13 weeks to build a website...??

[Hayles]

I've been speaking to a colleague today who was excited to tell me she's setting up an online shop to compliment her retail shop. She sells party stuff, gifts, cards, etc.

She's had some new business cards printed but said the website isn't up and running yet so not to link the site to mine just yet. I asked when it would be ready and she said the guy is building her a site "and as its called an ecommerce site" (!) it'll take 13 weeks for him to get the framework ready!? Then she says it'll take several months for her to list all the goods they have so it could be anything up to a year!!

I was so shocked I didn't know what to say. When I did politely say that 13 weeks is a very, very long time for an ecommerce site to be up and running she was quite defensive and it was clear I shouldn't say anymore. I really think someone is taking her for a ride, or blinding her with technical science, but she's happy with it.

13 weeks??

H

 

[HelenBuckley]

I agree. It should not take 13 weeks to build a website, unless she's been constantly changing her brief.

It sounds like the person she's using is taking advantage of her lack of knowledge. Do you know if she paid for the site in advance? If so, I think she ought to be a lot more worried.

I daren't ask how much this is going to cost.

 

[fastfences]

Hiya Hayles,
Classic case of someone seemingly taking the 'P'. Perhaps they have so much work on that they are only doing bits 'here and there.'

I'm sure many on here could turn it around well within 4 weeks, and offer an extremely good price.

cheers, Nigel

 

[Chris H]

If only all customers were like that!

As Helen says, probably using this a way to build their own knowledge of ecommerce sites. Not the way to do things.

 

[DotNetWebs]

I agree it does sound rather a long time but before jumping to too many conclusions I would ask her a couple of questions:

1. Did the designers say actually it would take them 13 weeks of work or is it possible that it would actually take them say, 1 week but they cannot start it for 3 months.? Good designers will probably (should?) have work booked in already and may not be able start straight away.

2. Is it a bespoke site or are they using open source code with templates etc.? Clearly a 100% bespoke, fully loaded, site will take a bit longer than a vanilla OS commerce site etc.

I currently only design 100% bespoke websites and am in the fortunate position of having work booked up many weeks in advance.

To be honest if someone came to me and asked for an 'e-commerce' site today I would not be able to deliver it for a couple of months unless I dropped something else. Fortunately all my clients are recommendations and usually prepared to wait. If someone is referred to me and I cannot meet their timescale then I would recommend they go elsewhere.

Regards

Dotty

 

[Deleted member 9840]

Hello

I don't think 13 weeks is excessive. Not if the company i am using is anything to go by.
Mine has been on the go for about that now, and hopfully within the next couple of weeks it will be live.

1)First of all i had the rep come and see me, (sales rep)
2)Then i went to see them. (sales rep/tour of offices)
3)I placed the order. (sales rep)
4)Had a design brief (sales rep)
5)Viewd Jpeg of designers interpretation of my ideas. (designer)
6)Met the disigner, tweeked layout etc, played with a few ideas (designer)
7)Sign off design layout
8)Off to the copy dept and SEO dept to refine my bad grammer and marketing spiel

this is where we are up to, after 3 mths....

I am from the school of thought that says if a trades man can start tomorrow and finish by weekend, i need to ask why????
The web company are going to display your company to the whole wide world, it takes time to get it right. If they are busy and this is how long it takes, so be it. They are busy for a reason.

Just my thoughts

Cheers

Steve

 

[adam1987]

How much is this costing ??

 

[Hayles]

Hi

Don't know the cost, but their current site (designed by same guy) is one page - and they were pleased with it. When I saw it I thought they'd done a freebie holding page themselves....

They won't keep changing the brief and the 13 weeks is the designers quote for the work on the actual site itself. I think the guy is learning ecommerce while building the site.

Nothing I can say though as they made it plain they thought this was the norm and were happy. I guess if they're happy....!?

