Website Leasing: How does it work?

 

 Website Leasing: How does it work?

Why not consider website leasing as an alternative to purchasing your new business website. Instead of a large upfront fee, conserve your business capital in exchange for a flat monthly fee. New custom designed websites for businesses typically cost 10-20K or more.

One of the biggest challenges small and medium-sized B2B businesses have when getting a new website developed is affordability. Few businesses can afford the luxury of having their own website developer to build or redesign their website. Most businesses, when faced with the costs associated with website development or redevelopment, just put it off!

Often, the result is that the business ends up with an old, out-of-date website which does not reflect what the business does. The ‘website’ is very much an image of the business some three or four years ago. This can be really limiting for the business, especially when there is no clear solution to get out of this dilemma!

Website Leasing, when it comes to websites, isn't an option that's often considered because:

 

Website Leasing simply doesn't come to mind. Traditionally, when people think about leasing they think about leasing tangible products like cars, computer hardware and office equipment.Many banks won't finance an intangible asset. Websites, much like software, are seen as intangible assets for which most banks will refuse to provide lease financing because it's not something that they can easily sell should you not be able to pay.Financing is difficult in this market. Even if financing was available on an intangible asset like a website, getting approved in this economy requires great credit on behalf of the borrower.

Confusing terms can cost you. Many leases are written to favor the lender, not the borrower which means that you could find yourself paying outrageous fees to purchase the asset outright, get stuck with high interest rates or fall under terms that automatically renew themselves for many more years.
So, If you are looking to create a new website or re-design your existing one, you need a financially viable way of getting a new website.
“So, how much will it cost?”
The answer is, of course, it depends!

It depends upon what you expect from your website. It depends upon whether you need to sell products or services through your website. It depends upon whether you expect your website to generate leads and enquiries for you. It depends upon whether you want your customer relationship management (CRM) system to be connected to your website to capture sales enquiries and to help you nurture your prospective clients.

 It depends upon how many products or services you have to market (if you have a catalogue of several hundred products and services, your website will need to be significantly larger and therefore, more costly to develop). It depends upon whether you consider a blog to be an important part of your website’s promotion. And it depends upon how much of your own resources you want to invest in the development of the site.

From a B2B perspective, the high costs associated with a traditional website build often mean that crucial aspects of the website have to be reconsidered or dropped to keep “on budget” – leading to an ineffective website and in some cases, no new website at all.Traditional website builds usually mean paying 50% or more upfront, and you could be waiting anywhere from six months to two years – and in extreme cases, longer – before your website goes live.

In a world where purchase decisions increasingly start with a Google search, having a website – a fully functioning, lead-generating website – is absolutely essential. A website may be costly, yes, but your business will not succeed without one and you cannot afford to wait months or even years for it.

Surely there is a smarter, more cost-effective solution that enables you to get a website that will help you to generate leads? There must be an approach that will allow you to spread the cost of the website build and not have to wait six to twelve months before your website launches?