Website ROI: A Complete Guide

The benefits of investing in a professional website design and development for your business or personal brand are clear. However, is it really worth it and what ROI can you expect as a result? To help you figure that out, in this article, we’re going to cover:

• How to calculate website ROI
• Strategies to improve website ROI

But before we do any of that, we’d first like to discuss the importance of website ROI, despite the countless benefits that come with having a website.

Why Website ROI Is Important

Generating a positive return on your investment is crucial, and that also applies to the money you spend building your website. With that in mind, here are a few reasons why website ROI is important:

Measuring Website Effectiveness

While building a website will have a big impact on your credibility and brand awareness, what truly matters is the amount of revenue that your website generates.

And by keeping track of what your website has cost you to build compared to the amount of revenue that it has generated, you can measure how effective your website is in positively impacting your bottom line.

Justifying Website Investments

When investing any amount of money into your website, website ROI will help you justify the money you’re about to spend. And if the calculation ends up working out in your favour, then making the investment will be much easier.

Identifying Areas for Improvement

Keeping track of your website ROI isn’t just about identifying success. It’s also about spotting areas that need improvement. This can be anything from optimising your website’s loading speed to testing your call-to-action placements to ensure that they’re as effective as possible.

How to Calculate Website ROI

Measuring the ROI of your website is essential to understanding how it is performing and identifying opportunities for improvement. Here is a rundown of how to calculate website ROI:

The Basic ROI Formula

The basic formula for calculating ROI is pretty straightforward:

• ROI (%) = [(Revenue – Costs) / Costs] × 100

In the context of your website, the revenue will represent the income that is generated directly from your website, such as online sales, leads converted to sales, and so on). As for the costs, that would be any website-related expenses, such as hosting, maintenance, marketing, and development.

Key Metrics to Include

When calculating your website ROI, there are a couple of metrics that you should include, including:

Website Traffic and Conversion Rates

Website traffic refers to the total number of users who have visited your website, while conversion rates refers to the percentage of visitors who have completed a desired action, such as making a purchase.

Average Order Value (AOV)

AOV refers to the average amount of money spent per transaction on your website. If you’re in e-Commerce, this is a crucial metric to include in the calculation of your ROI.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV refers to the average amount of money you can expect from a customer over the entire duration of their relationship with your business. This metric can help you forecast future growth in revenue based on your expected growth in traffic.

Cost of Website Maintenance

Depending on the nature of your website, the cost of maintenance can be anywhere from £50 or less to hundreds and even thousands of pounds per month. Some monthly website maintenance costs include:

• Hosting
• Development and design updates
• Marketing campaigns (SEO, paid advertising, email marketing)
• Subscription fees for any analytics tools or plugins

Tools to Help Measure ROI

There are a handful of tools that can help measure the ROI of your website, including:

• Google Analytics: A great tool for tracking traffic, user behaviour, and conversion rates
• HubSpot: An all-in-one marketing platform with tools for lead tracking and analysing ROI
• Tableau or Databox: Tools that can consolidate metrics into visual dashboards for easier analysis
• Hotjar: A tool that can help you analyse the user behaviour on your website through session recordings and heatmaps

Strategies to Improve Website ROI

Improving the ROI that your website generates is never a bad idea. Here are a few strategies that can help you with that:

Optimise for Conversions

The ultimate goal of a website is to convert visitors into paying customers. If your website isn’t optimised for conversions, you may still get customers here and there, but you’re definitely missing out on more business. To optimise your website for conversions, you can:

• Improve website navigation
• Improve loading speed
• Enhance call-to-actions (CTAs)
• Leverage A/B testing

Drive Targeted Traffic

Although having traffic to your website is important, it’s also important to remember that not all traffic is the same. To maximise your website ROI, you need to drive visitors that are actually interested in the products or services you sell and the best way to do that is through SEO and paid advertising.

Enhance User Experience (UX)

A website that offers a great user experience (loads fast, is easy to navigate, etc) will make visitors a lot more engaged and more likely to take action. And that’s just one of the benefits of good UX design.

Monitor and Analyse Performance

If your website is already live, make sure that you’re monitoring and analysing its performance over time. This can help you identify issues (such as loading speed if the bounce rate is high), which you can then quickly address.

Retargeting and Customer Retention

While attracting new visitors to your website is important, re-engaging with your existing customers is often more cost-effective since they already trust you and are likely to buy again.

So, be sure to consider setting up retargeting campaigns and enhancing your customer retention strategies, and you’ll see a significant increase in website ROI.

Final Thoughts

While having a website is important for every business, making sure that your website generates a positive ROI is what truly makes it a valuable asset. After reading this article, we hope to have helped you better understand why website ROI is important, how to calculate it, and the strategies you can deploy to increase it.

If you’re yet to invest in a website for your business and want to hire a team of specialists to bring it to life, contact us today and we will gladly discuss your options with you.