H

 

[awebapart.com]

When hearing stories like this, and other recent stories like:

www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=28686

it does make me despair. I'm shocked at how cavalier some people are with both their money and their trust. 13 weeks of actual work equates to:

£2,275 (if charging £5 per hour for a 13x35 hour week)
£4,550 (if charging £10 per hour for a 13x35 hour week)
£6,825 (if charging £15 per hour for a 13x35 hour week)
£9,100 (if charging £20 per hour for a 13x35 hour week)
£11,375 (if charging £25 per hour for a 13x35 hour week)
£13,650 (if charging £30 per hour for a 13x35 hour week)
and so on...

Add to that VAT, (for every £1000 there's £175 extra in VAT), and its even more expensive. Then add to that professional web hosting costs (£100-£200 per annum, although these pale into insignificance compared with such ridiculous initial development costs)

Companies wanting advanced online shops for many products can be up and running with a professional, tried and tested, advanced online shop from EKMPowerstore.co.uk, easywebstore.co.uk, or awebapart.com within days for around £250 - £300 per annum.

There's also the risk factor involved with going the custom route, which hasn't been tried and tested before. If the supplier hasn't done this before then they have know idea of what they've let themselves in for, they simply don't know what they don't know, and there's the risk that the project will fail completely, or simply just wont work, or not be fit for purpose, and all of these potential outcomes may be at the client's expense.

If the supplier has only done static html websites in the past and is now attempting to create an advanced online shop from scratch (which involves many other skills like relational databases, server side programming, building dynamic database driven sites, content management, interactive baskets, integration with payment provider system) then the supplier will simply not succeed in creating an advanced online shop in that time, even a skilled supplier wouldn't be able to code a good system from scratch in that time (not one that competes with existing systems, however a clever skilled supplier wouldn't reinvent the wheel, they would spend the time customising an existing online shop system like osCommerce).

I do hope that the supplier is not writing a system from scratch. I hope for your friend's sake that the supplier is customising the right existing online shop system for that money. But even if this is the case, if the supplier hasn't customised an e-commerce system before, and has no server side programming or database skills then there is still a very good chance of either failure or a very bad system. An experience supplier could have done it in far less time. The topic of custom-built or customising existing e-commerce systems is also discussed in:
www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=29170

I hope what we have here with the 13 week quote supplier is a supplier who means well and has good intentions, even if they are costing the client far more than necessary (perhaps due to ignorance of what's available on the market) and may ultimately end up with failure.

There is of course the other situation, where the supplier doesn't mean well and is just trying to bleed the client dry. This can happen if the supplier finds out how much money the client has available, and they miraculously base their quote on this or more, and try to make up work (with an overkill or inappropriate solution) up to this level, or simply pretend to work up to this level, rather than providing an honest quote for exactly how long it will take them to provide the system the client actually needs. Some suppliers do this, after all someone has got to pay for the supplier's plush offices, the staff pool table, the staff that dont actually work on the website (sales people, managers), and their extravagant lifestyle - but this is usually more commonplace with the design agencies who focus on larger wealthier clients.

 

[multilingual]

When hearing stories like this, and other recent stories it does make me despair.

Companies wanting advanced online shops for many products can be up and running with a professional, tried and tested, advanced online shop from EKMPowerstore.co.uk, easywebstore.co.uk, or awebapart.com within days for around £250 - £300 per annum.

Depends whether you want a website or whether you want a business.

You may be able to build a website in a couple of days, but you can't get a business up and running in a couple of days.

A 13 week 'build' time is too much, but a 13 week 'development' time is fine.

Let's not confuse the two.

JB

 

[Astaroth]

And 13 weeks does not necessarily mean that it is 65 man days of development either. For all we know they said they could squeeze her in and in reality they are only dedicating 13 man days of development spread over 13 weeks.

Saying that, our new section of website (that really does very little and isnt what we asked for) is now 18 months in development and whilst due for delivery in a few months is more likely to be delivered at the end of the year. You really dont want to know its cost but with no hardware purchases it is a 7 figure number and the first number isnt a low one.

 

[awebapart.com]

You may be able to build a website in a couple of days, but you can't get a business up and running in a couple of days.

