The real cost of corporate websites

Procurement usually compares vendors on build price and delivery date. Neither predicts what the site will cost to keep current: hosting and licences, editorial hours, agency retainers, accessibility and privacy remediation, analytics and tag work, and the internal time spent coordinating all of it.

Update friction is the difference between a decision being made and the page being live. When a routine content change requires a developer, the organisation pays twice: once in vendor hours and once in delay. Sites built on well-documented component systems absorb change; sites built page by page resist it.

Change-request processes exist to control risk, but each loop adds fixed overhead — scoping, estimating, approval, QA, acceptance. For small changes, the overhead frequently exceeds the work itself. The compounding effect is structural rather than contractual, which is why renegotiating rates rarely fixes it.

In group estates, every unaddressed inefficiency multiplies by the number of properties. A consent implementation, a template fix or a policy update that takes two days on one site takes months across thirty when standards are not shared. This is the point where governance stops being a documentation exercise and becomes a cost lever.

Build a five-year view that includes the build, recurring platform costs, an honest estimate of internal editorial and coordination time, external change hours, compliance remediation and a rework allowance. Then measure two operational indicators: publishing cadence and update latency. Both are observable, and both track cost more reliably than invoices do.