From their “maybe we should have a website” beginnings, websites are now an unequivocal business asset – an online shop window that’s always open. They’re so essential they’re like a member of the team, which got us thinking, how much would you need to pay them if they were a person?
The UK National Living Wage set by the government is currently an hourly rate of £9.50 for those aged 23+ for the 2022/23 tax year. However, the Living Wage Foundation says this should actually be at least £10.90 (rising to £11.95 if you live in London).
Using these figures, if you employed a salesperson full-time for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week on minimum wage you’d be looking at an annual salary of £19,760. Let’s assume that they are great at their job, a fabulous multitasker and they can handle more than one customer at a time. On top of this, they take minimal sick leave, always schedule holidays in advance and take timely breaks. You’d employ them, right?
What if your website was a person?
Before we get started, let’s have a little reminder that your website is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It has an encyclopaedic knowledge of your business and products, can handle thousands of customers at once and can also perform complex functions and equations to ensure customer satisfaction.
Now, let’s do some anthropomorphic wizardry and suppose that your website is lo-and-behold, a person. One that you have to pay. Ignoring that this person would be a de facto genius based on all the tasks it can perform, let’s assume you’re still only going to pay them minimum wage and that they still work 24/7 with no breaks and holidays (they are a bit vulnerable to viruses though).
On the same government minimum wage, you’d need to pay your website £83,220 annually – and that’s not even a leap year. In London, on a real living wage, this figure rises to £104,682!
Obviously this is all nonsense, but it puts in perspective that your website does so much more than a single person can possibly hope to manage. Yet, the image still persists that a web designer will be able to knock out a decent site for sub-£1K, whereas to employ someone even mediocre to do sales will cost at least £19K a year (an amount for which you’d get a bloody brilliant website by the way).
So next time you are looking for a new website, remember that a good rule of thumb is to think about what you’d pay a full-time salesperson for a year… and then remember that your website doesn’t just work 9-5!