You are right. To clarify, when I say up and running with a professional, tried and tested, advanced online shop within days, I do mean with an empty shop that may just have one or two products loaded, but with the system in place for the client to start uploading products/categories etc, and entering text for terms and faq pages etc, and linked to a payment provider like PayPal which can also be freely setup in a short timescale. If you already have your logo and colour scheme then it is possible to have your site branded within this timescale too.

Yes, at the end of these fews days all you have is an empty yet fully working online shop. But according to the original poster an empty shop is also what the supplier is aiming to deliver after 13 weeks.

If you have a few hundred products to add to your site then this will take time, you may not even have product photographs or descriptions at this stage so that is something to consider too. Even with all the material ready, it will take the store owner longer with some systems to upload the products because some systems are easier than others, especially if complicated product options are required.

It should be possible to get an empty but fully working online shop in days with EKMPowerShop and easywebstore. With our awebapart.com service we are currently talking around 10 days with our current schedule, but that's because we haven't fully launched our service yet, there is some automation still to add, and as such were not completely up to the setup speed of our competitors just yet.

 

[awebapart.com]

And 13 weeks does not necessarily mean that it is 65 man days of development either. For all we know they said they could squeeze her in and in reality they are only dedicating 13 man days of development spread over 13 weeks.

Understood. It could be a delivery date and the supplier just works a few days over that period. Equally it could be a delivery date and the supplier has a team of people working over that period and putting in 30 man weeks of effort.

I was assuming that it was 13 man weeks of effort, 1 guy working full time on it, since as the original poster stated: "the 13 weeks is the designers quote for the work on the actual site itself. I think the guy is learning ecommerce while building the site."

My company doesn't get involved with many bespoke projects nowadays, but when we do, we provide a fixed price total quote, e.g. £1500+VAT, we state when it will be delivered, e.g. 4 weeks time, and we state what the quote is based on, e.g. £1500+VAT total breaks down to 3 man-days development work at £300+VAT per day and 3 man-days graphic design work at £200+VAT per day. That way the client knows how much it costs, when they will get it, and how much work you are putting in to it. This may sound very simple and obvious but not everyone quotes like this, some will say it will cost you X and you will get it on day Y, but the client is never told how much time the supplier is actually going to spend on creating the deliverable. And that's still the good situation for the client, of using fixed price quote for delivering a defined system by a particular date. There's always the suppliers who just quote on a time and materials basis, placing all the risk with the client and bleeding them dry.

 

[awebapart.com]

Saying that, our new section of website (that really does very little and isnt what we asked for) is now 18 months in development and whilst due for delivery in a few months is more likely to be delivered at the end of the year. You really dont want to know its cost but with no hardware purchases it is a 7 figure number and the first number isnt a low one.

Yet another story that makes me despair. I'm very sorry to hear that.

 

[Astaroth]

Tell me about it.... it is all "funny money" as it is our internal IT department that is building it (though they have a fair number of contractors). What irritates me is that they charge us £480 per man day of build but then add a % cost on that for all other elements such as testing, project management etc. Most the percentages have a lower bound but no upper bound (though there is a guide). So change a system generated letter which due to our systems is actually very difficult to do and you get a build time of 10 man days and as testings minimum bound is 10% we get billed £480 simply for someone to hit the send button - user acceptance testing/ look and feel testing (inc spelling etc) isnt included in our IT spend.

The other annoyance is they add 5% for office management.... but hang on, we have 1 relationship manager, if we spend £1m on IT we pay 5% of that and get 1 relationship manager. If we spend £50m, on it we pay 50x the amount but still get 1 relationship manager - no matter how much we have ever spent they have never had to increase office space, brought in new programme office staff etc. GRRR

(apologies for turning this into a rant about IT providers )

 

[awebapart.com]

Ah, corporate IT spending, and IT supplier/department gone wild syndrome. I'm well aware of what goes on at this level, I used to work as a developer/designer at retail and investment banks and other large corporates in the city, in a 'previous life'.

