Demonstrate value in your website – calculate cost per page

This is so worth spending time on. It will be your “top trump” card when you need to demonstrate the importance of your website (and yourself).

More often than not, top brass think the web is just there, it’s easy to update and it doesn’t need a team to manage. You have to change this thinking and nothing hits home more than a monetary figure. (A low one that is!)

I have to thank Ranjit Sidhu (@sidspaceinfo) for the initial calculation below. Rather than the typical eCommerce calculation (sales per site vs sales for offline alternative) this is a cost per page, an alternative for the non-eCommerce sector.

1. Work out a yearly cost for your web team (or colleagues that make the web happen)
   • For a web team: My first step was getting pay structure from HR and mapping this to grades of the team. Luckily I was the manager and knew the grades but you might have to guess a bit.
   • For a bigger group: Slightly harder as you are talking a collection of people who will work on the website one day then other projects the next. In this case work with service/ project managers to get a percentage for the web as a task. Times the percentage with the total wage of the entire group. Again you might have to guess grades.
2. Work out a yearly cost for Hardware/ Software (optional)
   • This all depends on whether the hardware/ software is a cost you want to include. It might be the case that both are always a given so not worth including it. To get it speak with your IT dept.
3. Work out the number of pages on your website (or sub section of your website)
   • A few ways to do this. You could look at GA, however they duplicate pages and include generated error pages. You could ask IT for html files on the server. You could glean this from webmaster tools or from 3^rd party software that provide IA details (siteimprove).

The sum…

(A+B) / C = D

If you have calculated annual cost and want a daily figure then D/ 365

If you have calculated a monthly cost and want an annual figure then D x 12.

You get the drift…

To take this up a notch, do the same sums for other “offline” information sources. So the cost of a call centre, the cost of a helpdesk, the cost of a front of house office, the cost of a hard copy promotional item. When you present your cost bring those figures too – remember like for like. Money talks and ears will listen.

Having this figure to hand also helps when trying to push forward with changes to the website. Most times you will sell the idea of a project on savings/ growth in conversions. As a final push just remind them of the cost per page against other information sources it all helps.