Planning and pricing your Web Strategy

Working out your web strategy and estimated costs depends on what you require from a website, the scope and amount of ongoing online and email marketing, and the amount of search engine optimsation required.

The strategy also heavily depends on how much of your own time you are prepared to invest in your website development and ongoing content updates, optimisation, and marketing, compared to how much professional assistance you require.

The cost of technology has dropped remarkably over the last decade The hardware required is now commonplace in even the smallest of modern businesses, and much of the software is open source (under free GPL license) or increasingly affordable.

Further details and links can be seen in Open Source Info, an article relating to Open Source software, Content Management Systems, modern programming languages and technques, photo and video hosting, and more.

Costing the essential components of a succesful Web Strategy

The first  component - the website will be the most important outlay; even though most of the programming software is free, you will still need a professional to put it together for you.
Search engine optimisation, and online marketing  are components, which can attract a one off fee (such as initial keyword research) and then a monthly or bi-monthly maintenance fee (such as monthly search engine optimisation). The amount and frequency of costs will depend on how much you do yourself, and how much you request the services of a web professional. You should aim at developing your knowledge of key search engine optimisation principles to minimise the requirement for professional assistance.

The table below indicates the cost of each component of a strategy.

Each component of your marketing strategy can be outsourced to a web professional. However, no one is more suited to draft your online content than yourself. Content is king. However, if writing for the web isn’t your thing it is important you use the services of a copywriter.
Your product or service can be the best on the market but if you cannot translate how great it is using words, pictures, videos and audio there is little chance anyone is going to buy your products or book you. Your online visitors will only contact you if the content appeals to them.

You need to be aware that web development companies will generally not write your website content. Your online marketer will guide you to best write your content, however the copywriting role usually remains yours. You can decide to outsource the copywriting to a web copywriter but you will still need to spend time letting them know about your business.