For corporates, its a lot easier to spend money when it's not your money that you are spending. It's also a lot easier to know what cheap and understandable things like pens costs, but shy away from knowing how expensive and difficult to understand things like a corporate workflow system, or a marketing branding exercise, should cost. Which is why a big corporate will waste millions on IT and other areas, whilst trying to cut costs by placing a lock on the stationary cupboard. Sometimes just an injection of common sense is required, but it can be very difficult to do this to a corporate dinosaur.

A lot of people who start their own companies have originally worked for larger companies/corporates in the past. If this is the case, the worst mistake you make is to apply this same corporate spending, throwing money away, mentality to your own company.

I'm a lot happier now, providing value services for small business, and helping the business owners to avoid wasting their own hard-earned money.

 

[creospace]

Depends how much the budet is i mean if it's a 20 k job then that's reasonable but i some how think it's not

 

[Richard Conyard]

It's interesting to hear the various viewpoints here and I guess we cater for a different market, but three months / 13 weeks I find normally is the length of time a medium sized project will normally take.

It's not 3 months dedicated (or charged for), but by the time people go through the feedback loop (on designs, wireframes, specification, HTML mock-ups etc.), and by the time the content usually arrives 3 months is not normally a bad rule of thumb. It's not what I would expect for an off the shelf solution (actinic, oscommerce, etc.), or a templated design though.

I realise the level at which most people get into e-commerce on here is at the dipping the toe in the water stage, and for that unless they are backlogged for 10+ weeks then 13 weeks does seem excessive. I guess it is all down to the scope of the project.

 

[DuaneJackson]

I'm with Richard on this. For us, 13 weeks is about right for a mid-level project. Again, that's totally bespoke, not an off-the-shelf customisation.

 

[SillyJokes]

I'm not surprised to hear 13 weeks for a bespoke job and I doubt it will have all the bells and whistles in that time.

Also to populate the databases and website itself properly will be a monster job.

Essentially, if it is a right good job and produces a class website, the investment will be returned. Simple. People spend far more time and money fitting out a high street shop and no one questions that.

I'm sick of seeing half arsed websites being presented and always the whining question, "Why won't it convert?" Simple - you get out what you put in.

 

[awebapart.com]

Yes it's OK for companies to say 13 weeks is the the typical size of our medium sized projects, but in isolation that doesn't mean much.

What a 'mid-sized' project doesn't define is what type of system could be delivered in that time. From scratch it should be possible to create a reasonable simple dynamic database driven site with content management in that time, it is also feasible to have a system with some e-commerce link so it could tick the e-commerce tick box.

It is not feasible however in 13 weeks to create from scratch a system that is an advanced online shop with the features of a professionally customised version of osCommerce, with advanced product options, stock control, multiple payment options, fulfilment, offers, price reductions, discount codes, etc. osCommerce and its contributions have man years of time invested in them, there is no way you can create something similar in 13 weeks.

If a client is crying out with the typical B2C advanced online shop requirements, the requirements that osCommerce is well suited to, then you could either embark on the 'reinventing the wheel' route and attempt and fail to create a similar system to osCommerce from scratch in that time, or you could go the professionally customised tried and tested osCommerce route and actually succeed in getting the job done sooner and cheaper. So it is possible for the client to get out more by paying less.

 

[da8iwr]

Depends whether you want a website or whether you want a business.

You may be able to build a website in a couple of days, but you can't get a business up and running in a couple of days.

A 13 week 'build' time is too much, but a 13 week 'development' time is fine.

Let's not confuse the two.

JB

Thats not true mate
www.spotontv.co.uk i made this in 5 days for the client using Joomla and Virtuemart and charged them about £500 for it.

I made this in aprox 6hrs, using the clients design
http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/homeandgarden

The system is linked securely to HSBC payment gateway and took last month £38,000 in turnover with about 10% profit margin.

We used price runner and shopping.com as the marketing and advertising system, and it works perfect.

It only went live on December the 15th 2006 and the client filled all the shop up him self a few days before, and he is not computer literate at all.

