How Much Does a Private Investigator Website Cost?
The same as an investigation.
I'm a digital marketing strategist with a strong grasp of current marketing tools and trends across Social Media, SEM, and PPC. Over the years, I've lead and integrated digital marketing campaigns from concept to execution – I just happen to be a former private investigator.
I help companies understand their target audience, and then create and optimize online experiences by leveraging their owned media, new tools, and trends to help drive profits.
I help companies understand their target audience, and then create and optimize online experiences by leveraging their owned media, new tools, and trends to help drive profits.
If you go online and search for “how much does a private investigator website cost” you will find several price points from as low as $500 to $5,000 or more. The difference between the qualities of work is relate-able to hiring a $10-hour investigator v/s hiring a CFE at $100-hour expecting to obtain the same results.
We have worked with over 300 investigators and agency owners to help them achieve their business goals and grow their agency thanks to our in-depth understanding of the unique dynamics and functions of the private investigations industry. We have collected data and have references from all of our prior clients – and put them to use in all our future projects.
Most of our clients had misconceptions stating that “websites simply don’t work in our industry.”
For the most part, our clients’ main mode of marketing was / is word of mouth – which creates feast or famine cycles. The purpose of a website is to balance out those cycles and make work a bit more regular by helping you amplify your voice.
When clients come to us for a new website design project, our goal is to build them a website that will work for them at the time they engage our services. At the end of the day, it’s not about their website looking cool – it needs to look on-brand, work smoothly, allow users to easily find what they are looking for and do what our clients want them to do.
The first step in all of our website projects is to thoroughly understand the particular business needs of our clients along with their business goals, desired client base, expectations from the website, and behaviors. Once we have this information in hand, we figure out how their website factors into all of it – including their business.
When finished, and done correctly, our clients receive a website that not only represents them as being an authority in their area, but actually returns leads and helps convert visitors into paying clients.
What kind of work goes into developing a PI website?
Exploratory Call: 2 Hours – This call helps identify your needs and Goals. We need to figure out exactly who you are wanting to target, how you are wanting to target them, and what you expect from your website. Without this information, a website developer is going to throw together a 5 page website and hope for the best. Having this information, however, will help us understand your particular business needs and will help us guide the design elements.
Design Planning: 8 Hours – During this stage, we are going to go over all major aspects of your design. The image and style that you are wanting to convey to your clients. The type of “look” that you are looking for, and then we figure out how we can incorporate your current brand and image into your website. This is also going to help us visualize your web layout without having to create multiple versions of the page and modify it as we go. At the end of the day, you will get a website that works for your individual needs.
User Interface Design (UX): 5 Hours – Here, we create a wire frame of your website and build basic User Interface Design that will help convert visitors into clients. Think of UX as a map that tells your visitors exactly where they need to go and how they can get there. This is usually accompanied by a thorough Site Map which shows how all the pages are connected to one another. Every button on your website, every link, every paragraph and image needs to have a purpose, UX helps us find its purpose and actually implement it.
Development & Programming: 20 Hours – This is where we take the design and wire frame (UX) and actually bring it to life by turning it into a working website prototype. We create all the custom action plugins, install visitor analytics, setup security and protection to the website, and make sure that your website looks on brand and “belongs” with your company, we implement anti-spam measures, and ensure your forms validate to the right e-mail addresses.
Editorial Content Setup: 8 Hours – Here, we build a story that sells to your clients. Most private investigators share similar stories; Retired Law Enforcement, Private Investigator Experience, Retired Attorneys, Librarian Degree Graduate, Ex-Military Professional, etc. The purpose of creating a story is to help your clients understand that there is a difference between you and your competitor. Rather than focusing on “me me me me” we help create a story that focuses on the services you offer to the client and why you are different than the rest.
Image Licensing & Acquisitions: 1 Hours – While we do have several images that we use, we like to help our clients find images that stand out from the “norm”. We don’t like to use images of a magnifying glass with a man smoking a pipe, instead, we use images that represent a particular service. Are you a private investigator that never gives up? How about a picture of a plant breaking through concrete to show that you are persistent. Images bring your website and brand together without running into the PI cliché.
During this time, we’ll go out and actually purchase the images at a discounted price (due to our bulk orders). Copyright laws are non excitement over seas (for the most part) So, if you use a company overseas, you may end up with unlicensed images that can cost you hundreds of dollars – see this: Copyright Extortion Letter – this is not uncommon. We’ve dealt with it several times already. Some companies will “use images with permission” but when the photographer sells their portfolio to a stock company, the agreement you had is irrelevant.
Review, Testing, and Launch: 2 Hours – This is one of the last steps that you have to worry about. We need to figure out exactly how your website looks across all types of devices. Mobile, Tablet, and Desktop. We test all the contact forms and ensure you get the e-mails from the forms. Lastly, we verify that all your forms contain anti spam capabilities.
Client Training & 30 Day E-mail Support & Documentation – You don’t want to call a developer every time you wish to make changes to the site. So we work with you on understanding how to make basic changes to the website. If you ever need help, our team is here to help you out.
Total Time: 46 Hours
It’s easy to see how a website that costs you $500 will have to take shortcuts to be able to come within budget. A lot of companies also use agencies overseas. The quotes are great – $295 websites or cheaper. The problem is that they have different laws there than here in the United States. We have found exact copies and replicas of some of the websites that we build, and we have sent out Cease and Desist notices. Daniel Maya is a client of ours and can attest to this fact – call him and ask how many times we brought down websites with stolen content. Out of the 10 websites that we have sent out Cease and Desist notices, all 10 of them told us they used a company overseas.
Interested in seeing how much YOUR website will cost?
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214.997.4680
