price on web design?

[Multi-store]

what sort of ball park figure could i expect for a custom built ecomm site?

i have a freebie one at the moment which is ok, ish..................... for an amateur

however ive finally found a good supplier (after around 18 months looking) and i want to make it a real business.

i know you can get normal websites, with no ecomm, for less than £200 these days.

any one give me a few ideas?

cheers


multi-store.org.uk

 

[lynxus]

For a proper custom built website where the site would take orders, process them and work with your payment gateway and cart you can be looking at £1000's

Basic site with no dynamic content or any proper cart / payment processing is as you said a few hundred at best.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

Paypal

Using a customisable pay monthly CMS would be your cheapest option.

So it would not be built form scratch but customised to you-your images, your logo, your text, your choice of content.

Paypal integration made easy.

Why reinvent the wheel?

These usually include monthly hosting they tend to be £20 a month.

£500 to £1500 for someone to build.

From scratch £3000+-buy why bother?

That' what I'd say you'd be looking at.

http://www.tigercommerce.co.uk/ you still require design ability but used with other design software (you upload your image via the built in ftp) you can get very goo results.

I'd be happy to build you a site with this solution for a reasonable amount dependent on how many product you have etc.

You need to pay an amount upfront to pay for the cms which you get a discount on if you pay yearly rather than monthly.

Or I could build you a site using Serif which is just an editor an requires more work.

No one codes form scratch anymore there is no need but knowing code helps with any little bugs.

 

[Faevilangel]

To design and build an ecommerce store using a prebuilt system (paid or opensource) you're in the £1000-£15k estimate.
To design and custom build an ecommerce store, don't expect anything for less than £25k ... more like £50k+

Go for an open source system like Magento or Opencart and it will cost you under £5k

 

[ruspieter]

Cheap websites are useless when you buy cheap sites their also always templates and not nice ones at that plus most people tend to buy these site and then are annoyed because its not doing what it should so you then have to go to someone who knows what they are doing and pay more to fix the problems, if you want a good site pay more its worth it I do know someone he charges £250 per day his work is always great. if you want cheaper though for a good site i wouldn't expect to pay less than £150 per day its expensive but its expensive for a reason.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

"To design and build an ecommerce store using a prebuilt system (paid or opensource) you're in the £1000-£15k estimate"

Having looked at your existing site I'd say £1000 to £2000.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

PM me if you want-most of the sites one can sign up for a free trial for 14 days. I could nock you up the home page -see what you reckon.

If not impressed no one has spent any cash -if you like what you see then you would have to pay for the full version of the software.

I could purchase a developer version with no branding and pretend I had built it from scratch ,a s sadly many designers do but I prefer to be honest and provide a good job for a fair price.

PM me pal

 

[Faevilangel]

"To design and build an ecommerce store using a prebuilt system (paid or opensource) you're in the £1000-£15k estimate"

Having looked at your existing site I'd say £1000 to £2000.

Thanks for the snide remark Mike, Just to clarify, I know my site is old, outdated and it's not been updated since I started my business over 2 years ago. A new one is on the cards but I just haven't had time to update mine yet New one should be live in 2/3 weeks

 

[j600com]

I would say typically £2000+ is what it costs for something "decent" - I imagine many on here will disagree and say you can get a decent site for much less, but it depends on how high/low your standards are and what you interpret decent to mean.

It's extremely rare to see examples of good eCommerce sites that have cost less than £2000 in my experience - something is always a miss.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

? what snide remark???

I have no idea what your talking about.

I looked at the op's existing site and number of products.

To get something good along the lines of what he has £1000 to £1500 max.

An ecommerce site that processes and takes payment really aint that difficult.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

"I would say typically £2000+ is what it costs for something "decent""

Nah £1500. He certainly does not need to spend £25K that's just daft.

 

[j600com]

Can you provide examples of these £1500 sites so that I can take a look. I'd be really interested to see how good they are.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

http://www.funtica.com/

This was built with tiger commerce (not by myself).

This would not put a customer off, its clean well set out easy to navigate and didn't cost anything like £2000.

The owner could quite easily make money with this site.

 

[Faevilangel]

Can you provide examples of these £1500 sites so that I can take a look. I'd be really interested to see how good they are.

J, why does the amount of money spent on a site show how good it is, surely it's the system that it's built on should be the most important factor.

One example, I charged a friend £200 to skin an opencart store? So by your reckoning, the site was crap because it cost £200 rather than someone charging £1000 to skin the same cart.

