Measuring ROI on Your Website Investment: A Simple Guide for Growing SMEs

Measuring ROI on Your Website Investment: The Service Station Test for SMEs

If your website was a member of staff, would you keep them on the payroll?

That’s what measuring ROI on your website investment is really about. Is your site quietly working away in the background, bringing in leads and sales – or is it more like that part-time employee who’s always on a break?

In this guide, we’ll walk through a simple, no-jargon way to measure website ROI, using what we call the “service station test” – a handy analogy to help you see where your website is leaking money, and where it’s fuelling growth.

The service station test: is your website fuelling or draining your business?

Imagine your website as a motorway service station for your business:

• Traffic = cars driving past on the motorway (people searching online)
• Your website = the service station they can pull into
• Pages on your site = the different shops inside (coffee shop, toilets, mini supermarket)
• Enquiries & sales = people actually buying something, not just using the loo and leaving

A busy service station that sells nothing is a problem.

Same with your website. Traffic without action is just people using your digital toilets.

Measuring ROI on your website investment is about answering three simple questions:

1. Are enough people pulling in? (traffic)
2. Are they spending anything when they do? (conversions)
3. Are the profits worth more than what the service station costs to run? (ROI)

Let’s break that down into something you can actually track.

Step 1: Decide what “success” looks like for your website

Before you start crunching numbers, you need to be clear on what you want your website to do.

For most SMEs, success usually falls into one (or more) of these buckets:

• Leads – contact form submissions, quote requests, consultation bookings
• Sales – online orders, deposits, booking payments
• Appointments – bookings for services (physio, legal, beauty, trades, etc.)
• Enquiries to phone or email – clicks to call, clicks to email

Think of these as your main pumps at the service station – the places where money actually changes hands (or is about to).

Pick 1–3 primary goals

Be specific. For example:

• "We want 30 new enquiries per month from the website"
• "We want our website to generate £10,000/month in online orders"
• "We want 15 consultation bookings a month for our new service"

Write them down. They’ll guide everything else.

Step 2: Track the basics (without drowning in tech)

You don’t need to be a data wizard to start measuring ROI on your website investment. You just need a few simple numbers, consistently tracked.

Here’s the minimum to set up:

1. Website traffic

This is how many people are pulling into your digital service station.

Tools:

• Google Analytics 4 (free)
• Or privacy-friendly alternatives like Plausible or Fathom

Watch for:

• Total visitors per month
• Where they come from (Google search, social, email, paid ads, referrals)

2. Conversions (the actions that matter)

These are the moments that move someone closer to becoming a customer.

Examples:

• Contact form submissions
• Phone clicks from your site
• Online orders
• Booking or enquiry form completions

Set these up as events or goals in your analytics. This is like installing till systems at each shop in your service station – you finally see what’s selling.

3. Lead-to-customer rate

This comes from your own records, not your website.

For example:

• Out of 20 enquiries from the site last month, 5 became paying customers
• That’s a 25% conversion from lead to customer

You can track this in a simple spreadsheet or a CRM.

Step 3: Put real money values on your website’s results

Now we turn clicks into pounds.

To measure ROI on your website investment, you need to know roughly what each lead or sale is worth.

For service-based businesses

Say you’re an accountant, plumber, solicitor, therapist, consultant – anything with projects, clients or ongoing work.

Work out:

1. Average sale value
   Example: An average new client is worth £800 initially.

2. Average lifetime value (if clients stay with you)
   Example: That client stays 3 years and spends £800 per year = £2,400 lifetime value.

3. Lead-to-client rate
   Example: 1 in 4 website enquiries becomes a paying client (25%).

Now you can estimate:

• Value per lead (initial) = £800 × 25% = £200 per enquiry
• Value per lead (lifetime) = £2,400 × 25% = £600 per enquiry

Even using the conservative, initial value is usually enough.

For product / e‑commerce businesses

This is more straightforward:

• Use your average order value (e.g. £65)
• Track how many orders come from the website in a month

If you want to get more advanced later, you can factor in repeat customers, but don’t let that slow you down at the start.

Step 4: The simple website ROI formula (no maths degree needed)

Here’s the plain-English version:

Website ROI = (Money generated by the website – Money spent on the website) ÷ Money spent on the website

Let’s plug in some real SME-style numbers.

