Ramp-up
A new site does not reach its steady-state traffic on day one. Organic search in particular takes months, so real payback is usually slower than the figure here.
Free tool
Website ROI and payback calculator
how many months until it has paid for itself
A website is a one-off cost against a monthly return, so the honest question is not what it costs but how long it takes to get back to zero. Put in your traffic, your conversion rate and your deal value, and the payback period falls out.
Calculator
How long a website takes to pay for itself
Use the traffic you expect once the site is live and indexed, not what you have today if you are starting from nothing.
The method
How this website ROI calculator works
A monthly return is worked out first, then measured against the one-off cost.
Enquiries = visitors x visitor-to-enquiry rate, and customers = enquiries x close rate.
Revenue = customers x deal value, and gross profit is that revenue x margin.
Monthly gross profit = gross profit - the running cost, because hosting and care come out before anything pays back the build.
Payback = build cost / monthly gross profit
If the monthly figure is zero or negative there is no payback at these numbers, and the calculator says so rather than printing an enormous number.
First-year return = (twelve months of gross profit - build cost) / everything spent in that year, including twelve months of running cost.
Worth knowing
What this does not account for
The rest of the funnel
A website produces enquiries; people convert them. If nobody follows up within a day, the close rate you enter is optimistic.
What the site replaces
If it takes over work someone does by hand, that saved time is a return this calculator never sees.
Brand and credibility
A site that makes a company look serious wins work that is impossible to attribute to it. Real, and not countable here.
Content and marketing
Traffic is an input to this model, not an output of it. Whatever you spend to get those visitors sits outside these figures.
FAQ
Questions about this calculator
1What traffic figure should I use if the site does not exist yet?
Use the most conservative number you can defend. If you have an old site, its current traffic is a floor. If you have none, work backwards instead: enter the customers a month you need, and see what traffic and conversion rate would produce them.
2Why does this website ROI calculator lead with payback rather than ROI?
Because a one-off cost against a monthly return is a payback period question first. A percentage return depends on the window you choose; the number of months until you are back to zero does not, which makes it the easier figure to compare across quotes.
3Is a two-year payback bad?
Not necessarily. For a business with a long sales cycle and large deals it can be perfectly reasonable. For a high-volume, low-value business it is a warning that either the conversion rate or the deal value in the model is wrong.
4Should the running cost include content and ads?
No - keep it to what it costs to keep the site alive and safe: hosting, care, licences. Marketing spend belongs in the ROI or ad budget calculator, where it can be measured against the demand it creates.
5Why is gross margin in here at all?
Because revenue does not pay for a website; the profit inside it does. A site producing a hundred thousand in revenue at a ten per cent margin pays back far more slowly than one producing thirty thousand at sixty.
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