What is the mid to long term cost of your dental website?
A review of total cost of ownership for websites in 2022
One key operating cost which sometimes confuses dental practice managers is the overall cost of their website. This is an important factor which, if you get wrong, will unexpectedly drain your budget way more than perhaps you may have imagined.
What often happens is that practice managers and dentists look at the initial cost to develop a website but then don’t dig into the contractual small print which subsequently ties them into additional unexpected costs and/or onerous constraints. Indeed we’ve had a few clients over the years who have been lured away from us by “headline” promises only to come back a couple of years later when the reality became clear.
When developing and running a website for a dental practice you need to be fully aware of the following costs:
- Initial set-up costs
- Ongoing maintenance and updating costs
Only when those cost elements are fully transparent can you understand what your website “total costs of ownership” will be over the average four year life of a website.
To help clarify, here is a quick illustration of the type of mistake that is often made when choosing a website agency.
Total cost of ownership for a new dental website
This is a comparison of typical set-up and running costs for a website built by the team at Dental Media versus a close competitor. It can be considered that the websites are similar both in terms of scope, aesthetics and functionality – the difference as you’ll see, is what you pay for the website over a typical four years of ownership.
Dental Media costs:
- Initial design and launch – £4.5k + vat
- Typical ongoing operating fees (annual) – £500 + vat
(The annual fees include for 4 maintenance interventions and the annual website hosting fee – there is no contractual tie-in or mandatory monthly maintenance retainer)
Competitor costs:
- Initial design and launch – £8.5k + vat
- Website hosting is free, security updates are free
- Website updates are charged at £120 per hour – potentially £600 – £800 + vat per year
This was a real example where a new client almost opted for the competitor because she hadn’t studied their small print. The competitor’s sales person focused on “free hosting and free security updates for life” which on face value seemed very attractive. However these elements were more than adequately priced into the expensive initial development cost! What wasn’t mentioned was that they’d be pushing to build a new website four years down the track, again with a huge development fee.
I don’t really need to do the sums to illustrate just how much more expensive the competitor’s offer actually was, but it almost duped the dentist concerned as unfortunately she wasn’t looking at total cost of ownership and all of the costs involved. She’d also missed the fact that she’d have to make a similar huge investment in a new website 4 or maybe 5 years later.
This might seem to be a mistake that few would make but you would be surprised by just how many folk fall into the trap. They simply look at certain cost elements in isolation but completely fail to analyse the overall costs – by the time they realise, they’ve signed off on a contract and it’s too late. So please be aware and seek full transparency before you commit.
Other important contractual considerations
The “devil is in the detail” as they say and this is also very valid for dental web and marketing contracts. For example, one well-known designer only maintains their offer of free website hosting if the client doesn’t seek marketing services such as SEO elsewhere, effectively constraining their choice of supplier. This condition is buried in their small print.
Another area where significant obfuscation occurs is not clearly differentiating between website security updates and content updates – they offer the former free (but remember the huge initial design fee!) but then charge very large hourly rates if you want to amend the content on the website. All of a sudden the benefit of free hosting and security updates doesn’t look quite so attractive when all of the other extras are considered.
Perhaps the biggest area where dentists waste money when it comes to their website is the mandated monthly service contract which is sweetened with the offer of SEO. Starting at around £150 + vat per month, these monthly contracts soon leech your budget. Often you will be paying out even where no work is being done on your website and what’s more, the level of the SEO included is negligible.
Clients often realise this when they are several months into the contract and their website isn’t doing as well as expected in Google. Next they get upsold to a more expensive monthly contract with “better” SEO.
Summary
Understanding all of the costs involved with the development and ongoing maintenance of a website is essential if you are to avoid paying well over the odds. Unfortunately website sales guys are very clever when it comes to promoting the benefits and also obfuscating the “gotchas”. They will try all sorts of tricks to not only win the contract in the first place, but also leave a clear route to upsell the client later on where expectations fall short.
The key with any contract of this nature is to do your homework and really understand what the small print might be tying you into. Ask lots of questions and validate the answers so that you have full transparency which allows you to make a suitably informed choice.
If you would like more information about the development of a website for your own dental practice, including full transparency of the initial design and ongoing maintenance costs, the team at Dental Media will be pleased help. Please call direct on 01332 672548 or use the website contact form if you prefer.