There's benefits to investing in a website for your business idea
Updated: September 11, 2024
Image Source: Unsplash / Image Credit piggybank.ca
Creating a website to invest in a business idea is actually not as hard (or complicated) as someone might think. It’s also fairly easy to start a business in Canada. The challenge is always, where do you start? How does the business idea align with financial goals? Or wait, what are the financial goals to align to? And how do I achieve the website goals by investing in a website for a business idea? This article breaks down things to consider when investing in a business idea with a website or a web design service.
Running a business is not always about investing
It is true that creating a business is not always about investing in a business idea. Maybe you’re feeling a lot of dislike for the positions you are in today regarding your career or finances and how both impact your lifestyle. Or maybe it’s a lack of confidence in the economy or a desire to establish financial stability by creating a second source of income. Before we get too deep into an ugly fantasy of what a personal financial crisis could look like, let’s get back to the topic of investing in a website for a business. This article will discuss various ways starting a business creates the potential for new opportunities in finances to achieve personal financial goals.
First Step: Consider investing in a business idea
Either way, investing in a business idea is worth considering. Below is a list of considerations outlining some examples of the benefits of investing in a website for a business idea. The article also includes practical explanations of why investing in a business idea is worth it, how knowing what your goals are helps design a marketing plan for a website, how to maximize the cost to build an affordable website, and how to use the power of consistency to generate website traffic.
Operating A business isn’t all about website traffic
That’s true. You can create a successful business through other methods of business opportunities like networking and referrals. In fact, I believe referrals are one of the best ways to earn business.
Generate website traffic to sell your idea (product or service)
Financial goals, sales goals and marketing need to work together to acquire Visitors
Building a website is usually one of the early steps in the process of investing in your business idea. It usually comes after designing a logo. The next step is figuring out how to generate traffic to the website to sell the business idea once you have the product or service available online.
Sometimes new business owners think acquiring website traffic will materialize if they implement the “if you build it people will come” strategy. Keep in mind, building an online business is not quite the same as a brick-and-mortar store that is visible to anyone who visits a shopping area location (e.g. the mall or shopping plaza) that already has a regular flow of daily foot traffic from shoppers. In fact, it might be surprising to see how little traffic your website receives when it is launched and live on the internet. For this reason, you will need to think about how you will tell a lot of people (who you don’t know) to visit your business website online.
Different websites require different amounts of visitors
It’s important to know different businesses require different amounts of website traffic. For example, a content website can promote a service (e.g. wedding photographer) and it might not require as much website traffic as a full e-commerce website because the cost to hire a wedding photographer for one day is a higher priced service compared to a website that sells smaller priced products (e.g. custom designed t-shirts).
People who build a website need:
A financial goal (e.g. how much money (sales) do you need/want to earn every month?)
A marketing plan to advertise products or services to attract visitors to the website
An advertising process to execute the marketing plan (e.g. how will you generate website visitors to sell your t-shirt designs to achieve the monthly sales goal?)
Website traffic to convert into sales (e.g. how many of the website visitors will convert into a customer?)
Whatever the product or service might be, building a website and getting a business online is the relatively easy part. The harder part is acquiring traffic to convert to sales which makes your business viable, thriving and financially rewarding long-term.
Lacks and limitations
The inability to afford a designer to build a website isn’t the real problem of having a successful website. Today there are all kinds of online courses to help you succeed at what you wish to accomplish in life—like building a website—independently. And if you are someone who does not have the time to build a website but has the money, you can hire a service provider to do it. Either way, the business idea will still need to acquire website traffic and develop a plan for how to advertise to generate website visitors.
Many business ideas are worth it
Ideas need a plan for success
Another common story frequently heard from people who have a business idea is that they aren’t sure the idea is worth investing in. Sometimes they aren’t even willing to talk about their idea because they’ve already talked themselves out of trying it after thinking about potentially high startup costs. Building a website can actually be a lean and affordable process and the one-day website session is designed to make investing in a business idea affordable.
Actually offers a free 20-minute discovery meeting if you’d like to discuss the prospect of your business idea.
Business ideas need goals too
Align financial goals to your long-term goals
Investing in your business website is an investment in you. Investing in a business idea creates new financial opportunities which can afford to pay for personal investments like retirement or education plans. Read more about the long-term opportunities.
The power of consistency to generate traffic
The hardest part about a website is not the build or design itself. Any website platform and design should work for your business if you are generating traffic to the website. Rather it is the regular effort of working on strategies to drive traffic to your website that is the hardest part of building an online business. Generating website traffic means you will need to be consistent about updating and adding content to the site to generate a flow of new visitors to the site, like writing weekly blog articles and sharing them on social media platforms.
Learn more about how websites are never really completed or finished and use the power of consistency to acquire a flow of website visitors.
