Keeping costs down on an ecommerce website

[Kai_63]

I'm in the process of setting up a new business which will include an ecommerce website. I've had some quotes from a few designer/developers and they mention that they'll be using HTML and CSS to create the site. However, they also charge what I consider to be quite a lot of money (£600) to create a simple blog on the site (which I assume could be done for next to nothing using Wordpress or something similar)?

I'm basically looking to keep my costs as low as possible whilst creating the most professional site possible. I'm not trying to get out of paying for excellent web design and development, but at the same time I have to manage very tight budgets as a start up and want to save money wherever possible.

Any advice on opensource software that I could use on my site alongside the more bespoke elements would be great (this also includes search faciltiies such as Google's free custom search engine)?

Thanks

 

[bluedreamer]

You can't build a site without HTML, and without CSS any site will look very bare!

£600 might sound expensive for a blog but in some ways that could be cheap. Sure you can use "free" software and an off the shelf template but your blog would look the same as dozens/hundreds of other blogs. If you wanted something that's unique and tailored to your visitors then you have to pay for the time to do that. Bear in mind that top notch blog developers will charge a miniumum four figure sum!

Good Ecommerce doesn't come cheap either, again, like the blog scenario you can use free to use software and a cookie cutter template but you'd still end up with a site like hundreds of others and nothing to set you apart from everyone else.

Don't confuse "open source" as "free" or low cost - often OS software can be more costly to implement that commercial counterparts, or it needs extra development time to bend it to how you want it to work - all time and money. Then you have total cost of ownership to add to that which includes regular software updates, security fixes and so on.

Saying all that you are investing in your business with your web site. By all means go with a cheap developer but that won't guarantee that your site will sell anything, and you could end up spending twice what you need to in order to start the sales rolling in.

So, I suggest prioritsing what's important to help your business succeed. At the beginning I'd suggest putting in as much budget to your ecommerce part at first to start generating some sales. When you've made some money from sales then invest some of that adding a blog and other site features that will benefit your customers.

 

[Kai_63]

Thanks for the response. Definitely don't want the site to be created without html or css, that was just for background info.

My thinking is similar to yours, invest in a good bespoke ecommerce site (with great branding/design behind it) and for the time being go with a simple (ideally cheap) blog which has a simple template but includes my business logo and colour pallete within the ecommerce site until I can afford to do it properly with a custom built blog. I'd rather have a basic blog with a great looking ecommerce site than not have one at all.

Thanks again for the advice.

 

[redtop]

My personal advice

Go with a good off the shelf ecommerce package such as Cubecart, ZenCart or Magenta. Cubecart being the primary because of its almost complete flexibility for the not so experienced.

As for Cubecart Templates, there are lots of great designs out there that will not cost an arm and a leg to purchase but for the special touch get a graphics designer to create a design mock up for you then aproach a good Cubecart template coder such as ccskins etc to have it created into a cubecart template.

Please remember though and bear in mind you can have the best site in the world but if you dont customise your homepage and properly seo the content including keyword utilisation your wasting your time even if you do have SEO installed. SEO will benefit the store yes but the search engines dont just rely on SEO for your rankings. They also utilise keyword placements and additional tricks of the trade to gain you a high place in the search engines.

Blogs and forums are also a great addition to your existing store as well because of the massive content of the forum and blog allowing for a higher ranking place in the search engines as well.

Make it easy to use, fuctional, attractive for customers to browse but not over the top with graphics, remember not everybody has a 50mb internet connection. If the site is too slow customers will click away. So speed is also very important for a good website and online store.

If your host is slow, find another that will deliver as well and dont feel like your letting them down by migrating, remember your paying for your hosting to be fast all the time.

Hope this helps

 

[bluedreamer]

My thinking is similar to yours, invest in a good bespoke ecommerce site (with great branding/design behind it) and for the time being go with a simple (ideally cheap) blog which has a simple template but includes my business logo and colour pallete within the ecommerce site until I can afford to do it properly with a custom built blog. I'd rather have a basic blog with a great looking ecommerce site than not have one at all.

