Intonet

What is the value of your website?

Buying or selling a business today invariably includes a website.

It does not really matt er whether you are the seller or buyer because either party must establish a dollar value as it is an asset. Just as obviously, the vendor’s view is a mirror image of the purchaser’s considerations and diametrically opposed.

So, why does a website have a value?

The reason that a website has value is because a potential buyer can make a profi t from it just as the seller can claim he has derived that profi t. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you seek the help from a plethora of various professional valuers, you may become totally confused and arrive at a very infl ated value. Their usual equation looks something like this: total worth of the website = value of the amount of revenue earned from the website + value of age and inbound links + value of the domain name

Arvo Elias,

Cybercons

+ value of the page views and the unique visitors to the website + value of the amount of the website’s content.

My fi rst reaction is to wonder how one can possible establish the value of each variable in that equation. The monetisation method of each factor is debateable and oft en quite obscure even before that view is fl avoured with the assessor’s own agenda.

That equation is fi ne if one considers the website as a standalone commodity. In your case that is not so because the income generated by the website is invariably included in the trading account’s income column. The other components oft en break down into subcomponents and unless we are dealing with a major enterprise like the eBays or Amazons of the world there is a far simpler and, in my view, a more realistic way to unravel this conundrum.

To begin, I would start to rearrange the order of the factors in that equation…

The fi rst component to inspect is the domain name. If it mimics the business name, we are doing well and if it ends in dot com or preferably dot com.au the fi rst goal has been reached. In other words, if your enterprise is called “My Great Venture” then the preferred domain name should be “mygreatventure.com.au”.

The second most important component is the actual content. That should be extensive but without repetition. Reading the content should be akin to a book; lots of valuable, concise, relevant, and interesting text. The sole purpose of all this content is to sell. Sell whatever the business you are buying off ers to your potential clients. The most important information, complete with a call to action, should come fi rst.

Clever selling prose relies on emotion rather than cold facts

Eff ective content must have keywords accurately placed within the text with sentence structures playing a major part in search engine optimisation. There is also a relation between the visible text and certain aspects of code structure. If you have any doubts about evaluating these aspects, then professional advice is highly recommended.

Today the compliance of the design for mobile rendering is very critical. Google has declared that dual indexing has commence and ultimately evolve into an index of mobile sites only. This means that currently a website will be listed in the normal manner irrespective

of its suitability for mobile devices while, at the same time, a second index of mobile friendly sites will be generated.

The current classifi cation of the site could, at worst, then mean that the whole design may have to be scrapped because of this non-compliance, or at best just have some minor code modifi cations applied. So, this is your fi rst serious warning fl ag. Obviously to satisfy yourself of the true status just requires you to direct your mobile phone to the site and see if it displays properly: bett er still, go to the horse itself at “htt ps://search. google.com/test/mobile-friendly” and do a more thorough check.

To check if you are indexed in Google just go to Google, then search for “site:yourwebsite. com” and check the results bar that is returned. Your site results should show up under the “All” heading alongside “Image”, “News” and so on.

This aspect is called responsive design and you should be fully converted by now. If the site still displays problems when displayed on mobile devices, it is best you obtain assistance

The second most important component is the actual content

from a professional designer. Bear in mind that there is a tendency for what in eff ect are single page designs to be the preferred structure today. Again, brought about by the prevalence of mobile devices.

Inbound links as a generalisation have litt le if any value; links from major brands however could have signifi cant value, it really is a question of relevance and the amount of traffi c they direct to the domain in question. Finally, check the server log for the website. This will describe the number of unique site visitors, the pages viewed, where the visitors originate from and even the search terms used to land on the site. Make sure you view this log because, if nothing else, it will validate any claims as to the number of bookings/sales the site may have generated. Many logs will also display the time a punter has spent viewing a page and the last page viewed. Short visits can indicate a wrong search target having been reached. In other words, the visitors had no real interest in whatever was on off er; if however the majority of visits fall into this category there are grounds for questioning the overall eff ectiveness of the sit. Again, it may mean a full redesign is desirable.

How you decide on the value is a vexing question for you… If a redesign appears necessary, you could be facing a signifi cant outlay and professional guidance should again be sought. It is very important however that you have the registration and ownership of the domain transferred to you. Included in this should be the domain access keys, all the passwords and access data to allow you to manage the website, email system and the automated reservation systems which may be att ached.

This is pure paperwork and must not be neglected

I hope these brief comments may work as a guide for you before to acquire the keys to your new kingdom. Good luck!