Renting a website..? (paying monthly) Ecommerce Design - General Queries & Advice..

[PinkiesBoutique]

Hello all..

I just have some questions about starting my ecommerce site.
Im selling ladies dresses and bridal wear online, I am in the process of chosing my web designer and getting quotes etc.
Im finding it quite a minefield!! Any recommendations??
One company called web worx contacted me about a service that involves me paying a monthly fee for the website (about 60 quid) which means over the cost of 2 years I could have paid for and owned the site, I suppose it compare to renting a house instead of buying! Its cheaper short term but long term you dont actually own anything - has anyone ever tried this before? Any regrets?
Also I have been quoted as low as £750 to as high as £3000 - Ive been told the main differences are going to be the back office system, is this correct and will it really be worth paying over £2k extra to get an easier to use back office?
Can anyone recommend a good designer? Please feel free to PM if you are a designer with offers / advice..
Any comments / advice / rude jokes !? welcome...
Thanks,
Sarah.

[OldWelshGuy]

there are a lot of things to consider here, not least is the SEO aspect of things. Server location is not as important as it used to be, but a UK hosted site is VERY important if you are unable to verify your site in google webmaster tools and set its geo location to the UK.

MOST important is that you are comfortable with the company, and that YOU control your stock etc, and that the site is seo friendly/adaptable.

[MikeBzr]

One major thing you need to consider is what happens if that company goes under? You lose your website, potentially lose a lot of business, and you most likely won't have any comeback - so you'll be back at square one, having paid a bunch of money with nothing to show for it.

I'm dead against the idea of 'leasing' a website. I would assume that when doing so, you're stuck with a selection of stock templates, meaning you won't get something that truely captures and communicates your business' image or identity, plus your 'look' will be shared with several other sites.

I'd highly recommend hiring a web developer who can create your site to your specifications. £3k isn't that expensive for a high quality ecommerce site, however obviously you need to make sure, by checking out their portfolio, that the company you do business with can actually produce something which looks and functions well.

[iboxsecurity]

Renting your site is all well and good but should you be late paying or not pay for a month or period they specify the company can just pull the plug on your site leading to you not making any sales at all.

Design costs are varied and go from ive seen £300 for a site to well over 5 or 10 thousand pounds, it depends on the size of the company, the customer and the experience of the company. The back office of the site does not directly influence the cost, pm me and ill show you a back office which is fantastic and will not cost you 2K!

My company iBox-Security do offer monthly site renting of £49/month although we do prefer a customer to OWN their shop rather than rent it.
PM me for details on owning your own ecommerce site, designed and hosted for a very affordable price with great support.

Hope that helps

[mke]

Why reinvent the wheel? There are hundreds and hundreds of designs already done, sites that work straight out of the box and with excellent back office systems that will more than suit your needs and will grow with you. If you fall out with your host/supplier there are hundreds of alternatives out there who can offer highly qualified support. The software and what it contains is yours to take with you wherever and whenever you wish.

There are only so many was you can skin a ca(r)t. I'll PM you.

<edit: Sarah, have you disabled PMs or have you left the forum? If you PM me with details of how to get in touch with you, I'll respond. />

[PinkiesBoutique]

Hi, thanks for the replies.. Ive decided against this idea now. I think Im just going to hire a designer and have my own site. In another post I asked about hiring a web designer in the US to try and keep the price down, I really am on a tight budget - any views on this?
What if i have a US web designer but UK hosting is this possible?
Oh and Mike... HOW can you not like onions and peppers... Theyre the best, espcially together!

[awebapart.com]

a service that involves me paying a monthly fee for the website (about 60 quid) which means over the cost of 2 years I could have paid for and owned the site
60 per month for 2 years is 60 x 24 = £1440.

Let's say you pay for your own one-off semi-bespoke (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=278560) ecommerce system at a cost of £1440. That's your day 1 cost for your system. You then have ongoing costs (in order from low cost to high cost) of:

1. paying for hosting (and ecommerce sites should not be placed on the cheapest of hosting plans)

2. a support contract, is your ecommerce supplier going to support your system?

3. ongoing system maintenance and improvement software development costs, and good software development doesn't come cheap (e.g. £300+VAT per day)

So even if you do go for a higher upfront cost ecommerce solution, you shouldn't rule out the ongoing costs associated with that too. Owning your own complex software system - and ecommerce systems are complex pieces of software - does have its own ongoing financial responsibilities to consider.

