Do You Need a New Website in 2018?

The 4th Quarter of 2017 is upon us. Only 3 more months and a new year begins.

It’s a great time to think about budgeting for a new website or a website face lift in 2018.

Top 5 Reasons to Get a New Website

You may have had your existing website for years and it’s served you well, but answer “Yes” to any of these questions and the time has come to consider an upgrade.

• Do your competitors’ websites look sharper and more professional than yours?
• Does your website confuse visitors, attract the wrong audience, or simply embarrass you?
• Is your website difficult to read and use on a mobile phone or tablet?
• Does your website get less than 100 visitors per week?
• Is your website hard to find on Google, even when people search for it by name?

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, your website is a liability and not an asset for your business or non-profit. It’s time for a change.

Make a Plan, Budget for Success

New website range in price from FREE (and you do all the work) to $ thousands and even $ tens of thousands of dollars.

You need to consider the purpose of your website and its mission.

• A beginner’s presence online.  If you only need a few pages online to say who you are and what you do, a FREE drag and drop web service like Weebly or Wix might be all you need. These systems are easy to use and require no web coding skills. (A do-it-yourself site made today could outshine a professional site made 5 or more years ago.)
• Validation as a serious competitor in your marketplace. If you want to look professional and compete professionally, you’re going to need professionals to help you do it. Take honest stock of your skills. You can drag and drop graphic elements all day, but you are not an experienced and successful designer, photographer, marketing writer, web coder, info-graphic composer, etc. (Easy-to-use tools do not come with talent attached.)
• Standing up to your competition online. No, there is no magic button or formula to easily catapult your website to number one in Google. (And if you have a crappy website, it wouldn’t much matter anyway.) Online competition can be as fierce as a rampaging horde of Nazi-zombies. It can take an experienced digital marketing team to help you break through all the clutter and get noticed.
• Make a list of the goals for your website. If those goals include outshining your competition and using your website as a marketing tool to attract business, you’re going to need some professional help.

How Much Will It Cost?

The cost of your project depends on your goals, not how big the website is.

Helping you understand your own expectations and limitations of your budget is a job for a digital marketing professional (like the helpful project managers at CME).

For some benchmarks, however, let’s drop the following numbers:

• Beginner professional website for a small business – $3K to $5K
• Custom design, search optimization, professional content development, e-commerce, and marketing engagement for a small to medium sized business – $6K to $10K
• Custom development plus cloud-based software functionality – includes all of the above along with back-end programming and work flow processes – $10K to $20K
• Enterprise level solutions (you have a national-scale project and you want to compete with the big-boys) – $20K to $100K and beyond.

Why Choose CME?

At CME, we’ve been “designing your success online” since 1999. Along the way we’ve experienced tremendous growth, expanded from web development to full service digital marketing and software development, been called upon to service national and international level clients, and still we bend every effort to do our best for small local businesses.

So, if you’re thinking of budgeting for a new website in 2018, give us a call at 724-523-3001.  We’re ready to help.