How Much Should You Pay For A Website?

by Martha Chan

Are You Still Paying And Paying And Paying For Your Website?

I am always amazed as to how much more we will pay for the same thing that we can get elsewhere, just because we didn’t take a little bit of time to find out what we should be paying or to comparison shop.

When it comes to a major purchase, like the building, hosting and maintenance of a website, which promotes a professional business and can cost thousands of dollars, I have seen a lot of successful family lawyers, mediators, CDFAs etc. being what I called “Intelligent Dummies”. Some of them ask their friends or relatives to build their websites. The websites may be cheaper, but they also look cheap, or take a long time to complete. Neither one is good for the business.

It Only Costs Hundreds of Dollars/Year to Host your Website, Not Thousands

How much should you pay for a website? I have also seen, far too many times, family lawyers who pay thousands of dollars month after month, year after year, for one website which may be only 10 or 20 pages. When I ask them what they are getting for their thousands of dollars, they don’t really know. Often, when I look into it, they are not getting much. While it makes sense to spread the cost of building a website over time, it does not make sense to pay so much to build a website, and certainly it does not make sense to keep paying for it year after year.

Question Long Term Contract with a Huge Penalty to Discontinue

Sometimes, these family lawyers who are locked into a 2 or 3 year contract have to pay a large penalty to discontinue their contracts even though the work can easily be discontinued. For one client of mine, I worked it out that even if they discontinued their contract with their provider, paid the penalty (which is 60% 0f the contracted fee until the end of the contract), and switch over to our company, the client would still break even financially and get what they need.

I see the reason why a provider would want you to sign a 3, or for that matter a 10 year contract, but why would YOU sign a 3 year contract? If you are going to consider a 3 year contract, there need to be a benefit, and a reasonable way out, such as non performance.

You’d Think the Service Would Make it All Worthwhile

I have listened to clients complaining about how their service providers would not clarify or itemize their invoices, or make changes they ask for to their websites. Sometimes they asked me to inquire on their behalf, thinking maybe I can speak the same jargon, but I ended up experiencing making one request several times and not being able to get the answers because there are turnovers, or because there are so many layers to get through in the machine, you are not able to talk to the people who actually do the work or manage the work.

Ask Questions Before You Sign Your Next Marketing Contract

I am not saying my company is perfect and don’t ever disappoint our clients, but we don’t start with the premise of iron-clad contracts where you have to pay to get out of them. For sure, we believe you should honor contracts that you sign, and that is exactly why we want you to ask questions and look at the terms and conditions before you do.

Martha Chan is a marketing expert for family lawyers and divorce professionals. She is a co-owner and Vice President of Marketing for Family Lawyer Magazine, Divorce Magazine and Divorce Marketing Group, a marketing agency dedicated to promoting family lawyers and divorce professionals. She is the co-host of a monthly marketing teleseminar for family lawyers and co-author of The Essential Marketing Guide for Family Lawyers. She has served as a marketing consultant to many Fortune 500 companies and countless family law firms over the past 30 years. She can be reached at 866-803-6667 x 136, or marthac@divorcemarketinggroup.com.