 

[Josh_Farmer]

To be honest its all up to the end user,
J600COM some of there sites are well and truly worth the money because they look nice and function well,

On the same token, there is nothing wrong with a site for £350 if its skinning magento and making it look just as good, I've done plenty myself in that price range and it has all the features due to magento plus the skin looks professional and always work well.

As i said its all up to the end user, and what there requirements are.

 

[j600com]

It didn't load properly in my browser, has it got flash on the homepage?

 

[polygon]

When you guys are tlaking about these costs are you talking about costs from customising the look of a site from using a cart solution ie bigcommerce, tigercommerce etc.
You are designing the site, and not the backend features right?.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

There is a bit more too it than that.

Tiger simply allows to setup categories and paypal integration easily

You design your banner, component tops , category image boxes using other software and up load using the ftp it comes with.

when I say £1500 I include writing the content and product descriptions in an seo friendly way from the content provided by the shop owner and designing the banner etc.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

correct polygon

to design the backend would cost considerably more.

But why reinvent the wheel?

 

[j600com]

To be honest its all up to the end user,
J600COM some of there sites are well and truly worth the money because they look nice and function well,

On the same token, there is nothing wrong with a site for £350 if its skinning magento and making it look just as good, I've done plenty myself in that price range and it has all the features due to magento plus the skin looks professional and always work well.

As i said its all up to the end user, and what there requirements are.

I agree, but really the true end user is the person who will (or won't) buy from it. The truth is almost anyone can built an eCommerce site - but few can build sites that actually sell well. We've rebuilt (literally) 100's of eCommerce sites that never even repaid the £500-£1500 they cost to build (I've seen sites that haven't had a single sale in months of being live).

Having a website is one thing, having an online business is something completely different.

 

[polygon]

Mike when you say

"I include writing the content and product descriptions in an seo friendly way from the content provided by the shop owner and designing the banner etc."

does that mean say i wanted a site designed for example lets say on gameing accesories, would you write everyhting down for every items on the site, from product description, model numbers,dimensions etc etc, or is that upto me, or is it standard practice for a designer to write all that type of stuff for the web design ?

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

"100's of eCommerce sites that never even repaid the £500-£1500 they cost to build "

Yes and I've seen thousands of £15,000 web sites that don't make any money or bring in any new sales.

As you well know the design is one part of it-all you need is a design that's clear, wells et out with intuitive navigation with images that are big enough to show the product properly but are not too big

and for that you don't need to spend anything like £25,000

I saw your portfolio and I could knock out websites of similar design for £1500 all day long and so could lots of other people.

 

[Josh_Farmer]

I agree, but really the true end user is the person who will (or won't) buy from it. The truth is almost anyone can built an eCommerce site - but few can build sites that actually sell well. We've rebuilt (literally) 100's of eCommerce sites that never even repaid the £500-£1500 they cost to build (I've seen sites that haven't had a single sale in months of being live).

Having a website is one thing, having an online business is something completely different.

I agree,
The sites your company builds are really nice, professional and functional, and look like they will convert,

As you said, and i fully agree, building the site isnt the hard part, its building a site that will convert potentials in to sales.


and no its not normal practice for web-designers to write every description, i've never heard that before, because how can it be possible for a web designer to write descriptions on products they don't have a clue about, it my eyes its bad practice, and just waiting for problems..

For example how could i write a good product description on Solar Panels, when the truth be known i don't know anything about them.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

You would need to provide some information and your prices obviously but I would write proper descriptions and some decent home page text based on the info you gave me.

The beauty of these system is adding new products or changing/updating descriptions/pricing is painless.

 

[j600com]

J, why does the amount of money spent on a site show how good it is, surely it's the system that it's built on should be the most important factor.

One example, I charged a friend £200 to skin an opencart store? So by your reckoning, the site was crap because it cost £200 rather than someone charging £1000 to skin the same cart.

Hi,

It's not always the case, I was just saying I don't come across many good cheap websites. Usually something has been missed/is lacking.

The way I see it, commercially it's like any service - you are ultimately buying time. So often a cheap site means little time has been spent on it or corners have been cut.

Sometimes, if it's for a mate or you've not done the project in a commercial sense then yeah its going to be to cheaper - but I'm talking about when getting quotes from companies. Freelancers and friends will always be cheaper, but again often this route ends in a client being left in limbo (hang around on this forum for longer than a few days and up will pop another "my developer has vanished and I can't contact them" thread - happens all the time.