It is not just the case of if I've got the money then I'll go for the more expensive upfront cost option to save money in the long run, since this route can also be expensive in the long run, perhaps more so. It is a question of what makes business sense. Even some big companies go for the outsourced rent rather than buy option when it comes to ecommerce platforms, just have a look at Venda's clients (http://www.venda.com/pcat/customers). (Venda charge around £5000 per month, although there are hosted managed ecommerce suppliers who provide services more aimed at small businesses and their budgets, e.g. £20-£30 per month).

[MikeBzr]

The back office of the site does not directly influence the cost, pm me and ill show you a back office which is fantastic and will not cost you 2K!

It really depends on whether you want an 'out of the box' solution (of which there are plenty of really solid choices - many of them free or low cost), or one completely created from scratch, to spec, which is probably only the best choice for people who need very specific functionality that can't be provided by a pre-packaged cms - although even in that case its feasible to take a ready made cms and modify it to spec.

I would generally charge anything in the region of 1.5k-3k for a comprehensive ecommerce cms, depending on specifications, but I have a client who was quoted £20k for the same thing before coming to me... I'm not cheap, but £20k is a little over the top!

[MikeBzr]

What if i have a US web designer but UK hosting is this possible?

The locale of your web designer has absolutely no relationship to the location of your hosting; unless they're someone who insists on hosting your site for you (in which case, you can tell them where to go!)

Oh and Mike... HOW can you not like onions and peppers... Theyre the best, espcially together!

Urgh, I can't stand onions, I'm on a lifelong crusade for food manufacturers to stop putting the bloody things into pies etc - if I want a corned beef and potato pie, all I want in it is corned beef and potato! As for peppers, even the smell of them makes me wretch. I must have been abused by a fruit and veg supplier in a past life!

[awebapart.com]

I think Im just going to hire a designer and have my own site... I really am on a tight budget
If you are thinking of going to the expense of having a site custom made for you, then you should also be investing in a client-supplier contract (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=372601). Getting a lawyer to write up a water tight client-supplier contract alone can cost more than the first year costs of some hosted managed ecommerce solutions (http://www.awebapart.com).

[MikeBzr]

Any developer worth their salt will already have a contract they will use which covers everything mentioned in that thread, however it would certainly be worth asking to see a copy of their terms and conditions prior to deciding whether you want to use them.

[quikshop]

Urgh, I can't stand onions, I'm on a lifelong crusade for food manufacturers to stop putting the bloody things into pies etc -

Honestly why bother with a Chinese takeaway when 3/4 of it is onion!??

If you do a petition on the Government website let me know, I'll sign it :D

BAN ONIONS!!

[iboxsecurity]

It really depends on whether you want an 'out of the box' solution (of which there are plenty of really solid choices - many of them free or low cost), or one completely created from scratch, to spec, which is probably only the best choice for people who need very specific functionality that can't be provided by a pre-packaged cms - although even in that case its feasible to take a ready made cms and modify it to spec.

I would generally charge anything in the region of 1.5k-3k for a comprehensive ecommerce cms, depending on specifications, but I have a client who was quoted £20k for the same thing before coming to me... I'm not cheap, but £20k is a little over the top!

Agreed, but typically most clients that come to me who want ecommerce solutions are more than happy to use out of the box systems which have been tweaked, modified and customized to their needs rather than shell out a whole lot of cash if there just starting out. I usually recommend a out of the box ecommerce solution which then is modified to suit requirements.

For a fully built from scratch i charge about 1.5k for ecommerce but a out the box solution made to suit the business is less. But 20k eh...sounds good money to me...wonder why they didnt get the business hmmm :)

[MikeBzr]

Agreed, but typically most clients that come to me who want ecommerce solutions are more than happy to use out of the box systems which have been tweaked, modified and customized to their needs rather than shell out a whole lot of cash if there just starting out. I usually recommend a out of the box ecommerce solution which then is modified to suit requirements.

Absolutely - I think the scope for people who really need a completely custom made ecommerce cms is very small, as nine times out of ten an out of the box solution, modded or not, would fit their needs perfectly - but then of course you have people who want a custom one simply for the sake of having one.


Honestly why bother with a Chinese takeaway when 3/4 of it is onion!??

