Website Investment Tool

Website Investment Tool

How much should you invest in a website?

The optimal website investment is a function of 3 factors:

  1. Importance of website marketing
  2. Competition from other websites
  3. Budget limits and growth priorities

The importance of a high performance website to your business.

When you consider that 60-70% of all traffic for a given keyword category goes to the top 3 ranked websites, websites, there is really no reason to invest in a second rate website. It may look good, but if it does not produce a substantial amount of new business, it will be a sad waste of time and money; viewed only by your staff, some of your best customers and your family. If all you want to do is impress insiders, you would be better off taking them all out to dinner.

The most powerful benefit of the Internet is its ability to search for solutions. Between 70-90% of all business purchases start with online research. Other than groceries and convenience shopping, the majority of consumer purchases start online as well.

A major key to success on the Internet is to have a website that is built for search. This approach starts with a specific type of market research and the findings are baked into the content, design, features and optimization of the website.

If you are one of those who has concluded that web marketing is not for your company based on past results, you may be right. Or it may be that all the good traffic is going to other competitors. If you're stuck in position #10 for the most popular keywords, you are going to receive less than 1% of the potential traffic. You can always overcome this with Google AdWords and paid search, but you will still need a strong website to convert traffic into new business.

The initial steps to creating a top-producing website include defining what you are going to offer, who you want to reach and what they are looking for. Our most successful clients begin their new website projects with research that looks at the brand from three perspectives:

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  1. Client Realities (your assets and what you have to offer)
  2. Customer Needs (what your customers and prospects want)
  3. Market Dynamics (what competitors are offering)

This three-pronged approach enables us to develop your “sweet spot”, also referred to as a brand promise or value proposition. Based upon interviews, surveys and competitive website evaluations, we can map out a website strategy that will enable you to maximize your online marketing potential.

Based on your current business model, how important is a high performance website?

Low

We seldom get new business from the web and doubt we ever will.

Low-Med

We primarily show our website to customers. As long as it looks good, it’s fine.

Medium

We need to impress customers and prospects with our website.

Med-High

The web is where our type of customer goes first to research their options.

High

We need to dominate our category with the best website and the most traffic.

Competition from other websites

Our 100 point competitive website evaluation allows us to systematically evaluate every major aspect of your competitors’ websites and those of companies in your category. Armed with information about how much traffic competitive sites attract, keywords they rank for, links coming into the site and how long people stay on the site based on sticky features, we can better plan for you a website that will achieve top search results in your competitive marketplace. Additional features often include product or specific landing pages, custom videos, calculators and social media blogs. Analyzing your competition's sites will determine what you need to win on the web. They set the bar and you need to top it.

Low

Our industry does not rely on the web for business and we have few competitors.

Low-Med

The web is growing in importance as a research tool in our industry.

Medium

There are new entrants to our industry that are using the web like never before.

Med-High

We want more relevant traffic that converts to sales from our website.

High

It has become very competitive online with AdWords, ecommerce, etc.

Budget limits and growth priorities

It is hard to justify spending a lot on a website when you don’t have the income to pay for it or the confidence to invest in it. We understand. We know that some industries are not web centric and that for them, a high performance website may not be necessary for a high ROI. Yet for others in so many industries the battle begins and is ultimately won on the web. And in those cases, there is no justification for underspending on your website. If you don’t realize its full potential, you won't capture the lion's share of your marketplace.

Low

This is our first or second website and we want to upgrade the look, feel and responsiveness of it on phones and big screens alike.

Low-Med

We want to generate more traffic, leads and conversions and add enhancements to improve rankings.

Medium

We need to step it up to meet competitors head-on in a category that is increasingly web centric. We need a lot of enhancements now.

Med-High

We know that our website is our #1 sales person and that a high-performance site will drive down the cost of sales with more efficient prospecting.

High

We are in a very competitive category online and need to have an awesomely creative and engaging website that is the envy of our industry.

Growing your web-based business won’t happen by accident. It needs to be a strategic investment embraced by your most senior management team. Unlike some other marketing alternatives, web marketing is highly accountable and enables management to track and evaluate every step in the process when the online experience, events and milestones are tagged properly.

Young Company offers a complete set of online marketing services that will provide strategic planning, content development, on-site SEO enhancements, social media, paid search (including Google AdWords), new videos, and monthly performance reporting that benchmarks your site against your competitors'.