So you think your hosting's template services or using a popular C.M.S. template to build a "simple" website is good enough for your business?

Long answer short, you may get away with it if you're running a one-person operation and just need today's equivalent of a listing in the Yellowpages. For everybody else, it's not an effective part of a growth strategy for your brand or business even if you're not selling things directly off your website.

As we’ve said elsewhere, do-it-yourself template sites do serve a purpose. And if you're going to use one and just add your logo and address, don't pay a business to set it up for you, you can save costs and do it yourself.

If for example, you need to build a hobby site you don't actually need to use for business, or if you're going to stand on the street corner passing out pamphlets with you URL on them or something, then you don’t need to spend money on a custom branded website.

If you don't plan to make money off it, even tangentially, and literally don't need any visitors you haven't personally brought in, a site that generates traffic then influences visitors probably isn't necessary.

For everybody else, if you require marketing of any kind, have at least one competitor, and don't have a staff of thousands to send across the world spreading the personalized word out about your organization, you need a website with more than the logo and address sections to be custom. That, and NOT JUST "wanting a pretty website" is why you pay a web development agency to make you a site, to brand, differentiate and to attract new leads or customers.

Let's step back away from websites for a minute and discuss traditional branding and marketing methods. Let's start at the easiest; those local mailed paper circulars filled with weight loss goods, doggie spas, and bathtub refinishing ads. The ones you almost never read through before you throw them in your trash along with those never ending Direct TV mailers. Around here in Los Angeles, in a busy regional market, they claim to get you into 12,000 to 30,000 households, one time, and charge you $500 to thousands for that.

And just as many businesses use the do-it-yourself templates or web host's "build your business website" services, many businesses will gladly pay up to a few thousand dollars to get one cheesy (OMG sooo cheesy) print ad to the houses of 30,000 people, many of whom throw the mailer away sight unseen.

Those same business owners often have the mindframe that a website that is built to get in front of the eyes of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people ACTIVELY searching for THEIR VERY PRODUCT in an engaging and effective way, should be able to be had for the price of, or less than, a one-time cheesy print ad that ends up in the recycling bin. Business owners with this mind-set often strike out with their first website. They start out by by throwing a few hundred or a few thousand dollars at web development and walk away thinking websites "don't work". But websites and web branding really do work when done right, and we're here to prove it to you.

Branding Websites by Artisan Crew:
What They Can Do For Your Business

So you're afraid a website with a branding / marketing plan is too expensive? We're here to tell you that custom branding sites pay for themselves

A website, even one that doesn't do direct B to C sales like an ecommerce site, can, and needs to, pay for itself.

One of the goals of a branding site is to get more buyers / distributors / consumers to search for your brand directly instead of a product category. This means more buyers will be aware of the buzz about your brand, this means strangers recognize your logo, this means leads, sales, and overall profits increase.

We honestly believe you should get what you pay for.

But you also need to understand what you need to get, and can reasonably expect to get out of your investment. We mean websites that are too cheap and websites that are very expensive without goals are both inefficient ways of spending your web design budget.

So how do you get what you pay for?

I know we're sounding like a broken record here, but you need to start with your business branding goals and go from there.

Every business has an advertising budget, and the best way to use that most efficiently is to choose marketing and branding mediums that have the best return on investment. A really good branding website can have amazing R.O.I.

Any amount of money spend on an ineffective website is too much, but unrealistic expectations in regards to money spent gets you nowhere. $500 to a few thousand in the real world gets you a full page ad in a local print circular in the low tens of thousands of households, ONCE.

Did you know that a full-page black and white ad that runs ONE DAY in Sunday's New York Times costs about $180,000? If you're a business that thinks you can spend $3000 on a website to launch your business and get out in front of hundreds of thousands to millions of your potential clients / consumers / fans once and and be done with it, you're not being realistic. The web's a great branding opportunity, but it's not business Narnia.

Also remember that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. According to Nielsen, the average ROI for online advertising is 218%. A web design agency or web developer promising you a much higher return should raise an immediate red flag. If you need to make $1.5 Million in sales annually and an agency is promising the web design and web marketing they're charging your business $10,000 for is going to get you there, you're looking at an ROI of 14900%. If you're down with that, we have a mini-dragon that eats jelly beans and sneezes out gold that we'd like to sell you. Call us!

On the other hand, we've also seen the businesses who spend and spend and spend on custom widgets and apps (because all the cool kids have apps!) and amazing original graphics and exotic location shoots and videos and models and bears, oh my! But because they didn't start with measurable goals or an actual marketing plan in regards to who they needed to attract to their super fancy site and how, they too have missed the website boat. Metaphorically speaking, they're like restaurants with no customers who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on redecorating their interiors when they would have been better served changing chefs and advertising.