- “You’re too expensive . . . .”
- “My mate’s son can do it for . . . .”
- “I can do it myself for free . . . .”
- “I want it to do everything, I don’t care how much it costs . . . .”
These comments, and many more, have all been heard when we start talking to prospective clients about web design projects. But they’re focussing on the wrong thing: The Cost.
Why is cost the wrong thing? Because cost is just the money you hand over – value is what will make a difference to your business.
Any project should deliver value, or Return on Investment (ROI). A simple question proves the point: Which of these two options would you prefer? To spend £200 on your website and get £199 worth of business, or spend £2,000 and get £50,000 worth of business? I’m pretty sure you’ve gone for the second option, but so often conversations focus on the difference between the cost of £199 and £2,000 and not the difference in value between £199 and £50,000, and the fact that the former might have made them a net loss!
There is another question which also often fails to get asked, including by many design agencies of their potential clients. Are you spending too much on your website?
If you had a website costing £2,000, could you realise that in extra revenue within twelve months? For example a service based business, with only limited time slots available, might not physically be able to take on the extra clients that would deliver the return. This is why it’s so important when working on such a project, not to consider it in isolation, but to look at it within your overall business and marketing strategy, and a good design agency should ask the questions that prompt this. We have turned clients down or persuaded them to rethink their plans because we could see that they were spending in the wrong places and at the end of the day that does no-one any favours.
So next time you speak to your design agency, don’t ask how much a project will cost but how much value they’re going to deliver. If it delivers the value, it’s worth the cost.