On the flip side, I've seen some awful sites that have cost £10k+ so it's not cheap sites that are guilty of poor workmanship/service.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

@ JF Retail

That's why your web designer and I am a Marketer.

You gain information form the client about his business and customers and competitors and you do some research.

That is the same if you are building a brochure or flyer.

I have used specialist web designers/ developers in the past and had tow rite everything myself as I would not trust them tow rite it.

But many people are able to offer a decent service that covers both they are called marketing agencies and consultants.

If I though it merited building the back end form scratch I would advice the client accordingly but 90% of the time it just isn't anymore.

 

[polygon]

J600 and mike you both seem to know what you are talkign about. i may contact you both in the enar future when I need my site designed, i dont have thousands upon thousands, but i will have between £1000-2000 for startup ecomemrce site.

I see you both use diffrent cart soltuions. i am more familiar with tigercomemrce, but what does visualsoft provide different, no offence to be meant but I have read quite a few reviews of visualaoft mixed with good one, I guess thats the same for every solution, but does visualsoft use their own system they have had developed inhouse?. I mean on your site I cant see the features for you ecommerce solutions, is it you only provide design or you provide the whole cart solution with design?.

 

[j600com]

@ JF Retail

That's why your web designer and I am a Marketer.

A marketer that doesn't submit his clients to google shopping? Probably one of the fastest, best, free routes to market for an online retailer? Schoolboy error?

I saw your portfolio and I could knock out websites of similar design for £1500 all day long and so could lots of other people.

If this is true, then why aren't you? The example provided was far from it.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

The example I sent was not built by myself an could easily be improved.

But as far as I can see there's nothing that is so much better about your designs and everything done on your portfolio can be done using various other platforms.

As far as I am aware I never mentioned google shopping / google base. Submitting a product feed and automating the upload every month is hardly difficult tiger you press a button and it downloads a feed for you based on your site descriptions.

Just accept i am correct to make money out of an ecommerce site there is no reason on earth to spend £25,000 on a site.

since 1994 I have met and used web designers who were good at what they did -but bot one-not one was a marketer of a business man.

There is a need for coding from scratch in some instances but like it or not those instances are becoming a lot rarer.

 

[Josh_Farmer]

@ JF Retail

That's why your web designer and I am a Marketer.

You gain information form the client about his business and customers and competitors and you do some research.

That is the same if you are building a brochure or flyer.

I have used specialist web designers/ developers in the past and had tow rite everything myself as I would not trust them tow rite it.

But many people are able to offer a decent service that covers both they are called marketing agencies and consultants.

If I though it merited building the back end form scratch I would advice the client accordingly but 90% of the time it just isn't anymore.

Im not saying im a marketer, but then again, no market in the right mind would write every product description on someones site for a set fee, or about products there not 100% sure on.

you cant physically research every product and come up with a unique way of selling it, as i stated before, i could easily write up a product description on Solar Panels but would it be 100% correct, or as useful as if the person who was selling the product wrote it, no as they will always know more about the product there selling than someone in a different field. if they write a basic description with all the technical knowledge in there, then you improve it, thats completely different again

Brochures and flyers are a completely different market, as with them, you take basic details, and then market them details, its nothing like writing a product description at all.

J600 and mike you both seem to know what you are talkign about. i may contact you both in the enar future when I need my site designed, i dont have thousands upon thousands, but i will have between £1000-2000 for startup ecomemrce site.

I see you both use diffrent cart soltuions. i am more familiar with tigercomemrce, but what does visualsoft provide different, no offence to be meant but I have read quite a few reviews of visualaoft mixed with good one, I guess thats the same for every solution, but does visualsoft use their own system they have had developed inhouse?. I mean on your site I cant see the features for you ecommerce solutions, is it you only provide design or you provide the whole cart solution with design?.

I'm still not 100% sure why people choose things such as TigerCommerce when you could have your own cart, with 100's more available customisations for the same price, all you then have to pay for is hosting, but there is no limitation on development.

The example I sent was not built by myself an could easily be improved.

But as far as I can see there's nothing that is so much better about your designs and everything done on your portfolio can be done using various other platforms.

As far as I am aware I never mentioned google shopping / google base. Submitting a product feed and automating the upload every month is hardly difficult tiger you press a button and it downloads a feed for you based on your site descriptions.