Whenever I order chow mein, I always ask for just the meat and noodles, and I'm lucky to have found a good takeaway who actually remember that and don't moan about how fussy I am =)

[woodss]

I'm of the opinion that you get what you pay for - if your business is solely selling online, you should perhaps pay a premium to ensure you get a rock solid solution as it is essentially your business (and will hopefully pay for itself over the long term).

If you just need a quick shop to sell a few products then sure, thrash one out.

[MartCactus]

Renting is fine as you'd rent office space so why not website?

But make sure you own your domain name and control it. You don't want to rent that. The value of an online business is largely the domain name... search engine ranking and returning customers. A site can be built for a couple of grand very well, but building traffic to a domain takes lots of time and often money. If you spend a fortune promoting a domain you rent, then you are massively increasing the value of it... which mean when the rent comes up for review you'll get nailed.

Ecommerce sites vary greatly. Cost depends on functionality of the software, how much time and effort is spent on the visual design for your site, and any custom modifications you need to make for your specific market. Hence prices can be anywhere from a few hundred pounds for a very basic one to thousands of pounds (and tens or hundreds of thousands for very big ecommerce systems).

[quikshop]

Renting is fine as you'd rent office space so why not website?

But make sure you own your domain name and control it. You don't want to rent that. The value of an online business is largely the domain name... search engine ranking and returning customers. A site can be built for a couple of grand very well, but building traffic to a domain takes lots of time and often money. If you spend a fortune promoting a domain you rent, then you are massively increasing the value of it... which mean when the rent comes up for review you'll get nailed.

Ecommerce sites vary greatly. Cost depends on functionality of the software, how much time and effort is spent on the visual design for your site, and any custom modifications you need to make for your specific market. Hence prices can be anywhere from a few hundred pounds for a very basic one to thousands of pounds (and tens or hundreds of thousands for very big ecommerce systems).

A very good post, I think we can get hung up on the software aspect of eCommerce but ultimately a retail business should be focusing on driving their business forward through product, marketing, service and sales.

In the right hands any of the software choices, whether it be a custom built shop, a hosted eCommerce solution (http://www.internetretailer.biz), off the shelf package or open source can all be used to produce exceptionally good shops that fulfill their owners requirements.

[MikeBzr]

I think the thing that I get most hung up on when it comes to pre-packaged solutions is the actual frontend rather than the underlying software. Most of the 'out of the box' cms'es have a limited selection of stock templates, and using those can sap any element of your businesses 'identity' when it comes to the site.

I guess you can compare it to business cards - would you be happy using one of those quick card printers you find in shopping centres that allow you to pick one of a dozen standard designs, or would you rather your own custom design be made?

The solution, in my eyes, is to either find an ecommerce solution provider who can either create a bespoke design for you to go with your pre-packaged software, or hire a web designer/developer to do that for you.

[awebapart.com]

A couple of other things to consider when comparing low cost of entry commerce solutions you 'rent', with higher cost of entry custom made solutions you 'buy' are:

1. The difference in initial price a lower cost of entry solution provides, frees up more initial money to invest in other things to kick-start and boost your sales in the first year. New sites are rarely overnight successes, they take time. Google also penalises new sites with their google sandbox (http://www.webconfs.com/google-sandbox-article-11.php) for the first few months, and even after that ranking can take time, so sometimes it is better to kick-start sales in the first few months by investing in google adwords.

2. The time to market. It is logical to assume that a solution which is custom made will take longer to create than a solution which is already made, so your going live date will be later. Sometimes there isn't much difference (if the custom solution is semi-bespoke not fully bespoke), sometimes the difference could be several months.

[MikeBzr]

The sandbox is a tricky bugger, and is an example of one of those things that nobody in SEO really knows about in any definitive manner.

As far as I am aware, new sites aren't explicity confined to the sandbox automatically - its more sites which gain a load of backlinks within a short space of time - which in some cases is a characteristic of a new site.

[andersons wholesale]

Hi
have a look at i612.net. Look at the website design area.We have full E comerce package for £35 a month. No upfront, no contract. Try it for a few months and if you make no money close down at no loss. If you find it works then either keep renting or buy it off them. More or less 12 hr a day phone support. 24hr e mail support.

Bits and pieces added as we want, a really helpful friendly guy, I asked him for some mod work at 2pm today and at 18.30 he rang me to say it was all done.