If you have your shop designed professionally you can use the common elements such as logo/header/footer in your blog templates, this sort of kills two birds with one stone and keeps everything looking good.

 

[Naughty Vend]

Have you considered using Facebook as a 'blog' via a Fanpage / Like?

 

[Paul Norman]

£600 to create a blog is not expensive. I would expect to pay that for something that was personalised, and did not look the same as everyone elses.

Obviously, keeping your costs under control is important. But whichever platform you choose to use, as an ecommerce business, your website is your shop, your main point of customer contact, and your key marketing weapon. Spend on it as much as you possibly can! But make sure every penny counts.

As an e-commerce business, our expertise remains in sourcing the products, presenting them well, and servicing the customers. Outsourcing the site build to the best people we could find was key, freeing us from spending time on coding and designing.

 

[Kai_63]

Thanks for the responses.

My feeling is definitely that I want to spend the most money on the main ecommerce site.

As mentioned in one of the posts above, I figured that maybe I could get a decent blog using an existing piece of software to keep costs down (especially as I'm getting the basic elements of my brand identity - logo, colour pallette etc) designed first to create a consistent look for all my online and offline comms and assets which could be incorporated into the blog area. The main thing with regards to the blog (which will form part of the website is that it looks decent, allows me to quickly update customers on company news but also works efficiently for SEO.

Thanks

 

[sanjiv]

Have you found someone yet?

 

[sitedesign]

Hi,
I develop very simple business websites, which can be developed and added to at a later time. These can include shpping cart or brochure type websites.

This is based on the theory that Ecommerce websites can be more complicated than they look and can end up costing people a lot of wasted time and money.

I generally charge around £240 per yr for a simple 20 page brochure site which you update yourself via a front end editing system (like a word processor) - upto around £400 - 500 per yr for a full, unlimited product Ecommerce site.

This includes free setup, a hosting account on a UK based Cloud Server and unlimited support and Search Engine Optimisation.

For Ecommerce websites I generally offer people the option to buy out the website if they are comfortable adding and processing products, leaving a small onging hosting fee.

If you would like any more information on the full list of options we can offer please get in touch

Regards
David at sitedesign-group.co.uk

 

[suofei gong]

hello all

i am a new member , i only two months to do electronic ,but i find takes

too high cost ,especially now that the world is complex and changeable .

we are face more risks .so i hope find a way solve this problem. maybe

can set up some insurance ,specifically to provide the insurance of

ecommerce small package,it can reduce our costs.


everyone smart people can give me some good ideal, thanks

i waiting for you reply

 

[suofei gong]

i agree with you

 

[brightlightwebsites]

hello all

i am a new member , i only two months to do electronic ,but i find takes

too high cost ,especially now that the world is complex and changeable .

we are face more risks .so i hope find a way solve this problem. maybe

can set up some insurance ,specifically to provide the insurance of

ecommerce small package,it can reduce our costs.


everyone smart people can give me some good ideal, thanks

i waiting for you reply

Hi, we are small business based in hampshire, my prices are not as much as others. We have a shopIT package which basically gives you a basic ecommerce website. In this you can upload new items, voucher codes, use bankwire, paypal ect. We only want a small charge of £69, and then £21 per year to cover your domain fee's. In this you will get:

*free logo design
*full pHp scripting on your website
*domain and hosting
*Full customizable cart to suite you.

This is one of the most popular packages that our clients tend to go for.

if you are interested then let me know and we can get cracking.

cheers bud

 

[directmarketingadvice]

My personal advice

Go with a good off the shelf ecommerce package such as Cubecart, ZenCart or Magenta. Cubecart being the primary because of its almost complete flexibility for the not so experienced.

I don't know about these particular packages, but off the shelf stuff tends to be far more expensive in the long run.

There are two reasons why:

(1) Many of them don't allow you to add goal tracking code onto the pages (except for stuff like google analytics).

So, for example, if you're using adwords and they won't allow you to use adwords tracking then you're stuffed. You've no idea which ads are making you money.

