A recent survey of small businesses found that around 25% of those in the UK still don’t have a website.

If you’re one of the companies looking to get online in the near future, you’ll find some useful information on how to allocate your budget in this article.

Look at the big picture

One of the most common mistakes when thinking of getting a website for a small business is spending 100% of your budget on the design and build.

For example, it may seem logical if you have a £1,000 budget to get the best design and functionality you can for your money. However, spending all your money on just one element is a fatal mistake.

What else do you need to consider?

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Having a website that looks the part is all well and good, but will people be able to find it? You could have the most visually stunning website in the world, but does it really matter if people never get to see it because it’s nowhere in the search engines?

There are some businesses where SEO isn’t an issue, but for many SMEs in the UK, being found online can make a significant difference to the number of sales and enquiries they get.

You should ensure your overall website budget includes provision for some level of SEO.

• Copywriting

Even having a great looking website that ranks well in the search engines doesn’t guarantee online success. If you choose to write your own content for example, the words could turn people off in their droves, resulting in the design and SEO costs being a waste of money.

Good website copy needs to be written in a way that appeals to your target market. Too many small business owners right their own text and end up doing it from their own perspective.

Your potential clients want to read about benefits; for example how is using your product or service going to save them time or money?

A part of your budget should be set aside for a professional copywriter.

• Pay per Click advertising

It can take time to get your website ranking highly in the search engines for your chosen keywords and phrases.

Rather than sit back and do nothing while your site slowly climbs the rankings, you could be using Pay per Clock advertising (PPC) to get on page 1 of Google for the keywords that matter.

You can control exactly how much you spend in any given period by setting your own budget. PPC gives you the potential to generate sales and enquiries via your website from day one.

Regardless of your overall website budget, it definitely pays to allocate it more evenly on order to get better results. If you spend all of it on design and nothing else, your company could get off to a very slow start online. 

What do you think? Please leave your comments below. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 at 8:05 am and is filed under Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.