Full Transcript
[0:00]
Welcome to the 805 Web Minute and today we're talking about the real cost of building your own website and why that cheap tool might actually be the most expensive decision you make this year. We hear it all the time. A business owner, season ad, thanks for saving money and they end up in a much more expensive and honestly a much more frustrating situation than they ever expected. Exactly. So let's start with those initial numbers. Everyone sees the ads, right? Build your website for $17 a month. It sounds incredible. It does. It's a great hook. But that price, that light plan, it's, well, it's almost functionally useless for a real business. What do you mean by that? I mean, the second you need to do anything that actually makes money, like take a payment or book an appointment, that plan is out, you're immediately forced to upgrade. So that advertised price is really just for a simple, like an online brochure. Pretty much. For most small businesses, the realistic minimum is what they call the core plan. That one's about $29 a month. Okay, so we're already almost double the advertised price. And that's just the start. If you're doing any kind of e-commerce, maybe you're a local shop here in the 805 selling online, you need their business plan. And that's even more right. That's going to push you closer to $39 a month just to get the basic tools you need to sell things safely and manage your inventory. So we've gone from $17 to potentially $39 a month before we've even really started. But the platform fee itself isn't the whole story, is it? Not at all. This is where the what I call the hidden fees start to stack up. It all comes down to the apps. The premium apps. Yep. The platforms don't build in a lot of key functions. Say you're a salon in AG and you need a booking system. You need that. It's essential. It is. But it's not included. You have to add a third party app for that. And that app has its own monthly fee. So you're paying the platform fee and then you're paying another fee on top of that. Exactly. And you need a good form for custom quotes. That's an app. You want live chat to talk to customers. Another app. They might seem cheap, you know, $5, $10 each. It adds up fast.
[2:02]
It adds up incredibly fast. Your realistic monthly cost for a fully functional site is suddenly in the $50 to $100 range. Wow. Okay. What else? I saw something in the notes about domain names. They say it's free for the first year. Free for the first year is the key phrase. In year two, you get the bill. It's usually around $15 a year to renew. Okay. That's not too bad. But the bigger issue is domain privacy. If you don't pay an extra $10 or $15 a year for that, your personal information. Your home address. Your home address. Your name. It's all listed in a public database for anyone to find. So that's not really optional for safety. You have to pay it. You have to. And then they're the payment processing fees, which people often forget. That's 2.9% plus 30 cents on every single transaction, which comes directly out of your profit. Directly. No. And the last one is email marketing. They give you a tiny free allowance, something like 200 emails a month, which is nothing. It's nothing. You send one newsletter and you've blown past it and you're paying another monthly fee just to talk to your own customers. So the real financial cost is way beyond that shiny number in the commercial. But let's let's shift gears. Let's talk about something even more valuable than money for a business owner. Third time. Third time. Because every hour you spend fighting with a website builder is an hour you're not spending, you know, running your actual business. This is the cost that nobody calculates up front. The data suggests an average DIY website takes between 20 and 40 hours just for the initial building launch. Let's just split the difference and say 30 hours. What's the cost of that? Well, think about it. If your billable rate is say $50 an hour or $100 an hour, which is very common for skilled professionals. Yeah, absolutely. 30 hours of your time is suddenly worth $1500 to $3,000. You spent that before your site has made you a single penny. That's a huge opportunity cost. And the work doesn't stop at launch. Does it? That's the maintenance trap. It's a huge trap. Research shows that 64% of small business owners find just updating their site to be a major challenge.
