The 'How much should an e-commerce website cost?' question.

[JJWinst]

I know this is an almost impossible question to ask; but i'm going to anyway.

Im in the process of developing my own brand and will be looking for platforms to use and an agency to build in the near future. My previous retail store was built using 'Visualsoft' on their own platform. Whilst it was feature rich I was advised later on by a few people that I was over charged for what I had. I think it's really difficult to find a solution which is 'worth the money' when you can literally pay £250-£250,000 for an e-commerce store.

I have done quite a bit of research and like the idea of a Wordpress/woocommerce website as I want the site to be content led. BUT the question is; how much do I need to pay? A few things I will need the site to do:

- Sell products
- Manage inventory
- Product reviews
- Multi lingual (currency & language)
- Discount & loyalty points system (advanced)
- Good base for SEO
- Social Media link up
- Mobile friendly first

I'm sure there'll be some I've forgot but they're the obvious ones.

 

[ryedale]

Well from our perspective, we develop with OpenCart but they are all standard out of the box features for most modern E-Commerce solutions to be honest.

So a large part of the project cost goes on researching your target audience, looking at competitors and helping you plan a marketing strategy to get the site off the ground. Then producing mockups that the site will be designed from.

Obviously if bespoke coding is required for custom functionality, then this can push the price up signficantly but with a standard feature set, most E-Commerce sites for us fall between 3 to 5k.

 

[finleydesign]

Would recommend woocommerce, we have built them all from PrestaShop, opencart and Magento and still keep coming back to woocommerce.

 

[fisicx]

A lot depends on how much you want to or are able to do yourself.

You can do everything in your list with woo, opencast and most other commerce platforms.

Which platform you choose doesn’t really matter if you only have a few products. As the number of products increases then you may be better off with a dedicated commerce platform. I’d talk to people and get a feel for them and their approach to your project. There are plenty of UKBF members who could help so why not start a new thread in the tenders forum.

Don’t focus on cost. You could go cheap and not sell a thing, but pay a bit more and you will a lot more than just a website, you will get access to a font of ecommercd knowledge.

 

[Highland Spring]

If it was me I would setup Prestashop myself, add a selection of my products then get a designer to customise it. That way you are just paying for the design element and nothing else. Prestashop is free as a base script, you need some tech knowledge to install it but its only a 5 min job, some hosting companies offer fantastico which from memory includes a button to auto install in the same way others do for Wordpress.

On that basis a nice design is likely to cost £500 to £750. If you ask a designer to set up the whole thing they will likely charge £1,500 - £3,500. Hope that helps.

 

[makeusvisible]

From an agency perspective, the thing which will determine the cost is the volume of work. The volume of work will be driven by;

• How many unique page designs will be used
• What part the agency will play in managing content (products/text/images)
• Any non standard functionality

By non-standard functionality, I mean for example integrating with third-party systems.

In terms of designs, as a rule of thumb for this kind of setup you will be looking for the agency to design;

• Product page layout
• Category page layout
• Cart/Basket layout
• Standard content layout
• Home
• Contact
• A couple of contingency pages

The key factor in how long the above will take (and cost) is 'will the agency design for blank canvas or use a template'. This is largely why prices fluctuate so much in the web industry....because often eggs are not being compared with eggs.

The other thing you have mentioned regards non-standard functionality is the site being multinational. This throws up a technical question, but also a question of content translations....which can be extremely time consuming and expensive (especially if the agency is managing that aspect.

You have mentioned woo commerce....which is a brilliant platform. To give you a very ball park figure, if we design and code a standard woo commerce site, from blank canvas....it is in the region of £2k. In terms of getting quotations, just try to establish what each provider is offering, so that you are comparing like with like.

Best of luck

 

[JJWinst]

Thanks for all your responses.

A lot depends on how much you want to or are able to do yourself.

I'm not the most technical person but have experience with a couple of back end platforms so I can manage adding products etc but I couldn't build pages etc and I want this to look professional.