Understand all the costs to invest in your idea
Consider the startup costs and operating costs
The important part of choosing the way to invest in a business idea is understanding what all the startup costs are and how the business will benefit from investing in them. If you don’t have a large amount of money to invest initially or would like to test an idea or software, the costs to start up and costs to continue operating need to be lean so that you can create long-term affordable maintenance for the website. The next goal is to build awareness about the business (e.g. sales, networking, social media advertising, blogging).
The idea is that you will test the idea, crunch the numbers for all of the startup and operational costs, and maximize discounts or free trials to reduce website costs so they are affordable.
Test your idea first
A lot of website platforms allow monthly payments instead of committing to high-cost annual fees. This is a helpful pricing model for new business owners because it makes it more affordable to get a new business idea online without a large financial commitment.
For example, instead of investing in paying for the website for the full year, you can commit to paying for 1-3 months and test the idea out along with the chosen website or marketing software. Since the fees are significantly reduced in monthly cost it allows the opportunity to see value in the risk of investing in a business idea long-term, or call it quits without spending a lot of money to test an idea.
The goal is to test out the process of implementing the plan to attract website visitors while executing the plan with consistency. Testing different software options without the big upfront financial commitments also creates the opportunity to find the best website software for your business needs and reduces the chances of buyer's remorse.
Finally, testing an idea helps to understand the costs to start up a business as well as the costs to operate the business. Testing an idea helps to determine the value of the investment. For example, earning money from the business and seeing how the operational costs actually add value to your idea because those costs help you generate more money.
Crunch all the numbers
Different website services have different costs to use their services. So it is important to crunch all the numbers for all the costs to make the process lean and affordable long-term. For example, Shopify, Wordpress.com, Wordpress.org, Squarespace, and Wix have different pricing tiers and offer different website features. So it’s worth it to crunch the numbers on all software costs and compare the website features.
You may learn you don’t want to use the service after all because it’s cheaper to use a competitor since there are more (or fewer) features for your needs. Why pay for access to website features you likely are never going to use? Or why pay for a website platform if it doesn’t meet all of your needs when another one does?
For example, when you are selling online consider the rate to process a transaction with your website platform and include it in the costs to sell using PayPal or Stripe. Currently, the standard processing rate fee for online payment processors is 2.9% + 0.30 cents per transaction (e.g. Stripe and PayPal) paid to the website platform (e.g. Shopify) and to the payment processor (e.g. Stripe and PayPal). Squarespace does not charge transaction fees on their e-commerce plans.
Costs to consider:
Website software costs (e.g. monthly or annual fees for Shopify, Squarespace, Wordpress.com or Wix)
Other software costs for third-party applications like Google Workspace, Calendly, Mailchimp, etc.
Domain and hosting costs
Processing fees to use Stripe or PayPal (e.g. 2.9% transaction fee in Canada + $0.30 card charge)
2.9% might not seem like a lot of money but for every $100 earned you will pay $2.90 to process the transaction online. These numbers can add up (especially if your services are $1000+ range) so you will definitely want to crunch all the numbers to understand the true operational costs related to transactional service fees to run your website and process customers' credit cards with your website.
The advantage for business ideas is Squarespace for your website is they offer zero (0%) transaction fees on their basic and advanced e-commerce plans. Learn more details about why Squarespace is perfect for small businesses. Either way, get familiar with all monthly and annual website operational costs to help you invest in a lean and affordable website for your business idea.
Discounts add up!
why starting lean with discounts pays
Squarespace offers first-year domain registration for free (.com only) and a custom email address with Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite). In addition to those savings, Squarespace does not charge transaction fees (when you purchase either the basic or advanced e-commerce plan) on purchases visitors make on your website.
The advantage of the one-day website service is that Actually already have access to extend your 14-day trial in Squarespace with an extra extended trial period of 6 months! This gives you literally months of extra time to work on the website (after it’s initially been built for you of course) without committing to Squarespace right away. In addition to the several discounts Squarespace offers, the one-day website session Actually has a list of other discounts found in the immediate benefits of the one-day website session article.
Who benefits from investing in the one-day website service?
With the one-day website session, it is even easier to invest in a business idea because you do not need to have a professional coding background, know how to code or need any design experience to build a website. That’s because, at the one-day service, you are not building the website in a training lesson or traditional instructor-led workshop or course learning environment. It is a service provided for you, which means the website is built for you at the session! Training videos are provided for an additional fee or learn by watching the designer build your website during the session.
The benefits go far beyond purchasing a service to have your website built in just one day with:
The immediate benefits of the one-day website session
All the Squarespace discounts and annual savings
Benefiting from Actually’s business and website experience to build an affordable, easy to use and intuitive website
Education, training and coaching all in one-day session (e.g., business, marketing, graphic design, web design, etc.)
Integration of a plan for marketing that aligns with financial goals for your business (within reason of course!) in the website design
A ready-to-use website by the end of the session (or soon after, ideally nearly right away to maximize your investment)
Final thoughts
Will you have to keep working on the website beyond the session? Of course! A website is never really completed or finished which is why consistent effort to generate website visitors to grow website traffic is essential to achieving the long-term benefits of investing in your business idea.
One-day website session