The Way to Control Your Site Expenses

I was talking to a friend recently that had their website redesigned. They paid $2,000 for a site that really does nothing for them. It is a simple brochure site that provides visitors nothing and it certainly does nothing to convert traffic into sales. Since all of their budget went to design, they have no money left over to properly market the site. Mistake #1, don’t pay $2,000 for a branding exercise.

A home based business website is about supporting the business. The beauty of the Internet is there is no guessing. You can measure pretty much anything. What are you trying to accomplish? Increase traffic? Generate leads? Increase sales? If it is yes to one of these questions, then a $2,000 investment should get you another $20,00 to your bottom-line? Can a brochure site deliver an 80-95% ROI?

Web design is a commodity today. The cost of design should represent about 25% of your total spend. Design costs are competitive today, so spending more than you have to should be the last thing you do. There are excellent open source Content Management Systems (CMS) that give you the power to manage your own content. The cost of the software is $0 to you. I recommend using either Wordpress or Joomla. Both of these platforms provide you with Web 2.0 compliant back-end at low cost for setup and maintenance.

The value in web design is operating with companies that can properly promote Friendly website that permits me to manage content on the site. Prior to working with wordpress, my website was not listed in the top 100 on Google for the popular keywords. Since working with wordpress, visitors and page views have increased. But most important, it has doubled conversions from this time last year. And, I did not spend $2,000 on web design.

If you need help in evaluating a prospective vendor, here are some question that may help you understand their knowledge:

1. How do you capture visitor traffic off the Internet? Can you track their movement through my site? If so, how?
2. How do manage pay per click advertising dollars to ensure I am maximizing my spend and not wasting money?
3. How do you measure whether my site is friendly to my users?
4. How many page views would you estimate my site would get to determine the right level of hosting?
5. What things will you need to change on my website? What things can I change on my own?
6. If I want to change the look, does it require changes to the backend scripting on the site?
7. What will it take to add a new page to match an ad we are running to the new site? For instance, I want to advertise a special and build a page specific for it, what will it take for us to do this?
8. What do you expect the average cost per lead for the website to be?
9. Who owns the source code to the site?

So, think about your objectives. Think about what you want to accomplish and spend your money according to the results you want to achieve. A pretty website just does not generate the type of results you should and can get using the Internet. Don’t get mugged for $2,000. It’s bad for your home based business opportunity website.

Find out useful tips about monetization - get making money with adsense tips here.