Rough Guesstimate

[Carbtec]

I buy a type of product that the range of manufacturers make incredibly difficult to select from what should be a simple choice of material, size & quantity. It is often easier to purchase through their re-sellers at inflated prices.

Roughly how much would a website & database cost to initially create then host???

It would need a search page with box's to enter Size width, size height, material, quantity. The database would then need to offer up products either exact or nearest to those requirements, then onto purchase etc etc.

I'm just bouncing idea's at the mo', but I'm so incredibly frustrated at the various manufacturers approach to ecommerce that I just may set up what could easily become a 'goto' website for this type of products . . . . .

 

[Shopclicks]

How many individual products would you say you need? There are several ways to go abut this. You could use search, but filtering is sometimes more practical. Or you use product options (variables). But it depends how big the range of products is. You can take quantity out of the equation as all products will have a quantity selector.

 

[fisicx]

The actual filter isn’t complicated - it’s a single DB query.

There are loads of e-commerce platforms you can use, many of them low cost or even free. The time consuming part is configuring the site and then populating the database. You would probably need a developer to build the filter and help with configuration.

Cost could be £1000 to £100,000. It all depends on the number of products, the number of variables and how people will be ordering and paying.

 

[Paul Carmen]

As @fisicx & @Shopclicks have said, it needs a website specification. The devil in any project like this is in the details. This means the number of products, define filters and options, number of pages, who's producing copy, images, content etc.

The problem with this is you're only thinking about less than half the equation. You could build all this and spend the money and not get a single customer.

The proposition is actually about the market, customer research/search terms and your competition. If this is a competitive area, it doesn't matter if you build something great, as without amazing copy and good SEO work no one will see your website, unless you spend heavily on PPC.

You need to carry out this research first to define the whole project from customer, market through to specs and marketing, before you think about spending any money on a website build.