Cost of building website from scratch and pit falls

[Second Place]

For the last 2 years I’ve been running a fairly successful eBay business selling jewellery but now I want to jump ship and have my own website for reasons I could write an entire post on (I'll still use eBay and my website). Now I’ve started making some items and If I can sell five every day I’ll be on £21,000 gross profit a year from them alone.

I’ve reached out to five web builders two of whom have got back to me. One with a quote of £2500 and the other £3000 which seems high given other advertise on there website to do bespoke websites for £1200. At this stage it is 0 to 60mph. I need everything branding etc is this why it’s so expensive? Plus I’m paying on average £450 a month in eBay fees so in theory this could pay it’s self-off fast.

The £3000 quote was for-

FULL E-COMMERCE SITE


Design of 2 or 3 initial routes for the look and feel of the website.


PAGES INCLUDING:

Home page

About page

Product overview page

Single product page template


ACCOUNT PAGES:

Cart page

Checkout page

4 x Account pages


Development and build of chosen design route in accordance with client feedback. Production of overall website including Paypal integration.


WEB DEVELOPMENT
Integration of PayPal including plugin.


Is £2500 the right ball park or way to high?


Also what pit falls could I fall into such as the developer not giving me access codes so I can’t go to another web designers in the future or them keeping copy write of logos etc.

Any input would be appreciated.

 

[james_firmsites]

Too high in my estimation. Now I am very biased as a web developer who would charge £45 per month for something similar (but I am by no means the only one around here doing this)

I see several pitfalls

• Very large upfront cost
• Difficult to ensure you get a good product, if you don't what safe guards are there from paying so much money
• No incentive for a long term relationship etc as they have your cash
• Things change over time, will this cost you more?
• Is hosting included, are there other long term costs

Why not ask for some quotes around here and see what you get?

 

[Second Place]

Too high in my estimation.

Why not ask for some quotes around here and see what you get?

Thanks for the reply. I was looking at local companies as if needs be I could walk into their office and talk to them if I need to.

Even at £1200 it is a lot and I don't want to be forced to all communication on it entirely long distance.

 

[james_firmsites]

Thanks for the reply. I was looking at local companies as if needs be I could walk into their office and talk to them if I need to.

Even at £1200 it is a lot and I don't want to be forced to all communication on it entirely long distance.

Again heavily biased here, but we work with people all over the UK and it really is not a big deal. As long as you have a good relationship with your developer you can easily deal with issues via email/phone and things like teamviewer. If you are walking into a web developer's office and there is not a support package in place you are going to end up being billed more than £3k!

Why not see if a distance one can do a equal/better job for a lot less, after all if you try that method and don't like it you have lost a little. But if you try the £3k quote and overpay you wont get that money back.

 

[ryedale]

The pricing of web design is difficult for a lot of people to understand because it's not a process they can physically see happening.

E.g many people wouldn't think twice about paying a builder £5k + labour to build a new garage for example which might take a few weeks to do but then feel that to pay a skilled web designer over a 1000 for a website that might take a similar amount of time is far too high.

If you having a site properly planned and designed then you are paying for the web designer or the agency's experience and know how. In our case, that amounts to 18 years industry experience and more user experience courses than I care to remember!

There are always many factors involved when quoting e.g.
Target audience, e.g local or national,
Any bespoke functionality required that will have to be custom coded
Bespoke layout needed for product pages
How complex are are the shipping methods
Custom search needed with advanced filters
Custom graphic design required
Integration with other platforms
Inventory management
Any legal issues to manage
Multilingual
+ many more

If you are wanting someone to basically just tweak a generic theme for you and try and make it fit then you can find a freelancer to do it cheaply for you but the end result may well be poor.

If you want a bespoke design that has been carefully planned out, going through every potential step that a user may take through the site + full branding then it's going to cost a lot more

Generally, we very rarely do an E-Commerce site for under £3000 - usually more around the £4-6k mark and occasionaly as high as 10k

How much have you set aside for marketing?

It's always good if you can visit in person - We won't work on a large project unless we can have a least a couple of face to face meetings. It's impossible to plan properly otherwise.

Good luck!

 

[dan19900]

UK developers in general are over priced, I have a full time web developer from the Philippines on $800 per month who could make 10-20 websites like that in a month lol.

You can just do it yourself with woocommerce for $100 or less or use shopify for $30 per month. It's really not difficult to make a basic website.

You'll probably have zero customers when it's finished regardless of who you chose, it's the advertising that costs more money.

 

[Julia Sta Romana]

For the last 2 years I’ve been running a fairly successful eBay business selling jewellery but now I want to jump ship and have my own website for reasons I could write an entire post on (I'll still use eBay and my website). Now I’ve started making some items and If I can sell five every day I’ll be on £21,000 gross profit a year from them alone.

I’ve reached out to five web builders two of whom have got back to me. One with a quote of £2500 and the other £3000 which seems high given other advertise on there website to do bespoke websites for £1200. At this stage it is 0 to 60mph. I need everything branding etc is this why it’s so expensive? Plus I’m paying on average £450 a month in eBay fees so in theory this could pay it’s self-off fast.

The £3000 quote was for-

FULL E-COMMERCE SITE


Design of 2 or 3 initial routes for the look and feel of the website.


PAGES INCLUDING:

Home page

About page

Product overview page

Single product page template


ACCOUNT PAGES:

Cart page

Checkout page

4 x Account pages


Development and build of chosen design route in accordance with client feedback. Production of overall website including Paypal integration.


