Managers naturally want to know what the website is going to cost. As usual though, the answer is it depends what you want.  Website costs are like other marketing and advertising costs, they are as high as you want them to be - and probably higher!

Web marketing has 2 major advantages over offline marketing:

•  Costs and results can be more directly measured

•  Each part of a web marketing strategy can be tested in small stages to reduce risk

In the past Lord Leverhulme said he thought half his advertising budget was wasted but did not which half. Now on the web you should never waste any monies beyond what you set as a risk budget to try new ideas.

Most new websites for small businesses cost between £2K and £20K. For a good explanation of the reasons why, see www.telecomsadvice.org.uk/features/website_cost.htm

If you are building a new site and marketing strategy from scratch, you should budget for a range of costs needed to create the whole:

•  Strategy plan

•  Textual content

•  Graphical content

•  Regular updating requirements

•  Navigation and Programming requirements

•  Ongoing promotion costs

•  Management time

At the same time you need to budget the resulting sales or other benefits you expect to achieve. Within 3 months of the launch of a new site you should know whether it is going to be successful. You will then either be happy to increase your spend to make more profit or it is time to analyse the weak areas and improve them.

For help in planning your strategy or managing the ongoing results, click here.