Can someone please advise of external and ongoing costs when working with something like WP/WOO? As previously explained my retail site is built on an 'all in one' platform who look after hosting/SSL and they built in our payment providers etc..

Am I going to have to set these up myself or will an agency do this? What on-going involvement do they need to have?

 

[ryedale]

All E-Commerce agencies should handle it all for you.

Which payment providers are you looking to use?

 

[makeusvisible]

You wouldn't need to deal with anything technical to add your products into WOO. The design/coders job is to create the design so that when you enter product info, it simply wraps around their designs without you needing to worry about code.

The agency should setup your hosting and SSL. Expect to pay between £100 and £300 per year for hosting the site....depending on the level of hosting/backup schedule etc. Other than the domain name, that's your only ongoing cost....unless you want the agency to perform regular updates for you (which is a good idea).

 

[fisicx]

I'm not the most technical person but have experience with a couple of back end platforms so I can manage adding products etc but I couldn't build pages etc and I want this to look professional.

If you can add the products yourself then all you really need someone to do is add the theme and the features you want. Looking professional is a relative concept and each person will have a different opinion what a professional website looks like. I'd just go find a theme you like and use that. No need to build any pages if all you want is a shop - woocommerce and the theme do it all for you.

Whoever you choose to build the site should hand hold you all the way. The initial discussion will decide who does what and from there a price will be agreed.

 

[JJWinst]

Can you clear up what you mean by 'theme'? - My previous site was built using wireframes; is that the same thing?

I want to create something slightly different for my brand; I don't envisage having a huge product range for the first 2 years and I want to rely on heavy content explaining to our customers the benefits of our products and how we have produced them.

In the industry I will be entering I think there is a big demand for brands to be ethical and sustainable and it will be important to get this across to the customer.

My retail site is quite costly to run when you factor in build cost/hosting/SSL/support from visualsoft etc and as a startup brand I want to keep on-going costs low.

 

[makeusvisible]

All WordPress websites are running a theme. Either a theme which has been created specifically for them or an off-the-shelf theme.

When designing a theme, many agencies/freelancers will user wireframes to map out the structure of the page(s) before they actually start graphic design work. If your previous site was developed using wireframes, that would indicate you had a custom design built for you.

 

[Paul Norman]

It can cost nothing, if you know how to build it yourself.

I was going to knit my own jumper, but I rather wanted to retain my wife.

Or it can cost hundreds of thousands, if you want a really fancy one. And that would be fine, if you needed such a site, and it would generate enough profit to pay for itself.

The key is to be clear what you want. And to be clear what financial outcomes you expect.

I have purchased (from a company I also have shares in, to be transparent), 4 ecommerce sites in the last 7 years. The most I paid was £10k.

 

[fisicx]

Can you clear up what you mean by 'theme'? - My previous site was built using wireframes; is that the same thing?

wireframing is a development tool, you don't use it to build the site.

My retail site is quite costly to run when you factor in build cost/hosting/SSL/support from visualsoft etc and as a startup brand I want to keep on-going costs low.

If you only have a couple of products and are focussing the content on marketing then you probably don't need an ecommerce site, all you need is a 'buy now' button. This will keep it cheap as chips.​

 

[antropy]

Obviously if bespoke coding is required for custom functionality, then this can push the price up signficantly but with a standard feature set, most E-Commerce sites for us fall between 3 to 5k.

The same goes for a lot of branding and design work, but £3k to £5k is reasonable I think for a nicely designed and branded ecommerce site that does the job without having any really bespoke functionality like integration with a warehouse API etc.

 

[JJWinst]

Ok so I went to a recognised brand agency who offer brand strategy, development etc etc and the quote was .... ... ....

16,000 EUROS!

 

[antropy]

16,000 EUROS!

That shouldn't surprise you, a large established agency will need to charge that sort of money (and sometimes 10x that) and often it will be worth it if your company is big enough to benefit from the extra sales it would bring.

