A profitable website

The best website is a profitable one. Or at least a website that meets your objectives. Do you have a profitable website?  

A profitable website

A website can be profitable because you earn money directly from it via a web shop. How much does your website generate in direct financial income? 

If you use your website to promote your offline services, the website stimulates your turnover for those services. How much does your website generate indirectly?

Maybe your website is not for profit. But your goal is to inform as many visitors as possible free of charge. Does your website meet your educational objectives?

You can only determine whether you have a profitable website if you set clear objectives in advance. Have you specified the purpose of your website?

Internet Project Plan (IPP)

You specify the objectives of your website in an Internet Project Plan. What is the purpose of your website? When do you consider your website to be a success? Can you quantify that?

An unquantified goal is "the website is a success if it attracts many visitors". Quantified (and therefore measurable) "the website is a success if there are 100 new visitors to the website every day who view more than 4 pages".

With an Internet Project Plan you make clear what your website strategy is, how you implement it and make it measurable. It is a kind of marketing and communication plan for your website.

The goal of an Internet Project Plan is to:

• describe a clear step-by-step plan
• draw up a schedule for the whole project
• define the project including tasks and responsibilities
• improve communication between the various cooperation partners
• structure and control all processes
• measure the effectiveness of the project

With an Internet Project Plan you make the purpose of your website concrete and its success (e.g. profitability) measurable.

Funnel

With a profitable website, the conversion of potential customers to actual customers is optimised. In marketing this is referred to as sales funnel. A funnel is an imaginary funnel that describes the conversion process from visitor to customer. How is the conversion of a large number of potential visitors to a number of actual buyers done? 

Call To Action (CTA)

You want to motivate the visitors of your website to take a certain action. You want them to make a purchase in your webshop. Or you want them to contact you. Encouraging your visitor to behave in a certain way is called call-to-action in marketing.

Successful profitable websites make optimal use of call-to-actions. You can recognise CTAs by buttons and texts such as "Order now", "Read more" or "Contact us".

Use CTA's on your own website to motivate your visitor to do what you want to do and thus achieve the objectives of your website. 

Webshop

If you have a physical shop you can increase your turnover by offering your products online. Some customers of your physical shop will buy their products at your online shop. If the online revenues are greater than any decrease in turnover of the physical shop, then the online shop may be profitable.

From your sales you can deduce fairly quickly whether you have a profitable website. 

Costs

At a web shop you can immediately see what the revenues are. If your goal is to attract more customers via your website, it is less immediately visible what these new customers will bring you.

The costs of a website consist of several elements:

Direct one-off costs

• Initial design of the website:
  • installation of the CMS
  • configuration of the CMS
  • purchase of licences for extensions
  • setting up the menu structure
  • placement of content and media (photos, audio, video clips)
  • material (photos, logo design, etc)
• training in CMS management

Direct annual costs

• hosting for the website
• maintenance (backups and updates)
• software licences
  • Backup software
  • Form software
  • Editor
  • SEO plugin
  • Webshop software
  • Template of Theme (the design)
• Possible promotional costs (e.g. advertisements via Google Adwords)

Indirect recurring costs

• your time to keep the content up to date
• your time to promote your website + content on social media

Profit

Profit is the result of your revenues minus your costs. Regularly evaluate whether your objectives (in Internet Project Plan) are still in line with reality. And analyse the extent to which you are achieving your objectives. Remove the costs from your website. With a positive result you will have a profitable website. 

Do you have a profitable website?