Websites and ROI

I met with a local web dev co. today that I'm considering partnering with. Their very basic wordpress site starts at around $1500. Basic hosting is $30/mo. And maintenance + hosting is $100/mo. They have a fancy custom back end for the clients to see stats and make minor changes.

I was asking lots of questions of course and asked if their clients or prospects ever asked about ROI and how their site could help their business during the pitch. The answer? "Very rarely". So I asked "is it just that they know they need a site?" "Yep and ours look better than the competition." who, btw, is charging 3x as much!!! And of course, the sites are not optimized at all for lead generation. And they stay really busy doing big complex sites for colleges etc.

Mind boggling. Any comments?

PS He hired me to do some copywriting after we talked. I'm just getting started and things are starting to move along pretty well and the funny thing is I really haven't spent very much time "trying" to sell anything. Just been putting myself out there is all plus taking massive action.