Example: Local trades business

• Website cost (design + build): £4,000
• Ongoing costs (hosting, support, small updates): £80/month
• Marketing to drive traffic (Google Ads, etc.): £300/month

Over 12 months:

• Ongoing + marketing = (£80 + £300) × 12 = £4,560
• Total website investment in Year 1 = £4,000 + £4,560 = £8,560

From your tracking you see:

• Website brings in 15 enquiries per month
• 1 in 3 becomes a job = 5 jobs per month
• Average job value = £500

So:

• 5 jobs × £500 = £2,500/month from the website
• Over 12 months = £30,000 revenue from website leads

Now the ROI:

• ROI = (£30,000 – £8,560) ÷ £8,560
• ROI = £21,440 ÷ £8,560 ≈ 2.5 (or 250% ROI)

In plain English:

For every £1 you invested in your website in Year 1, it brought back about £3.50.

That’s a member of staff you’d definitely keep.

Step 5: Spotting leaks in your digital service station

Once you’re measuring ROI on your website investment, the next job is to plug the leaks.

Here’s where things usually go wrong – and what it looks like in our service station analogy.

Leak 1: People can’t find you (empty car park)

Signs:

• Very low traffic
• Most visits come from you, your team, or branded searches only

It’s like building a brilliant service station on a road no one drives on.

Fixes:

• Basic SEO (appearing in Google for what you do + your area)
• Local SEO (Google Business Profile, reviews, local directories)
• Simple content that answers customer questions (blogs, FAQs)
• Light advertising while your organic presence grows

Leak 2: People pull in but don’t stay (they use the loo and leave)

Signs:

• Decent traffic
• High bounce rate (people leave after one page)
• Very few enquiries or sales

This is usually a website problem, not a traffic problem.

Fixes:

• Clear messaging (who you are, what you do, who it’s for, what to do next)
• Faster loading (especially on mobile)
• Obvious calls-to-action (buttons that say “Get a quote”, “Book a call”, etc.)
• Trust signals (reviews, case studies, before/after photos, guarantees)

Leak 3: No clear next step (all signage, no tills)

Signs:

• People view several pages
• They spend time on the site
• But still very few enquiries or orders

It’s like a service station with no tills – plenty of shelves, nowhere to pay.

Fixes:

• Add enquiry forms to key pages
• Make phone and email details obvious (especially on mobile)
• Add booking buttons and simple, short forms
• Reduce friction (don’t ask for 15 bits of info when you only need 5)

When a “cheap” website is actually very expensive

One of the biggest mindset shifts in measuring ROI on your website investment is realising that “low cost” and “good value” are not the same thing.

Back to our service station analogy:

• You can build a tiny, cheap station with one pump and no shop
• Or a well-designed station with clear signs, easy access, and shops that actually sell things

The first is cheaper to build, but if it only generates £200/month in sales, it might never pay for itself.

The second might cost more upfront, but if it consistently brings in £3,000–£10,000/month in revenue, it’s clearly the better investment.

A quick way to sanity-check website quotes

Before you buy or redesign a site, ask:

“What would this website need to generate each month to be a no-brainer investment?”

Example:

• Website project: £5,000
• You’d be happy if it generated: £2,000/month in new business

If that feels realistic based on your average job or order values, you’re probably looking at a sound investment.

If you’d need it to generate an extra £20,000/month just to make the numbers work, something’s off.

Make ROI part of your regular business check-up

Treat your website like a member of your team. You wouldn’t wait 5 years to review someone’s performance.

Here’s a simple rhythm you can follow:

Monthly (15–30 minutes)

• Check total visitors
• Check number of enquiries/orders from the site
• Note down:
  • How many leads turned into customers
  • Rough revenue from those customers

Quarterly (30–60 minutes)

• Review which marketing channels are bringing the best traffic
• Check which pages people visit before they contact you or buy
• Identify 1–2 improvements (clearer call to action, better service page, faster loading, more reviews)

Annually

• Look at your total website-sourced revenue vs total website costs
• Decide whether to:
  • Keep improving what you’ve got
  • Invest in a proper redesign to unlock more growth
  • Shift budget from low-performing channels to those that work

Over time, you’ll stop thinking of your website as a cost, and start seeing it as an asset that either performs or gets upgraded.

Want help turning your website into a high-performing asset?

If this all feels a bit like doing your own tax return, you’re not alone. Most SME owners were never taught how to measure ROI on their website investment – they were just told they “needed a website” and left to get on with it.

At Los Webos, we build websites that behave like your 24/7 top-performing salesperson – and we help you track the numbers so you can see exactly what you’re getting back.

We can help you:

• Audit your current website’s performance in plain English
• Set up simple, meaningful tracking (no jargon, no data overload)
• Redesign or rebuild your site so it actually converts visitors into customers
• Create a digital strategy that supports your wider business growth

If you’d like your website to feel less like a cost and more like an investment, let’s have a chat.
No hard sell – just a straightforward conversation about where you are now, where you want to get to, and whether your website is helping or holding you back.

Get in touch with Los Webos to review your website ROI