upon whether you want your customer relationship management (CRM) system to be connected to your website to capture sales enquiries and to help you nurture your prospective clients. It depends upon how many products or services you have to market (if you have a catalogue of several hundred products and services, your website will need to be significantly larger and therefore, more costly to develop). It depends upon whether you consider a blog to be an important part of your website’s promotion. And it depends upon how much of your own resources you want to invest in the development of the site.
From a B2B perspective, the high costs associated with a traditional website build often mean that crucial aspects of the website have to be reconsidered or dropped to keep “on budget” – leading to an ineffective website and in some cases, no new website at all.
Traditional website builds usually mean paying 50% or more upfront, and you could be waiting anywhere from six months to two years – and in extreme cases, longer – before your website goes live.
In a world where purchase decisions increasingly start with a Google search, having a website – a fully functioning, lead-generating website – is absolutely essential. A website may be costly, yes, but your business will not succeed without one and you cannot afford to wait months or even years for it.
Surely there is a smarter, more cost-effective solution that enables you to get a website that will help you to generate leads? There must be an approach that will allow you to spread the cost of the website build and not have to wait six to twelve months before your website launches.
Lease your website. Don’t buy it!
Instead of “buying” your website and using a traditional design process which freezes your existing website in its current state whilst all the new development takes place, consider leasing your website and utilising Growth-Driven Design.
It’s entirely possible. Spread the cost of your new website over twelve months. In the same way that people lease a car, the same can be done for your website.
Leasing your website might sound strange but it is effectively the next ‘logical’ step in clever website design and search engine optimisation. You take out a contract with the digital marketing agency responsible for the website build and they manage and maintain your website on your behalf – allowing you to focus on running your business.
How does website leasing work?
When you lease a car, for example, you typically pay three months of payments upfront and then a monthly fee over a fixed period. For the buyer, leasing a car is far more manageable than purchasing, it also allows the buyer to return the car and select a new model when the lease expires. The costs arising from maintenance, repair and servicing are all paid by the car provider and the buyer can get the best value for their money.
This process is exactly the same for your website.
With ‘website leasing’ you will pay a three to six months down-payment at the outset and then pay a monthly fee over an agreed period, usually 12 to 24 months. The leasing company – or in this case, the digital marketing agency – look after your website on your behalf, analysing its performance, optimising it and developing it whilst you go about your day-to-day business. All of this comes as part of the package.
For example, the search engine optimisation of your website will be managed by the agency within their monthly fees. New pages that you need added will be dealt with in the same way. In fact, you will have an agreement that specifies that new website pages will be added on a month-by-month basis to support your website’s search engine rankings. Ultimately, your monthly fee not only spreads the cost of development but also covers small changes and updates to your website, meaning you are no longer stuck with the same website that was developed for you several years ago.
With this approach, you not only avoid the large upfront costs associated with traditional website builds but also have access to a team of web design and optimisation specialists to help you manage and enhance your website.
In addition, instead of your website being frozen in time – as it would be with a traditional website redesign process – you instead use Growth-Driven Design.
Once your website is live, the agency then uses website analytics and user behaviour on your website to optimise it further and create new pages based on the data you have obtained.
Growth-Driven Design and leasing your website represent a smarter approach to website design and development. If you are looking for a better approach to developing a new website that will allow you to get the best results on Google and maximise your website visitors and lead generation through your website, consider Growth-Driven Design from the largest HubSpot partner in the UK.
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