Just accept i am correct to make money out of an ecommerce site there is no reason on earth to spend £25,000 on a site.

since 1994 I have met and used web designers who were good at what they did -but bot one-not one was a marketer of a business man.

There is a need for coding from scratch in some instances but like it or not those instances are becoming a lot rarer.

You are correct that you don't need to spend £25,000 to make money out of a ecommerce site, technically speaking, you don't have to spend a penny to make money out of a eCommerce site, but as the saying goes, you pay peanuts you get monkeys, its the same.

Would i buy a £3,000 Speaker system, on a site which looked like the one you pointed out before....No, as the site doesn't bring trust upon the end user.

The quality is what matters, and the ability for the site to convert, cost' becomes irrelevant in the long term if your websites making money..

Its the same idea in Retail, you wouldn't open a retail store with £500 and expect it to make you millions would you.. eCommerce is the same, the truth is most of the time you get what you pay for. May it be through support or customer service, or the end product you get what you pay for.

I've seen people designing eCommerce sites for £50 but are they any good no, do they offer support not.. You may as well throw £50 away.

 

[j600com]

J600 and mike you both seem to know what you are talkign about. i may contact you both in the enar future when I need my site designed, i dont have thousands upon thousands, but i will have between £1000-2000 for startup ecomemrce site.

hi,

mike by all accounts can deliver the same solution for £1500 so i would snap his hand off

But seriously, when you are ready you need to...

1. see lots of examples of successful eCommerce projects - and then talk to their clients.
2. do your homework on the company; find out how many designers/developers/SEO people they employ (worry if it's only one)
3. find out when they started trading (worry if it's months ago and not years) 4. go and visit your web company and see their setup (make sure they are who they say they are, not a bedroom business or reseller of someone else's services).

Ps. If you did want a demo of our admin or a quote just PM me and I'll put you in touch with one of our consultants - but at £1500 Mike sounds to be your best option (providing he can actually deliver what he's saying he can of course).

 

[polygon]

I'm still not 100% sure why people choose things such as TigerCommerce when you could have your own cart, with 100's more available customisations for the same price, all you then have to pay for is hosting, but there is no limitation on development.

Is not a hosted solution more expensive in the long term? i mean for a new person getting into new commerce places like big comemrce, tigercommerce have developers working on new features all the time for their sofwtare, and you get updates for free, with alot of features loaded in. all you pay is the hosting and the designers but other than that you get constant updates

With self hosted isnt the development costs more expensive for a new person into ecomemrce, as some of these open source carts dont come with alot of the features as self hosted, and they you have to keep paying added moduels and plugins, and ontop of that constant design changes right? With self hosted you have to still pay the monthly hosting along with the designers fee, and future updates and plugins/modles right?.

 

[DPOM]

Couple of options for you,

you can "rent" a website here: www.rentawebuk.com you can pay monthly (£49.99) for an e-commerce site (or buy outright). Sites are based on opensource shopping carts but they are customised to achieve your requirements. Designs are bespoke and can be updated yearly at no extra cost. Also includes a basic level of SEO (On site and off site backlinks)

couple of examples (current projects) here and here

or you can contact us here: www.DPOM.co.uk for something fully customised, but the price reflects the level of customisation and is significantly higher than those found on the Rent A Web site. Something like this site (currently being built) would cost in the region of 2-3K from us. (that link is too a mock up not an actual site)

Hope that helps

 

[polygon]

hi,

mike by all accounts can deliver the same solution for £1500 so i would snap his hand off

But seriously, when you are ready you need to...

1. see lots of examples of successful eCommerce projects - and then talk to their clients.
2. do your homework on the company; find out how many designers/developers/SEO people they employ (worry if it's only one)
3. find out when they started trading (worry if it's months ago and not years) 4. go and visit your web company and see their setup (make sure they are who they say they are, not a bedroom business or reseller of someone else's services).

Ps. If you did want a demo of our admin or a quote just PM me and I'll put you in touch with one of our consultants - but at £1500 Mike sounds to be your best option (providing he can actually deliver what he's saying he can of course).

Thanks for the advice. im not saying thats my total budget, im just giving an example, but no way as a startup at the moment can i spend anywhere over 5k, max probabaly 3k. have been looking at alot of companies the last month or so, and checking variuos sites out. But liek you said I dont just want another website, I want a website thata ctually sells.

 

[j600com]

The example I sent was not built by myself an could easily be improved.

But as far as I can see there's nothing that is so much better about your designs and everything done on your portfolio can be done using various other platforms.