[4:07]
Two out of three people. Two out of three. They're spending on average another two to four hours every single month just on maintenance. So what are they doing in that time updating text? Sometimes, but it's often more technical fixing broken links dealing with security updates, making sure things don't look weird on new phones. It's a constant battle. And if you just decide not to do it, if you're too busy, that's where the real danger comes in for security. 43% of all cyber attacks target small businesses. They're actively looking for sites that aren't updated. So you become a target a huge target. And second is your customers. The data is brutal here. 88% of consumers will not come back to a website after they have a bad technical experience like a slow page or a broken contact us form. Exactly. So by not maintaining your site, you're not just risking a hack. You are actively losing customers. Okay. So the financial costs are hidden. The time cost is massive. But now we have to talk about the biggest risk of all, especially for us here in California. The legal risk. Website accessibility. This sounds serious. It's incredibly serious. ADA website accessibility lawsuits surged by 37% last year. There were over 2000 filed in just the first half of 2025 alone. Wow. And I think a lot of business owners assume, hey, I'm using a big platform like Wix. They must handle this for me. That is a dangerously false assumption. Why? The platforms are very, very clear in their terms of service. They explicitly state that they do not guarantee compliance. They put all the responsibility on you, the business owner. So what are they responsible for? And what am I responsible for? They provide the empty box, the template. But you provide the content, the images you upload, the text you write, the colors you choose, where your forms are built. All of that is your legal responsibility. So if I upload a picture, but I forget to add a description for a screen reader, that's a violation. If your contact form can't be filled out using just a keyboard, that's a violation. And that's where these lawsuits come from.
[6:08]
Okay, but what about those little widgets? I see the accessibility icons in the corner of some sites that promise to fix everything. This might be the most important point we make today. Those widgets do not work. They don't protect you. No. In fact, they can make you a bigger target. The data is shocking. Last year, 456 lawsuits were filed against websites that had one of those widgets installed. So why don't they work? Because they're just an overlay. They can't fix the underlying code of the website or the content you've added. It's like putting a bandage on a broken bone. It gives a false sense of security. There is even a big government settlement over this wasn't there? Yes. The FTC hit a major widget company with a million dollar settlement for misleading businesses. The evidence is clear. They are not a solution. So DIY is cheap up front, but ends up being expensive, time consuming and legally very risky. What's the other option? A traditional web design agency. That's the traditional alternative. Yes. And they do high quality work. The problem isn't the quality. It's the price. It's the price in the time. You're looking at a huge upfront cost anywhere from $5,000 to $15,000. That's just not feasible for most small businesses on the central coast. Right. And it's slow. An agency project takes. And minimum eight to 12 weeks to launch. That's three months of waiting. And then you're stuck paying them every time you need a small change. Exactly. You want to update your hours. That'll be $150. Please. You have to email them. Wait for them to do it. It's expensive and it's slow. So it feels like business owners are stuck between two bad options. A risky time-secing DIY project or a super expensive slow agency. That's the gap in the market. There's this huge need for something professional, fast and affordable. Which really brings us to the final question for you, the listener. How do you make this decision? You have to be really honest with yourself. The DIY route is only a smart move. If you genuinely enjoy this kind of work, you have 30 or more hours of free time to burn and you're willing to become an expert on security and legal compliance.
[8:14]
And for most business owners, their time is just worth more than that. Your time should be spent serving your customers. So you have to frame it correctly. Is your time worth more than say $79 a month? Because you're trading thousands of dollars of your own time to avoid a relatively small monthly fee. It's a false economy. And we haven't even talked about the upside. A professional site isn't just a cost. It's an investment that's proven to grow your business. But data backs that up completely. Businesses with modern, professionally managed sites report revenue increases of 15 to 50%. Over 70% see that increase happen almost right away. So the real cost. It isn't the website. The real cost is not having the right website working for you 24, 7. That's the bottom line. You have to decide if you want a new stressful hobby that carries legal risk or if you want a business asset that actually makes you money. That's the quick tip for today. If you want a professional website without the agency price tag or the DIY headache here is the better way. At you grow.pro we build it. We manage it and we handle every update forever all for just $79 a month. There is zero setup feed, no contract. And it is strictly month to month. So there is zero risk. We're local here in AG and we can have you live in days, not months. Want to see what your site could look like? Go to you grow.pro right now and we'll design three custom mockups for your business completely free. No strings attached. Thanks for listening and keep growing.