Please tell her i will do it for £250 plus £20 per month, and i will have it live by the end of the week for her, or ill do it for free. If she doesn't like what i do for her, ill still do it for free and not charge her. here are a few i have done in the same way using the same system

http://www.entouragemodels.com/
That's a modeling site where I used Virtue mart as a catalogue for the models, only went live on Thursday evening.

http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/homeandgarden
That design was supplied to me, so I didn't have the design options of it, but you can see it's not bad, it only went live on my test account this morning so it's very empty. This is what they had, which is using actinic and doesn't work correctly http://www.shophomeandgarden.co.uk/acatalog/Furniture.html (I never made this)

http://www.spot-ontv.co.uk/
This guy makes a fortune out of this site, but spends just as much on price runner and other stuff.

http://www.gavinwebster.co.uk/
The comedian who writes the jokes for VIZ, allows you to buy his CD with his VM shop.

No catches no snags.

Please don't take this as spamming, as of course I'm trying to find work, I'm self employed i need to pay my rent and keep my greedy bank manager happy, but I'm also trying to show what can be achieved and at what costs, to give you an idea of what you should be charged.

Any body saying it will take 13 weeks is being either extremely lazy or very very poor, in that way you need to think whats the security and quality going to be like?

If you were going to buy a car, you wont sit down and design and build the car from scratch (unless it was a hobby), you would walk into a dealer and buy one. Same goes for websites, unless there is a specific reason to make a bespoke system, why go to all that effort when there are so many amazing systems available for free with incredible amounts of support and backup?

Show your friend some of these systems i have above and tell her that this is what you can have and be ready in a few days, imagine all the sales and money you could earn in the time of this going live to however long it takes her to have the other made.

Ian

 

[UKSBD]

No disrespect.
I only spent a minute at 2 of your sites and they demonstrate the difference
between a proper website design company and someone who does a little bit of web design.

 

[Coding Monkey]

No disrespect.
I only spent a minute at 2 of your sites and they demonstrate the difference
between a proper website design company and someone who does a little bit of web design.

Agreed. As SillyJokes said, you get out what you put in.

 

[webit]

Also, to be fair - I wrote webit.net on my own - J2EE coding in my spare time and no frameworks or existing sites to base it on - it took over 18 months and I don't come cheep!

 

[Rob Holmes]

13 weeks isn't so bad - although I would expect she has seen a mockup of artwork for the index page and sub pages by now and the extra time is the coding of the cart etc?

Rob

 

[da8iwr]

The sites i have added on here are budget sites, not full bespoke sites.

I have been producing sites for 10yrs and do this full time and employ 7 people to help do it.

The questions within this post were talking about time scales and money and only ecommerce systems.

Here are a few sites i have produced with time and care and a little more budget to play with.

http://www.beyondleisureltd.com/
both sites have VR Tours, and a full bespoke cms system built by our selves to allow the client to change info.

http://www.quicktimevirtualreality.com/
This is out own portfolio photography site, which has taken years to build up, but at the moment are rebuilding it using a CMS system to allow much more control and have members only sections.

http://www.dancevenue.nl/
A company in the Netherlands commissioned this to be designed and produced in Joomla, which we did.

http://www.justorganizeyourstuff.com/
An ENORMOUS site commissioned by a design company in Florida, for a client just out side of Washington.

www.subzeroiceart.com
Ice sculpting company in the north east which i helped set up financially as a silent partner.
(I'm changing servers at the moment so it is not live, but will be in a few hours)

There is a huge difference between budget sitres built to do a job as efficviently and as qickly as possible, and websites that have been commissioned with quality rather than money as a concern.

But even so, the Sub zero site took about 3 weeks and has a full shopping system for logged in members and a further 2 weeks for a high quality award winning brochure. And the beyond sites took about 1 month including the bespoke ASP content management system. Some sites i have made are ongoing with a monthly cost, so many more hours will be spent.

All i was trying to do is show you can make a secure website with full CMS control for very little money and anymore money you have after that is a bonus and will of course improve the site.

Ian

 

[darren atkinson]

da8iwr: Hope you don't take offence to this, but this is the 3rd post of yours I have seen in the last couple of days listing lots of url's you have worked on.