(And trying to figure out which keywords are profitable and which aren't will be an incredibly time-consuming process - and time = more money.)

(2) They limit your ability to customise or split-test your checkout process. That greatly limits your ability to improve it. Which means you're going to be throwing away a ton of sales.

Steve

 

[Raw Rob]

(1) Many of them don't allow you to add goal tracking code onto the pages (except for stuff like google analytics).

So, for example, if you're using adwords and they won't allow you to use adwords tracking then you're stuffed. You've no idea which ads are making you money.

(And trying to figure out which keywords are profitable and which aren't will be an incredibly time-consuming process - and time = more money.)

That's not true. I've added adwords tracking to a ZenCart store and it was fairly easy, and I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to add the code to any Open Source store.

Rob

 

[MrTempleDene]

What many startups fail to consider is that yes, you can download zencart etc. and tinker with it yourself, but the time you spend doing that is time taken away from running your core business.

How much is you time worth?

I'd say better to get a professional in to do it

 

[directmarketingadvice]

That's not true. I've added adwords tracking to a ZenCart store and it was fairly easy,

I think you misunderstood what I wrote. I wasn't talking about ZenCart, I was generalising about these packages.

I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to add the code to any Open Source store.

I have had a number of ecommerce business approach me to get help with their marketing and I had to turn them away because they were unable to add the necessary split-testing and tracking code to their carts.

Now maybe they were all wrong... or liars... but that's what they told me.

Steve

 

[computaguy]

Why is it that when someone wants a professional to design a web site, especially when it is to play such a large role in their business, £600 is considered a lot of money?

In my experience it will take a week of exclusive work to adjust any existing code, provide any graphics and write any CSS that is necessary to provide a website worth it's salt.

£600 is cheap if you are using someone who has spent years learning their craft and has the refs to prove it. Let's face it... the skills are varied. Not only do you need a solid understanding of database design, but you must be able to provide reporting sufficient to satisfy HMRC - 10 hours at sixty quid an hour... even 20 hours at 30 quid an hour... surely this is a good investment?

 

[dataferret]

Why is it that when someone wants a professional to design a web site, especially when it is to play such a large role in their business, £600 is considered a lot of money?

In my experience it will take a week of exclusive work to adjust any existing code, provide any graphics and write any CSS that is necessary to provide a website worth it's salt.

£600 is cheap if you are using someone who has spent years learning their craft and has the refs to prove it. Let's face it... the skills are varied. Not only do you need a solid understanding of database design, but you must be able to provide reporting sufficient to satisfy HMRC - 10 hours at sixty quid an hour... even 20 hours at 30 quid an hour... surely this is a good investment?

Well said !

 

[Anon4357392]

For e-commerce sites I've made for friends and families I just use OS Commerce and customise it to their needs. It has great functionality, works with loads of payment processing gateways and there's a massive network of support behind it. All their sites are doing really well =) Only took me about 2 days work per site to customise them - its hard to tell they are OS commerce sites =)

 

[sanjiv]

OSCommerce hasn't been updated for so long so there may be vulnerabilities in it. I would use Zen Cart or CRE Loaded which are both OSCommerce on steroids and get regular updates.

 

[Touchins_Technologies]

Well , as many know the best way to get the Job done at a reasonable
price is to outsource to other developing coutries like India.
Reachout.. Touchins Technologies , if you are still looking for one ? touchins . com

 

[wholesalecity]

You can find a cheaper company.
If you can not find one in UK,
You can try other countries.
India and China maybe suitable for you.
Because salary there much cheaper.
Building such a site is not difficult.

 

[5pence]

you can't build a shopping site only using html/css. HTML and CSS are client side code that the client's browser uses relay the layout and information. You need server-side code also (c#, php, vb to name a few).

also £600 for the development of a shop is far too low and any developer worth is salt wouldn't charge such a small amount for the amount of work that it really entails - any quotes that low (for a shop site well written with good SEO and payment gateways) i would treat with suspicion.