New website? Don’t start dialling the agency yet.
The market shifts. Business changes. Things evolve. Customers want new stuff. That’s the game of commerce. It’s these shifting sands that create the need to constantly evolve brand, and in modern times, the manifestation of brand and communications — your website.
Websites are a major vehicle that put our ideas and problem-solving abilities right under the nose of our audience. If you’ve had the tap on the shoulder and have been handed a number to go forth and find a web studio to build your new vehicle of change, stop right there. Don’t start dialling agencies just yet.
Plucking a number from the hallowed spreadsheet-of-all-knowingness is exactly the opposite of how you should be budgeting for a new build.
Disconnect your website from your budget…please, just for a minute.
Budgeting also happens to be a manifestly inadequate term. Let’s get on the same page here. It’s an essential business investment. View your spend as an investment, which by definition is an action or process of investing money for profit.
Your business goals need to play a huge part here. You never start a business by deciding on a budget. You come up with a business case, a plan, a strategy — and then figure out how much it takes to operate. Websites aren’t any different.
It’s helpful to suspend reality for a moment;
Don’t pay attention to the number you put in the forecast for this year
Don’t give too much air time to the number your boss just handed you
Why? Because all that reality clouds what’s possible.
Seriously, so much of our thinking is messed up by ‘budget’.
What company ever doubled sales just by simply saying we want double growth? No, you have to make a plan, do things differently and invest money upfront to make stuff happen.
Start with this question;
If we want [insert your number here] new customers this year, what would our website need to do in order to achieve that?
Some good conversation will come from asking this simple question:
What is this website actually doing?
What is the goal? (Is it to log in, or sell units?)
Do we want to change the perception of our brand?
Are we saying the right stuff to our audience?
Is it to gain new customers or serve existing ones?
From having this conversation with yourself or the team, disconnected from a budget, you’ll most likely land on a scenario that looks this;