 

[JJWinst]

That shouldn't surprise you, a large established agency will need to charge that sort of money and often it will be worth it if your company is big enough to benefit from the extra sales it would bring.

Their proposal is very appealing. They have built for some huge brands and I think they would be great for my startup.. but unfortunately I don't have 16k sat aside.

Where on the forum do I post a job? I'd be keen to see a few proposals with the same spec I've given the above agency. I'm quie set on Wordpress/Woocommerce combo from the research I've done.

 

[JJWinst]

Out of interest - Would a recognized agency be more expensive based on skill or based on case work? They've done case work for some huge brands - does that warrant their fee?

 

[antropy]

Where on the forum do I post a job?

Here but you might not be able to access as a free member:
https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/tenders.88/

I'd be keen to see a few proposals with the same spec I've given the above agency.

We wouldn't go to the effort of writing a detailed proposal if you're putting it out there to a load of agencies but we would give a cost estimate.

I'm quie set on Wordpress/Woocommerce combo from the research I've done.

If your site is going to be very content heavy that might make sense.

 

[Paul Murray]

Out of interest - Would a recognized agency be more expensive based on skill or based on case work? They've done case work for some huge brands - does that warrant their fee?

You're probably just not their target market. An agency will generally charge you about 3–5x what a freelancer developer will charge due to higher staff fees and overheads. Big agencies work with big companies.

If you're a small business or a sole-trader then try and find a smaller team or a single designer/developer.

On a slight side-note, my CMS of choice isPerch. It doesn't use themes like WP. Instead you build the site using the code/mark-up you need and let the CMS control the parts of the site you want or need it to control.

It has a Shop add-on that lets you build an e-commerce solution that just does exactly what you want. Using a more well-known platform will probably make it easier to find a developer (though there's still plenty of Perch devs out there).

This might be an option if you only need a small site with a few features, but it's easy to add new features in future do to it's modular approach.

 

[Anders Jorgensen]

I know this is an almost impossible question to ask; but i'm going to anyway.

Im in the process of developing my own brand and will be looking for platforms to use and an agency to build in the near future. My previous retail store was built using 'Visualsoft' on their own platform. Whilst it was feature rich I was advised later on by a few people that I was over charged for what I had. I think it's really difficult to find a solution which is 'worth the money' when you can literally pay £250-£250,000 for an e-commerce store.

I have done quite a bit of research and like the idea of a Wordpress/woocommerce website as I want the site to be content led. BUT the question is; how much do I need to pay? A few things I will need the site to do:

- Sell products
- Manage inventory
- Product reviews
- Multi lingual (currency & language)
- Discount & loyalty points system (advanced)
- Good base for SEO
- Social Media link up
- Mobile friendly first

I'm sure there'll be some I've forgot but they're the obvious ones.

It depends on how much you want other people to do really.

Still if you don't learn how to do it then you will have to pay for any change you will have to make along the process of having a successful web shop.This can ad up quickly.

Now I found a course that is not currently open for purchase on the how to build a web shop from scratch to the success you want and I thereby build my own shops and do the marketing strategies that work as well.

I pay for Shopify currently $30 pr month. That is basically the expense. Then I have advertising from Google Shopping to ad to it.

With that I can do the list you have and much more. I got 1400 something products and an app keeps track of stock and imports on a daily basis.

Shopify allows SEO and be indexed in Google. Discounts etc is just settings. Your main web shop is independent to any marketing strategies you choose like social media or Google search, adwords or shopping.

I can do any type of blog posts for creating content including reviews and you can get a Free review app to the product pages so review is right there too.

Shopify is very mobile friendly and the pages do look nice regardless of desk top or mobile use.

For Shopify itself it is working for you 24/7 365 days a year and it does it without hindrance of you making any changes at all + you don't have any cost to do it. Most apps are Free if the need for a solution like stock comes up.

 

[Paul Carmen]

Did you ever post this as a job in the marketplace, as I couldn't see it? It would be good to understand how you got on & what you went for.

