Your website costs money — hosting, design, content, ads. But is it actually earning more than you're spending?
That's what website ROI measures. And most businesses have never done the math. They treat the site like a fixed expense instead of an investment with measurable returns.
Even if you've never tracked a marketing metric in your life, this guide gives you the exact formula, a worked example with real dollar amounts, and industry benchmarks to compare against. Fifteen minutes of work. That's it.
Why most businesses get website ROI wrong
They undercount costs
Most people add up hosting and their last redesign, then call it done. That's like calculating the cost of running a restaurant by counting only the rent.
Your real website costs include content creation, SEO tools, paid ads driving traffic, internal labor (your team's time on the site), and every software subscription tied to it. Missing these makes your ROI look artificially high — and your decisions worse.
Here's how it plays out: a company reports $15K in website costs because they counted hosting and design. But add the marketer who spends 30% of their time on website projects ($17.5K), the content budget ($12K), ad spend ($18K), and tools ($2.4K) — actual costs hit $55K. That changes everything.
They don't assign a value to leads
If your website generates leads instead of direct sales, you might think ROI is impossible to measure. It's not. You need one formula:
Lead Value = Average Deal Size × Close Rate
If your average sale is $5,000 and 10% of website leads convert to customers, each lead is worth $500. Multiply that by the number of leads your site captures per year, and you've got your revenue number.
This single step is what separates businesses that "feel like" their website works from ones that can prove exactly what it returns. Skip it and your ROI calculation is incomplete — no matter how precise your cost tracking is.
The website ROI formula
Here it is:
ROI = ((Website Revenue − Website Costs) / Website Costs) × 100
The result is a percentage. Above 100% means your site generates more than it costs. Below 100% means you haven't broken even — which may be perfectly fine if you're in an investment phase building content or domain authority.
For context: industry data suggests 50% ROI indicates strong performance and 200%+ represents excellent returns. And well-designed user experiences can boost conversions up to 400% — a massive return multiplier hiding inside most websites.
The formula is simple. The hard part is getting the inputs right, which is exactly what the next section walks through.
How to calculate your website's ROI step by step
Step 1: Map all your costs
List every website expense from the past year: hosting, domain, design and development (amortize one-time costs over 2–3 years), content production, SEO and marketing tools, paid advertising, software subscriptions, and internal labor. If your marketer spends 30% of their time on website work, include 30% of their compensation.
Pro tip: Build a spreadsheet with monthly recurring costs and one-time costs amortized annually. Reuse it every quarter — the structure only takes 10 minutes to set up.
Step 2: Calculate total revenue
For e-commerce, pull directly from your analytics platform. For lead-gen businesses, multiply your total website leads by the lead value you calculated earlier. Don't forget affiliate income, ad revenue, or subscription revenue your site drives.
Pro tip: Use UTM parameters and Google Analytics conversion tracking to attribute revenue accurately. Revenue you can't trace back to the website doesn't belong in this calculation.
Step 3: Apply the formula
Plug in your numbers: (($153,000 − $55,500) / $55,500) × 100 = 175% ROI. That's $1.75 back for every dollar invested.
Pro tip: Calculate quarterly and track the trend over time. A single snapshot tells you where you are. A trendline tells you where you're heading — and that's what actually drives strategy.
Step 4: Benchmark your result
Your number needs context. Here's what businesses typically see across industries:
- E-commerce: 100–400% (direct attribution makes tracking straightforward)
- B2B SaaS: 150–500% (high lifetime value amplifies returns)
- Local services: 200–800% (low website costs paired with high per-job revenue)
- Professional services: 50–200% (longer sales cycles complicate attribution)
Below 100% isn't necessarily failure — it often means you're in the investment phase. New websites and content strategies typically need 6–12 months to compound before real returns materialize. Track quarterly so you can spot the trajectory early.
Real example: SaaS company discovers hidden 175% ROI
A mid-market B2B software company spent $55,500/year on their website — redesign amortized at $5K, $12K on content, $18K on Google Ads, plus tools and internal labor. They never measured ROI because "the website just runs."
After mapping every cost and assigning a $250 lead value ($2,500 average deal × 10% close rate), they found the site generated $153K in attributable revenue — a 175% ROI nobody knew about. That insight led them to shift $6K from low-performing ad campaigns to their highest-converting landing pages, pushing ROI past 200% the next quarter.
Your next step
Common mistakes to avoid
- Ignoring internal labor. It's the biggest hidden cost. Leaving it out inflates your ROI by 30–50%.
- Measuring too early. Websites and content strategies need 6–12 months to show returns. Don't judge the investment before it has time to compound.
- Over-attributing. Not every customer came through the website. Use CRM data and UTM tracking to stay honest about where your conversions actually originate.
Try this next
Run the calculation this week. Costs on one side, revenue on the other — 15 minutes of work.
And if you want to help your own website visitors calculate ROI on their projects, services, or purchases, build an interactive ROI calculator with ActiveCalculator and embed it directly on your site. It turns a static pricing page into an engagement tool that captures qualified leads while prospects are already thinking about returns.