website for £1k

[extremeld]

hello,


i was wondering what quality of website i could get for £1k, this is my upper limit really, it would have to incorporate a store with descriptions as well as a photography.`


thanks

k

[who_me]

hello,


i was wondering what quality of website i could get for £1k, this is my upper limit really, it would have to incorporate a store with descriptions as well as a photography.`


thanks

k

you'd have more change than you can shake a stick at www.mistore.co.uk (http://www.mistore.co.uk)

[zoezoe]

hello,


i was wondering what quality of website i could get for £1k, this is my upper limit really, it would have to incorporate a store with descriptions as well as a photography.`


thanks

k

I thinks thats quite a good budget for a start up. Depends what kind of software you want to use for the store.... send me a pm.

[PointandStare]

Websites/ online stores cost as much as a car.

[zoezoe]

Websites/ online stores cost as much as a car.

Thats is very true, and the old bangers will cost you a fortune in the long run!!

[nickpp]

we could supply a custom x-cart store of magento store for this kind of budget

Regards

Nick

[who_me]

Websites/ online stores cost as much as a car.

a toy one right?

[Fingers In Pies]

Hey K.

You can't go wrong with a MISTORE (http://www.mistore.co.uk). Ask Katie at Walk In Wardrobe (http://www.walk-in-wardrobe.co.uk). She has a mistore, and prints with me - she raves about it.

This 700 strong business partnership (http://www.worthingfirst.org.uk)use it. It's a £3000 website for less than a tenner a month. Hidden extra's.. well you need to add the products and pages yourself... You'd have to do that for the site that costs the price of a new car too... or he'll be charging you an MOT everytime you ask him to do it.

:)

[boho]

I can say the same about Internet Retailer (http://www.internetretailer.biz), its another hosted ecommerce solution and is very well maintained with loads of great features and you could have a customised shop for within your budget as well. I've been with them 4 years now and am very happy with the service and system.

[movietub]

I set up with EKM about 18 months ago (Yes EKM are not the greatest and I need to change... soon.) But from looking around it seems that the start up budget is a littl accademic, in as much as you don't really need one.

Its possible to find eccomerce site, payment proccesing and merchant accounts that can all be setup without any fees. The only cost is the ongoing monthly payments. In other words you should focus on calculating these monthly overheads, hold them up against your sales/revenue forcast for the first 12 months and then you can fine tune the solution (hopefully to leave some profit).

You also mentioned 'to include photos and description' well this can all be done by you, it's normal to do this yourself and I'm guessing you will do it for free. Spending time writing detailed reviews and descriptions of your products will pay dividends to both the conversion rate of visitors>customers and also will boost organic PR.

As a quick start you could add several products and simply use photos/descriptions from the manufactures websites. In my experience very few manufacturers see this as a negative thing, if they do you only need apologise and redo the description if needs be.

So in other words your budget is zero but you need to work hard and fast once you get going ;)

[PointandStare]

All these 'hosted' solutions are great but what happens when a trader wants to move on and go somewhere else?
All your database, photos, content etc will be lost or you'll have to pay a huge fee.
You can't simply move it to a new server ... unlike 99 website rental (http://99websiterental.com/compare_packages).

[movietub]

All these 'hosted' solutions are great but what happens when a trader wants to move on and go somewhere else?
All your database, photos, content etc will be lost or you'll have to pay a huge fee.
You can't simply move it to a new server ... unlike 99 website rental.

This thread has had more plugs than my computer.

But in response to your comment - well come on thats simply not true is it?

I'm sure some would make a big charge for collating all the data to pass onto the next host but this is something that could be done quickly by yourself.

All online shop hosts supply product databases which can be aquired simply by downloading or navigating to the correct area of the current website folder. If this information wasn't easy to get hold of listing products on, for example, Google Base would be a nightmare.

Once you have the table/ delimited text its simply a matter of reformatting to fit the format of the new host. The image paths and links could be altered very quickly to match the storage paths and catagory hierachcy of the new host as well.

And you would already have copies of all the images to upload to the new host in the same way you uploaded to the old one.

Like I said I'm about to move from EKM and I have already transferred by entire product range to the new host thats about to go live. It took half a day including ironing out the few products which were lost in translation. I have 4000 products.

[boho]

All these 'hosted' solutions are great but what happens when a trader wants to move on and go somewhere else?
All your database, photos, content etc will be lost or you'll have to pay a huge fee.
You can't simply move it to a new server ... unlike 99 website rental (http://99websiterental.com/compare_packages).

