How to calculate website and advertising ROI: a simple formula
Most business owners get ROI wrong because they forget half the costs or half the revenue. Here is a formula that closes both gaps.
The base formula
ROI = (channel revenue minus channel cost) divided by channel cost, times 100%. If a site and ads brought 50 million UZS in revenue against 10 million in cost, ROI = (50-10)/10 × 100% = 400%.
The key mistake is computing ROI from revenue instead of profit when margins are thin. At a 20% margin, that same 50 million in revenue yields only 10 million in profit, so real ROI = 0%. Always clarify which figure you're using.
What belongs in costs
The ad budget isn't the whole cost. Add: development cost amortized over 12-24 months (a site costing 15 million UZS running for 2 years is 625,000 a month), a media buyer's salary or fee, content and creative production, and the payment gateway's commission (usually 1.5-3%).
Track first-month fix-up costs separately — this often eats 10-20% of the launch budget but rarely makes it into the spreadsheet.
Counting revenue correctly
Only count revenue from orders that clearly came through a tracked channel — a UTM tag or a dedicated phone number on the site. Orders where a client recalled the brand and messaged directly without clicking an ad belong to organic, not the paid channel, or ad ROI will be inflated.
For B2B and long-cycle services, attribute by first-touch date rather than payment date: if a client clicked an ad in March and paid in May, the revenue belongs to March's budget.
Website ROI separate from ad ROI
Keep the two apart. Ad ROI shows whether click spend pays off. Website ROI shows whether the build itself paid off through a conversion-rate lift versus the old site or competitors. Compare conversion before and after a redesign at similar traffic volume — that's more honest than comparing revenue across months with different seasonality.
Without pre-redesign data, use an industry benchmark: a healthy visitor-to-order rate for ecommerce in Uzbekistan is 1-3%, and 3-8% visitor-to-lead for service lead generation.
The minimum toolset
Calculating ROI without an analytics agency needs: Google Analytics 4 with goals configured, a dedicated phone number or UTM tags per channel, and a Google Sheets table breaking down costs by month. That covers 90% of small and mid-size businesses.
Recompute ROI at least monthly: seasonality, rising auction competition, and click-price shifts can flip the number within 4-6 weeks.