I can only speak for myself but it seems like blatent self advertising to me.

There are many, many web designers and developers on this forum and it would be a complete pain in the ass if we all listed as many url's as you do everytime a questions is asked.

The forum 'gods' let us put links in our signatures. The way I see it is if somebody is interested in my services then they can follow that link, rather than me ramming my services in peoples faces all the time.

Regards,

Darren

 

[Optegris]

Thats not true mate
www.spotontv.co.uk i made this in 5 days for the client using Joomla and Virtuemart and charged them about £500 for it.

I made this in aprox 6hrs, using the clients design
http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/homeandgarden

The system is linked securely to HSBC payment gateway and took last month £38,000 in turnover with about 10% profit margin.

We used price runner and shopping.com as the marketing and advertising system, and it works perfect.

It only went live on December the 15th 2006 and the client filled all the shop up him self a few days before, and he is not computer literate at all.

Sorry but I'm lost. How can a site with very few products, little or no descriptions e.g. http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/homeandgarden/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=2&category_id=2&manufacturer_id=0&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=27
no returns/about/contact information and a basic design be turning over £38K???

 

[jopassmore]

As other people have said, it depends if he means it will take 13 weeks, or whether he can't start it for 12 weeks and then it will take a week.

I am doing an online shop for someone at the moment, simple design, with it's own shopping cart that I have written already for a similar site. Links to paypal for payment. I have given the customer a 2 week time scale and I am doing it in evenings and a couple of mornings. So, full time it would probably take less than a week.

Having said that, I have so much work on at the moment that I tell any new customers I can't start their jobs until March. They could tell someone therefore that their site is going to take 13 weeks to be complete, but that is not strictly true is it?

Jo

 

[da8iwr]

Sorry but I'm lost. How can a site with very few products, little or no descriptions e.g. http://www.newworlddesigns.co.uk/homeandgarden/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=shop.flypage&product_id=2&category_id=2&manufacturer_id=0&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=27

No returns/about/contact information and a basic design be turning over £38K???

Sorry about that, it was supposed to be directed at the spotontv link, as I moved the text around after and forgot to move that bit as well.

da8iwr: Hope you don't take offence to this, but this is the 3rd post of yours I have seen in the last couple of days listing lots of url's you have worked on.

I honestly don't intend this as spamming, I am just trying to show that some sites can have medium quality ability, not a low cost junk site, but at a very low cost, allowing people who are new to the industry to see what can be done and at what budget.

Sorry if I offended anybody, as that wasn't my intention.

But going back to the question, about 13 weeks, yes your right Jo, 13 weeks would be OK if there was a lead time, like most design companies/individuals have. I wonder if that is the case.

A new client of mine owns a shop and he employed a guy specifically to make and look after their new website. The new employee spent 26 weeks building the site from scratch, but it still wasn't finished then, so he sacked the guy and asked for one of our budget ones, which he still uses today.

Bespoke systems have their time and place, and building a system from scratch makes perfect sense to somebody that needs a tailored site for a specific job, but if your simply going to be selling products on line, then I don't see how a 13 week wait and a bespoke system would be a financial or a business benefit?

Ian

 

[Optegris]

Sorry about that, it was supposed to be directed at the spotontv link, as I moved the text around after and forgot to move that bit as well.

Ah OK, that makes a bit more sense now

 

[puresilva]

It's difficult to say if this is a commensurate amount of time without knowing the details of the project. As a customer, I'd be angry if they produced a modded OScommerce template after 13 weeks; that's if I knew it was one.

An experienced developer will have modules already coded that can be 'bespoked'; this saves development and testing time. Occasionally new modules have to be created from scratch to meet the exact requirements of the project.

13 weeks is way too short to build a feature-rich e-commerce website from scratch. It's also about 12 weeks too long for picking a template off a shelf and tweaking the design.

 

[charlesqin22]

13 weeks? It is normal with UK efficiency!

I am a Chinese businessman in Beijing,China.I worked with my UK partners many times.I find that many UK business people are working at a very slow pace. I had everything ready for them,but they did not give a reply for months.They have missed lots of chances from me.