Honestly if you're going to plug your site at least do it with an honest answer as your statement is just simply untrue! I can get a complete csv file of all of my products and customers should I want to move and any half decent host has the ability to upload the data into their system, also images I keep not only on discs but as zip back up files. People should be taking regular back ups and asking for regular backups anyway - just like you should and would do with any other site.

Truth be told many people maintaining their own sites lose far more information because they dont have back ups than sites who have their entire content backed up by a host.

My own hosting provider also sells standalone shops with their own database and hosting which are totally portable but with the benefits of the hosted side of things, so your claims of you can't do this, or this would be lost are null and void!

[luckyg]

Like I said I'm about to move from EKM and I have already transferred by entire product range to the new host thats about to go live. It took half a day including ironing out the few products which were lost in translation. I have 4000 products.

Well done.

I did it after only one month with them about 18 months ago. I think robin hood was running it but he wasn't giving back to the poor!

Any company with a 10p per minute 0870 customer services numder should lose all of its customers.

[First in Retail]

you get what you pay for !

Remember the website is a tiny section of the business, but get it wrong and your in trouble from the off.

£1K isnt a lot at all but it all depends on your expectations. We have clients spending 15k a month on adwords and 20k a year on the site.

do your research, off the forum, people who need to advetise here are not busy enough :)

[cycloneuk]

I use Xcart, which is a very powerfull piece of software, probably spent around 2.5k with all the added mods and custom code, which is not bad at all considering all the functions i have available.

[Poppy Design]

Hi

If you use some prewritten shop software that is fully customisable and the software has all the functionality you require (so you do not need to pay for bespoke programming) and get a designer to do the customisation then yes you can get a decent ecommerce site for £1k.

It's when you want specific functionality that is not included in the basic software costs add up for programming it in.

Finally most importantly you need to think about the end user (your customer) - your shopping cart/site should be easy to navigate, easy and simple to purchase items with secure payment processing. You will need a professional attractive design that inspires confidence.

[awebapart.com]

i was wondering what quality of website i could get for £1k, this is my upper limit really, it would have to incorporate a store with descriptions as well as a photography.
A couple of important points to consider:

1. Although you have posted in the ecommerce forum, your "it would have to incorporate a store" comment suggests that you don't just want an online shop website, but you want a normal corporate brochure style website with a shop as just a section within that site. If this is the case then some of the off-the-shelf ecommerce system recomendations may not be appropriate (since they are more geared to online shop only websites). A Joomla/Virtuemart solution might be more appropriate since the Joomla CMS (content management system) can provide the main website part of the solution, and the VirtueMart ecommerce system can provide the online shop section part of the solution.

2. Your previous posts (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=78764) suggests that you aren't selling products at all, but rather some service, in which case an off-the-shelf ecommerce system might still not be appropriate (since these are more geared to products), it really depends on what you want to sell.

[davisonconsultancy]

Have a look at Pace Retail (http://www.paceretail.co.uk) they have a good selection of templates, with the ability to customise various aspects of your site, either Day One or as you grow.

[webworxindia]

A offshore company like us can provide you a bespoke E-commerce website in 1000 pounds. If you are still looking then PM me the details.

[movietub]

Well I'll build him 'a' bespoke website for under a £1000 as well!

Does it have to be good?

Wouldn't it be easier to find a few other sites you like the look of, write down how you need the back-end of the site to operate, how you will process sales and orders etc. Inventory function? customer registration? etc etc and then send this package out to a variety of companies, in particular the many who have made contact on here, and see who offers what?

Chances are at least one company will respond with a solution that clearly shows they understand what you want to achieve - and that's probably the best price/value you will find. Given that cheapest ain't always best for such things.

[edmondscommerce]

If it is not imperative that the store has a custom design then a store can be set up well within this budget...

Recommend sticking to open source shopping carts (why pay) and I generally say avoid hosted services that you pay monthly for as the costs rack up over time - and the major costs on a website are in the initial build.

If its not getting loads of traffic then it can be hosted very cheaply

[who_me]

If it is not imperative that the store has a custom design then a store can be set up well within this budget...
Custom design £299
Recommend sticking to open source shopping carts (why pay) and I generally say avoid hosted services that you pay monthly for as the costs rack up over time - and the major costs on a website are in the initial build.
Monthly fee that includes hosting costs, full support and free upgrades for the life of the website (at £9.99 per month, that’s 5 years and 8 and a bit months until you spend to the remaining £701... )

If its not getting loads of traffic then it can be hosted very cheaply

Built totally in line with SEO guidlines... so low traffic shouldn't be a worry not to mention hosted on arguably the best dedicated servers money can buy with 100% guaranteed up time... that alone is worth £9.99 of anybodies money...