Setting a website budget: the questions we get asked most

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. The questions about setting a website budget that come up most often on our calls.

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

Do we need to care about this?

The cheapest quote usually costs more by the end. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here.

How do we know it is working?

Content is the line item most often forgotten. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

What this looks like day to day

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Three things worth confirming about setting a website budget before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• The cheapest quote usually costs more by the end — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.