Measuring Whether the Website Is Worth Its Cost

The question nobody can answer

This is Small Business Week in Canada, and plenty of owners will spend part of it looking at what the business spends and why.

The website is usually on that list: hosting, updates, the odd change, perhaps an AdWords campaign pointing at it. Then someone asks whether it is worth it.

Most owners cannot say. The honest answer is a hopeful yes, or a shrug.

The question is not hard. Nobody has been writing down the two things that answer it: where each enquiry came from, and which ones became paid work.

What the website actually costs

Start with the costs. They are the easier half, and still usually underestimated.

• Hosting and the domain, paid monthly or yearly.
• Maintenance and updates, paid to someone or done by staff.
• The original build, spread over the years the site will last.
• Advertising that points at the site, such as AdWords.
• Staff time answering form enquiries and keeping pages current.

The third is the one most people leave out. A site that cost several thousand dollars and lasts five years costs something every month, long after the invoice was paid.

Visits are not the answer

The figure most owners reach for first is visits, because Analytics shows it on the first screen.

Visits measure attention, not money. Job seekers, people in other countries and automated bots all count as visits, and none of them pays for anything.

Analytics also misses much of what the site does. A phone call from someone who read three pages first leaves no trace in the report.

Ask every enquiry one question

The record starts with one question for everyone who calls, emails or walks in: how did you find us? Ask it the same way each time, and write down the answer as given.

Google will be a common answer, so ask one more thing: was it our website, the map or an ad? People mix those up, but they remember whether they read your pages.

Ask referrals too whether they looked at the website before calling. Many do, and that visit is part of the site's work.

A record that fits on one sheet

A ruled sheet beside the phone or a shared spreadsheet will do, as long as every enquiry goes on it, including those from the website form.

Six columns are enough: the date, the name, how they found you, whether they saw the website, what they asked for, and what happened.

The last column is filled in later: quoted and lost, quoted and booked, not a fit, never replied. For booked work, add the invoice total.

Keep it within reach of whoever answers the phone, or it will have gaps within a month.

A worked example

A limousine service with three vehicles, run by a couple in the Okanagan, does weddings, winery tours and airport runs.

Last winter their accountant asked whether the website, its upkeep and a small spring AdWords campaign were worth the money. Neither of them could say.

Calls went to a mobile phone that travelled with whoever was driving, and nobody asked callers how they had found the business.

They started a sheet in the booking binder, typed it into a spreadsheet each Sunday, and asked every caller the same two questions.

By September the pattern was plain. Airport runs came almost entirely from repeat customers, and winery tours from hotel front desks.

Wedding enquiries mostly came through the site, or from people who read it after a recommendation, and weddings were their largest bookings.

Set against the site's cost, the wedding bookings alone answered the accountant. The ads were harder to judge, so they now run only while couples are planning, and the sheet will show whether that was right.

Matching enquiries to paid work

Enquiries are half the answer. A source that brings many calls and few bookings can be worth less than one that brings a handful of good ones.

Once a month, fill in what happened to each enquiry from the invoices, not from memory, and total the booked work by source: website, map listing, referral, repeat customer, the sign on the van.

Take off the rough cost of doing the work. What remains in the website's column is the figure to set beside its cost.

The work the website does without credit

Some of what a website does never shows up as a source.

A referral who reads the site before calling is recorded as a referral. A caller who saw the van but checked the site before deciding is recorded as the van.

That is why the saw-the-website column matters. Report the work the site brought on its own and the work it helped close separately, so nobody confuses the two.

How long to record before judging

One month says very little, since a quiet fortnight or one large job can swing it. Three months gives a rough picture; a full year gives a reliable one, because sources behave differently in March and November.

Change as little as possible meanwhile. A redesign halfway through makes it hard to know which version the numbers describe.

What the answer can tell you

If the website's column covers its cost comfortably, the question is settled, and the next one is what more the site could do.

If plenty of enquiries arrive through the site but few become work, the site may be attracting the wrong people, or the quoting may be the problem.

If almost nothing arrives, the site is not doing its job. That is a reason to have it looked at properly rather than give up on it, because the cause is usually fixable.

The counter-case

Not every business needs this much record-keeping.

A firm booked months ahead by a few long-standing clients uses its website mainly as a reference. Its worth there is credibility, which a record will show but cannot price.

The record is also an estimate. People misremember how they found you, and some enquiries will always be unclear.

An approximate answer built on real enquiries still beats a guess, so keep the sheet, ask the question every time, and judge after a season.

Starting the record

1. Add up what the website costs each year.
2. Draw up a six-column sheet for enquiries.
3. Put it beside every phone that takes calls.
4. Ask every enquiry how they found you.
5. Record form enquiries on the same sheet.
6. Fill in outcomes monthly from your invoices.
7. Judge after a season, not a month.

Step four is the one everything else rests on. Without the question asked every time, the sheet fills with guesses, and the answer is only as good as those guesses.

Before measuring anything, stop the leaks described in the enquiries your business lost last year.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.