Last Aug.I set up my own business website in only one week in China and it is running very well with some 200 clicks daily.

Come to me if the lady wants her website up and running sooner with a China Sister website.

Welcome to my website 3w dot partyapartyb dot com

Charles Qin

 

[da8iwr]

I have been contacted by somebody who i used to go to Uni with many years ago, who owns a software development company now called DPI vision in Newcastle. He released sometime ago a shopping system called Trading Eye, which was in cold fusion. But now he has totally rebuilt it from the ground up in php and MySQL.

This is a full commercial system (not open source), which is fully W3 AAA compliant, which he believes is the only one on the market to be this good (and Ive looked and cant find anything else), it has a link system for Sage, so it will auto update your own accounts, and has Froogle export system, allowing people to upload on the fly their own products straight into Froogle. It also has an eBay module, which allows people to link in with eBay and your own shop.

http://www.tradingeye.com/products/tradingeye_shop_pro/comparison_chart/
The system I'm talking about is the Shop Pro, which includes the full CMS as standard.

He charges £299 to developers which includes the 50% developer discount, and it is a full commercial feature rich product with support, all built by hand, and no open source.

Its 100% skinnable using CSS and XHTML, which all web designers know (well the ones that are any good at least), it even comes with about 6 samples to play with which you can download from their support section of their site.

I cant think of anything that you will need extra than what this has, i will be using it on a client next week as a tester and will be using this over virtuemart and Osc if i find no problems, which i don't expect any at all.

But as it is there baby, and not a cobbled together open source product, you can ask for modifications to suit clients requests, and they will be able to do it, at a cost of course. But this means you have the knowledge you can offer anything with no worry about a not being able to do it.

Just an idea for all you guys out there, and i would like to see a local relatively new company doing well at the same time.

Ian

 

[Pelenna]

Hi,
As a relatively inexperienced user I found EKMpowershop perfect for my needs - I now have a fully stocked, fully functional website capable of taking credit cards, and all my products can be uploaded to froogle. This all took me about 3 months altogether, and although it may not be as flexible as a fully bespoke one - I totally appreciate other businesses needs for web designers, and after doing this, I totally respect good web designers! - I do find it perfect as I like to be very hands on and in control.
13 weeks just to do the website with no uploading of products seems a long time for something that sounded in the original post to be needing something similar to what I have. I stand corrected though if the 13 weeks is delivery time rather than development time, as others have suggested.

 

[da8iwr]

Hi Pelanna
But you must admit, that most of your 13 weeks was probably uploading products and configuring the site, rather than building it.

Most sites whether commercial or open-source (unless your going to build it from the ground up for what ever reason they can find to do that) take a very short period of time to integrate a design and make live, a week at the absolute most. But stocking it up can take a team of people an ice age.

Imagine how many man hours have been spent on something like 7dayshop.com or FalconComputers.co.uk

Thousands of products each with images, delivery info, costs and alternative products which will take for ever to upload and set up, as I'm sure you found with your site.

Ps Pellana
My Mum is a seamstress and owns a haberdashery shop, i spent 20 yrs living around cotton, and sewing machines, hope everything is going well for you, its one industry that technology hasn't really affected much, as we all need clothes

 

[ChrisMono]

I can do webdesign and programming but i dont do it for a living.. and this is my quote:

install script and configure settings: 5 hours.
design: 1-2 weeks if custom
list products: around 300-500 a week.

13 weeks is a joke

 

[Drew]

If in 13weeks there was immense sustainabilityin what was created, then there would be no complaints from me. I think there are seemingly so many people saying just do blah blah blah and you will have this result. I know it takes hard work and discipline to accomplish any meaningful endeavor
But off top 13 weeks just sounds long it is really just like 90plus days

Drew

 

[SpeedyExpressCouriers]

13 weeks for an e-commerce website is too too tooooo long, pm me and I would get you in touch with our web developer. Check out our website and let us know what you think? It took just over one week to develope.