What's the 'bottom line' of a new website?
- Read time: 4 mins
- Tech level: low
- Key point: knowing why you need a new website can determine the cost of a new one.
You know your organisation needs a strong web presence that powerfully promotes your offering to its target audiences.
After all, a user-friendly website that sells the benefits of your company will help deliver a competitive advantage to your company within its market segment.
So what do you do when you realise your current website fails to successfully promote your organisation to its customers?
It’s certainly a no brainer that any business today cannot afford to ignore this element of their marketing communications strategy.
You know it’s time for a new website – what next?
Once you’ve recognised that your website needs to be rebuilt, you will probably have some questions.
Foremost of all – how can I convince my senior managers to assign precious budget resources towards a web rebuild?
Second of all, which may wind up preceding the first in the mind of your organisation’s financial controllers, how much will a new website cost?
In most organisations, especially enterprise-size organisations, knowing the website needs to be rebuilt will not automatically lead to any improvements.
Once you have recognised your website needs to be improved, you will probably need to build a strong business case for a web project or a business case for usability improvements.
What does the average website cost?
Asking how much the average website costs can be like asking what size is the average country.
There are a multitude of variables that will affect the cost of a website build.
However, there are several key factors that make the variation considerable.
The bottom line is that the cost of a website depends on how reliable and durable you want your web presence to be. Your website represents your business and your brand 24/7 so you need to decide what level of quality you’d like to offer your website visitors.
This is especially important when it comes to delivering a website that clearly communicates the benefits of your brand while being seamless to navigate for your customers and potential customers.
In other words, you really do get what you get pay for when it comes to a web rebuild.
And so do your customers.
Spend less in the long run
A good example of the principle of how the cheaper website option may cost more in the end is revealed if we compare WordPress with an enterprise CMS.
WordPress is currently one of the more popular CMS platforms on the planet.
As a consequence, many businesses are now opting for WordPress website when they are setting up new website for their organisation. WordPress is excellent for blogs – which is what it was originally built for.
But the fact is that the functionality of a WordPress website cannot be compared to that of an enterprise CMS.
What makes up the long term cost of a website is not only how the website looks on the surface, but what lies at its foundation.
The cheaper option can cost more to fix
For example, an enterprise CMS website developed by Polished Pixels may cost more in the short term than a WordPress or Wix website, but will likely involve less expense in the long term.
When something goes wrong with websites created by cloud-based web development platforms like WordPress, it can cost a lot more in time and reputation to the business than if they'd had their website done by professionals in the first place.
Shortcomings of free web development software including WordPress include:
- multi-site configuration requires advanced skills
- lack the functionality required if you are going to create a complex website with more than 30 pages.
Moreover, addressing these issues after the damage has been done can draw on precious company resources and cut into budgets.
We believe it’s important to prevent problems before they start. That’s why we recommended the best CMS for most large organisations is an Enterprise CMS.
You’re probably asking why?
An Enterprise CMS provides the winning formula for almost any large business
The benefits of an Enterprise CMS for business are multi-faceted. At the core, an Enterprise CMS (ECM) promotes workplace collaboration and efficiency.
A good ECM moulds technology around the people using the CMS to update content, as well as the people visiting the website that the CMS is managing.
Moreover, an ECM is usually better at producing websites that meet accessibility guidelines. They also provide the opportunity to build a faster loading website because the code that ECM typically produces is cleaner and ‘less bloated’.
Better website management
An ECM will allow an organisation to manage multiple websites via a single interface and login, and re-use content between sites. They can also be configured to work well with your web content strategy – and not create roadblocks.
A good ECM can be set up to provide timely reminders for when content is due to be updated based on business rules that have been previously set. Of course, the business still needs to create those business rules. However, a good digital services agency will walk you through that process.
Who could improve our website?
Polished Pixels is a leading Sydney based website agency providing expert website design.
We specialise in building user-friendly websites for large financial and business institutions, as well as universities. Services include enterprise class CMS implementation, web design, website content strategy, usability and customer centric design.
We are experts in creating websites that integrate key content functionalities. Our websites provide end users with easy access to the digital assets, making content management both streamlined and efficient.
The result is a strong web presence created with significant savings on company time and budgetary resources.
Polished Pixels provide expert services in:
- Usability. Polished Pixels are experts in making websites that are easier for visitors to navigate and find information
- Enterprise CMS implementation. Polished Pixels are experts in building website using Squiz Matrix CMS
- Ongoing maintenance. Polished Pixels are experts in establishing processes of keeping the website up-to-date using the new CMS
Pricing calculators
We have included an online new website cost calculator to help you work out a ‘ball-park’ cost of a new website.
If you’d also like additional usability services as part of the website project, we’ve created a UX cost calculator as well.
