Web Site Budgets Spent on Maintenance

Staff -- graphic arts online, 12/1/2000

Fully one-third of companies' annual Web site budgets are devoted to maintenance and design, according to a study just released by ActivMedia Research (www .ActivMediaResearch.com), a market research firm based in Peterborough, N.H. dedicated to electronic business information data.

When the costs for access and site hosting are added in, it makes up nearly 60% of total global site development and operational budgets annually. On a global level, $22 billion will be spent establishing and maintaining an on-line presence, translating to 17% of the $132 billion in e-commerce revenues being generated today.

"While externally hosted sites rely on outside services for around-the-clock technical support, internally managed sites face the daunting challenges by themselves," reasons Harry Wolhandler, ActivMedia's vice president of market research, suggesting a real revenue opportunity for firms offering Web services.

For all site types, the percentage of site development and operation budgets devoted to site upgrades increases with the number of years on line, on-line revenues, and total site development and operational budgets, according to the study. The increase in budget devoted to continual site upgrades rises approximately 20% by all of these measures.

Nine key areas of site development have been researched with an eye to establishing benchmarks and budgetary norms in both dollars and proportional percent allocations:

•  Web site design and Web page programming;

•  Web hosting and access services;

•  Web transaction and order-processing services;

•  Web applications and outsourced Web services;

•  consultants for site design and strategy;

•  computer systems and peripheral hardware;

•  network hardware; and

•  Web-related software and systems integration with backstage computer networks.