SMiK Web Design
is a sister business to Michon International which was making websites for all types of business from 2009 to 2014 but I couldn’t see a future in website building. There are so many ways to create a presence on online and with its fast rate of change and plethora of “can do” no idea web developers entering the market place it didn’t make a very stable business model.
As a result SMiK Web Design haven’t taken on any new clients for over a year. SMiK Web Design will still create a website for select businesses, ones that understand the value of content marketing and the long term values of SEO. If they signup to the Michon Digital Marketing Service SMiK Web Design would certainly gear up to develop or redevelop their Website to take full advantage of their content marketing strategy.
Our problem stems from people under valuing the time and effort spent to design, development and maintain a website and they have good reason. The return on investment (ROI) on a beautifully designed website is pretty much nothing. What a website looks like and how it functions really only effects conversion. It has negligible influence on the number of people who visit the site and therefore doesn’t bring in any new business without marketing.
Most business owners know very little about marketing their business online. So their beautifully designed website receives very little visitor traffic and converts even fewer customers. But the site costs a packet for its beautiful designed and functional, becasue it takes a team of skilled people to craft a high quality website and those skills are not cheap.
So how much does website design cost?
While we were building websites for business in Tasmanian for $1000 – $2000 our compatriots in Melbourne and Sydney were charging upward of $5000 for the same site. Getting a high quality website built will cost upward of $3000 these days, while maintaining that website each year will cost another $1000. Just to keep its core updated, hack free and hosted. Of course you can go it alone and have your nephew build it for you. The result may look similar but its like buying a kit car and pretending its a Porsche. Looks OK sitting in the garage but is no match for the real thing on the open road. Unfortunately neither are much good to your business with out concerted marketing effort.
Marketing a website and making it deliver a significant amount of visitor traffic and value to your business will cost upwards of $2000 per month. The current best long term strategy to market your website is via quality unique content. It costs a significant amount in both time and money to write or have written fresh content and have fresh images created for any website site. Add to this the time it takes to promote your business on social media and position it in search and you see where the $2000 goes. As competition in your market place increases in time, expect this cost to also keep pace. But if you do noting then the visitor traffic your site currently enjoys will remain for a short time then slowly decline.
So what can you do create a better website?
If you spend a few hours early in the life of a website and design a set of themes around the high interest areas of your market place then write and publish a post each week. Over a few years combined with a good social media strategies you will build a content funnel to advertise your business online better than 90% of websites in your market place. Posting on your website and syndicating through social media will get your website found and delivery thousands more visitors per month to your business. That strategy alone has more than doubled the visitor traffic to Harvest Market website in the past 12 months. Targeted content, search engine optimisation, social media strategy and advertising deliver people to your door via the web. The look and feel of a website has nothing to do with getting visitors and potential customers to your site.
Businesses must spend more time thinking about how to get their website seen before developing the look and feel of the site. Without a way to delivery visitor traffic to your website you may as well be casting money into the sea.