I recently met with a restaurant owner here in Springfield, MO who had paid $350 a little less than a year ago to have a new website built. They were also paying $25 per month to host the website for the past 8 months, bringing the total web design investment to $550. The total of $550 is actually being generous because we are not calculating the opportunity cost of time spent going back and forth with the designer during the website build.
While looking at visitor statistics for the site, we determined that the website had received approximately 35 unique visitors since its launch. Of the 35 visitors, 80% of them had bounced. (see What is Bounce Rate and Why is it Important?) This leaves us with a total number of 7 quality visits since launch. We will be extremely generous and assume 4 of these 7 visitors converted into a sale. We also know the visitors who bounced could not have converted because the website used a cover page that contained nothing but a logo.
At an average ticket price $35 per table, the website had generated a total of $140 in revenue for the restaurant owner. The $550 spent turned into $140 and the loss would continue to grow as long as the website was live due to the cost of hosting.
Your Website Should Not Be Costing You Money
The whole point of this story is to let you know that your website, like any good investment, should be generating more money than it cost. You should never build a website “Just to have a website.” By properly planning your layout, message, and call to actions, we are able to create a website that consistently generates new revenue. As your website grows, we can continually adjust these items to maximize your return.
Constant Monitoring Is Key
If you’re not keeping an eye on your traffic and visitor behavior, you could be missing out on massive potential profits. We can set up your website with detailed visitor monitoring, call forwarding, conversion tracking, and much more to determine exactly how users respond to your website. Using this data, we are able to create robust reports that make it easy to understand exactly how much money you’re making and which advertising campaigns or keywords are producing the best results.
Whether you’re in need of a new website or would like to see this kind of reporting implemented on your existing site, we can help. Give us a call today and we will be happy to help you analyze your current flows and create a game plan to optimize the experience for all future visitors.