Can you provide some examples of your own work then? It's easy to make these claims about how you could "knock these sites out all day long" for under £1500, but then to send someone else's work (rather than your own) somewhat puts a bit of doubt in my mind.

 

[Faevilangel]

hi,

mike by all accounts can deliver the same solution for £1500 so i would snap his hand off

But seriously, when you are ready you need to...

1. see lots of examples of successful eCommerce projects - and then talk to their clients. Good idea - Make sure they can walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
2. do your homework on the company; find out how many designers/developers/SEO people they employ (worry if it's only one)
Ignore this... why should it matter if it's just one developer... It;s the developers experience that counts, not the number of developers.
3. find out when they started trading (worry if it's months ago and not years) absolute tosh, check their previous sites and talk to clients, don't worry if the company is 6 months old as they could have been under a different name.
4. go and visit your web company and see their setup (make sure they are who they say they are, not a bedroom business or reseller of someone else's services). Absolute tosh again as I am a "bedroom business" and I am reputable. If a company has an office with 10 developers, you're going to be paying for that with the cost of your site.

If you want to find a decent developer who does what they say, get a personal recommendation.
1) Put a request on these forums in the tenders forum
2) Look at existing websites, look at who developed the website. Checkout that developers portfolio. Talk to the website owner and even talk to the developer.

Finding a decent developer isn't just about price, quality but also support. Will they help you keep the site updated, will they fix errors in the site, will they answer any questions you may have.

Don't rush into any website, do your research and chat to people... Personal recommendations trump any other recommendation.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

"Brochures and flyers are a completely different market, as with them, you take basic details, and then market them details, its nothing like writing a product description at all."

Oh yes it is - a product description worth having includes the benefits not just the features.

" if they write a basic description with all the technical knowledge in there, then you improve it, thats completely different again"

Exactly that's what i say he should do and that should be combined with competitor analysis and market research. Online copy is about two things not just google also its about converting an visitor into a customer.

For the budget the op has tiger is a good solution when used with other design software which most marketers already have be it expensive adobe or free opensource.

Does Jquery or a java carousel really help convert or get visitors -does it buggery.

Clean well set out, intuitive navigation, good. copy from all points of view -QED everyones a winner.

You need to spend £25K - my ass you do.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

I would agree with a lot of Favangel's last post with one caviat.

Portfolios are always to the client's spec.

As per the PM I sent I do a draft of the home page free with as many revisions as you liek if you don't like it or are not impressed you pay nothing and fire the company/consultant.

If you do you pay an agreed amount and the work continues -you still get as many revisions as you like until you are happy then you pay the remainder.

I tend to do a wire frame after the home page -to agree the structure of your products and categories first as navigation etc is very important .

Too many websites are over complex.

keep it simple.

As I say there are other options and other platforms but my honest opinion is that with your budget the quickest and easiest ways to get a good result is tiger or something similar.

You could even use serif webplus-I've built sites with that before . You get 18 months free hosting.

All the bets whatever you decide to do.

 

[Faevilangel]

Thanks for the advice. im not saying thats my total budget, im just giving an example, but no way as a startup at the moment can i spend anywhere over 5k, max probabaly 3k. have been looking at alot of companies the last month or so, and checking variuos sites out. But liek you said I dont just want another website, I want a website thata ctually sells.

There is much more to a business than a website... How will you market the site? Search engine optimisation? Newspaper adverts? You could have the best website in the world but if you get no targeted visitors, you're not going to get any sales. Does your £3k include marketing?

Personally I wouldn't talk to anyone who has posted in this post as they all have just said "i do this, we do this blah blah blah....". Do your own research and find someone who actually can talk about something else rather than themselves.

There are so many web developer than you really are spoilt for choice with your budget. Find someone you like and who talks the talk and you can get along with.

As you want an ecommerce store, look at existing carts and find one that suits your needs. You will then be able to narrow down the developers and most carts will have a custom development service or provide a list of developers they recommend.

 

[Mike tells it like it is]

"You could have the best website in the world but if you get no targeted visitors, you're not going to get any sales."

Correct -as I said earlier.

I was reinforcing this point when I said I have never met a webdesigner who is a marketer.

It is perfectly possibly to make serious money with a site that is simple but well set out and well designed.

Do yourself a favour listen to me on one thing whatever you do -make your navigation simple and intuitive.

SEO aint rocket science but it cab a long game and take time and be an infuriating process-oh yeah and it aint a level playing field