WEB DEVELOPMENT
Integration of PayPal including plugin.


Is £2500 the right ball park or way to high?


Also what pit falls could I fall into such as the developer not giving me access codes so I can’t go to another web designers in the future or them keeping copy write of logos etc.

Any input would be appreciated.

Are the also involved in content creation? Would they be involved in creating your catalogue? And how large is your catalogue? Are you planning to integrate it with your inventory and sales system? What are the terms with regards to support?

I agree the rates seem high. Is this really their standard package or did they specify certain requirements? This may be the reason why your web development costs are so high.

 

[tony84]

Back in the day, I used to use a system called prestashop - I have no idea if it still exists.
But basically it was an ecommerce site that more or less works on installation. You still have to add products, but plug-ins were already developed. So if you decided you wanted to take payments via worldpay - there was a plugin done. If you decided you wanted a marketing plug in - it was already done.

Chances are you would need to pay someone to install it and set it up. But there were tens of people working on it all the time so if there were any bigs or security flaws, they were usually fixed quite quickly.

There are similar systems - magento (might be a little overkill), I cant think of any others anymore but it might be worth looking into ?

 

[iDigLocal]

Find a good local website development agency, somebody that you can have a strong longterm business relationship with. A website is not just for Christmas you will need ongoing website maintenance and monitoring. You can choose to do this yourself but you are better off getting a professional if you cannot afford the time yourself.

Plan for your future, look at were you are trying to get to, this is an investment. Which platform you choose will depend on where you want to be in the future.

The prices quoted are not unreasonable as @ryedale says. It will depend on what it is you need your website to do and how you want it to look. The cheaper quotes will be by people who simply use off the shelf themes and then charge a lot for them, so you will probably get more work for your money if you get a good team in than if you pay £500-£1000 for somebody essentially just installing your website.

One thing to consider also is how do you plan on getting all your products on there.

Also don't forget to ask about on going costs.

 

[fisicx]

The £3000 quote was for-

FULL E-COMMERCE SITE.....

That just looks like a standard woo commerce site with a choice of themes. Not worth paying £3000 for this. If everything was bespoke and coded from scratch that's different but you don't need this in your initial foray into ecommerce.

What you haven't budget for is marketing which will probably be in excess of the monthly fees you pay to eBay.

 

[AMSUSER]

There are so many web designers out there competing for your business, so it can be a daunting prospect to choose the right one for you. Although some providers can tempt you with a cheap price, these often outsource work internationally and quality can be sacrificed as a result. That is why it is best to keep things local. Using a local web designer gives the benefit of improved communication regarding the project, the ability to easily collect references, and they have valuable local knowledge which can help you out on your business’s journey.

 

[Anderz]

For the last 2 years I’ve been running a fairly successful eBay business selling jewellery but now I want to jump ship and have my own website for reasons I could write an entire post on (I'll still use eBay and my website). Now I’ve started making some items and If I can sell five every day I’ll be on £21,000 gross profit a year from them alone.

I’ve reached out to five web builders two of whom have got back to me. One with a quote of £2500 and the other £3000 which seems high given other advertise on there website to do bespoke websites for £1200. At this stage it is 0 to 60mph. I need everything branding etc is this why it’s so expensive? Plus I’m paying on average £450 a month in eBay fees so in theory this could pay it’s self-off fast.

The £3000 quote was for-

FULL E-COMMERCE SITE


Design of 2 or 3 initial routes for the look and feel of the website.


PAGES INCLUDING:

Home page

About page

Product overview page

Single product page template


ACCOUNT PAGES:

Cart page

Checkout page

4 x Account pages


Development and build of chosen design route in accordance with client feedback. Production of overall website including Paypal integration.


WEB DEVELOPMENT
Integration of PayPal including plugin.


Is £2500 the right ball park or way to high?


Also what pit falls could I fall into such as the developer not giving me access codes so I can’t go to another web designers in the future or them keeping copy write of logos etc.

Any input would be appreciated.

As soon as it becomes business they must charge accordently to it. The hourly rate, rental, staff etc. Thereby service is costly.

Now the question is with websites and especially any marketing tactics is that there is no standard sort of guarantee for any work and it can't be promissed you will be number 1 in a search engine for given keywords. If you do get that then run away.

The other pitfall is that you are depended on their service for any upgrade or change.

A basic web shop can be done looking at youtube or go to Fiverr.com to outsource the build. There you will get what you pay for.

Do it yourself is the cheapest if you follow a certain way to go about it.

Search for best course on how to build a web shop that includes marketing and advertising that is proven to work!

Then choose a shopping system provider like Shopify and apply the course.

This will only cost you time with the minimum expense pr month + the price of the course but if the course is what it say it is then you can do that forever long term.

I am personally following that route myself and I got full control over the course of the road to succes going and it's all in my ability to do it learning in the process of doing so which gives a lot of personal value and experience.

 

[ryedale]

Is the site you have been making by yourself the one in your signature?

 

[apricot]

We've gone through all kind of search and we have spoken to all type of agencies building an ecommerce website for the last 18months. We had Magento website but then it started cost high on fixing issues when things are broken on the website.
We now switched to Shopfy and it costs us only $30 a month and we've done the integration inhouse with a little coding experince but even if you get a developer to implement desing etc, it'll be the best solution.

 

[AMSUSER]

I suggest that using Shopify is best if you have just a little technical skill. I set up a e-store using Shopify and found it super-easy. Nowadays, the technical stuff has been addressed by Shopify so it’s not bewildering to set up your URL and domains.