If not, what was the brief given to the agency who came back at €16k? I'd assume you gave them some sort of business plan, with brand work, content & copy targeting your product/service & market area included, with potentially a plan for you to drive traffic for the launch?

 

[JJWinst]

Did you ever post this as a job in the marketplace, as I couldn't see it? It would be good to understand how you got on & what you went for.

If not, what was the brief given to the agency who came back at €16k? I'd assume you gave them some sort of business plan, with brand work, content & copy targeting your product/service & market area included, with potentially a plan for you to drive traffic for the launch?

I don't think I can post in there.. I contacted several of woo-commerce's recommended designers and a few guy's from the forums. The original quote I got was from an Agency in Amsterdam which had worked on some competitor sites - They gave me a brief to fill out and as part of their quote included brand strategy etc but not marketing as such. They have worked with Nike previously so I don't think it was ever feasible.

 

[Paul Carmen]

Ah OK, that explains why I couldn't see it then!

You will get a massive variation when it comes to prices from agencies, you really need to take a plan of some sort to each company/person you get a quote from, as that way you're comparing like with like.

The risk otherwise is that if the agency does not do a good job of finding out your needs, you end up with a site that's not fit for purpose, or doesn't rank for what your customers really search for.

We'd suggest having a think about what you want to achieve & cover: -

What do you intend to do with the site

• With WordPress, are you just going to use a theme as is, or do you have a lot of design work and customisation in mind
• Do you need any graphic design work as part of the process; e.g. new logo, assets created for any areas etc.
• What external functionality do you need to integrate, sounds like WooCommerce, but there could be others; e.g. email CRM, finance systems etc.
• If you're migrating an existing site, we would review this to setup redirects, make sure URLs are correctly structured and that you don't ruin your existing rankings
• We need to make sure the site is secure, plus PCI & GDPR (for May 2018) compliant, so that it's actually legal

Marketing, SEO & copy/content

• What are your marketing goals & do you have customer / services / competitor research; e.g.
  • Customer age range, demographics, areas you want to target
  • What are the services/products you want to promote & who are you competing against
  • What do customers search for in relation to these services
  • What does success look like; e.g. leads, cost, ROI etc.
• How many pages & what content do you need to achieve the marketing goals
• We'd recommend full technical SEO as part of the build; e.g. writing compelling titles & meta descriptions, h tag setup, alt tags, sitemaps, decent taxonomy & internal link structure etc. with a compelling journey for your customers
• Do you need copy & content produced for the site, or are you creating your own; e.g. lots of companies we get involved with write good copy of their own, but use lots of internal techy language and never research what customers actually type into search engines, or look at their competitors sites to make sure they're doing a better job
• Do you have a good handle on Google Search Console, Google Analytics and Google My Business setup and your NAP/markup, so that you can monitor the site and ensure that the local element is consistent everywhere & that leads/sales are tracked

I know this sounds complicated, but by going through this type of process & then into more detail once the services, targets, lead & traffic requirements are understood, you'll set yourself up for success.

We always work like this with our clients, as we believe that a website is the start, not the end of the online process. Our projects are designed to deliver what you need; e.g. sales, leads etc.

However, unless you have a vast amount of products/services & massive traffic requirements, this should be nowhere near €16k. Feel free to drop me a PM if you want to discuss any of this, or have a no obligation call.

 

[ukbf0001]

I wouldnt use woocommerce - as your stuck with wordpress. What you want is something like ecwid. It is super simple to use, very little design involved, it fits into any website - HTML, wordpress, joomla, drupal.

You create it in the cloud - and then you copy / paste 5 lines of html into any (ie multiple) websites - and hey presto you shop is there.

But the killer part of this is that you can also embed it direct into FaceBook - so FaceBook users never even have to visit your site or leave their facebook session. It is also the #1 FaceBook ecommerce tool - there is a facebook demo of it here https://www.facebook.com/ecwids

No coding / technical knowledge required at all, updated automatically - no brainer

 

[alexdigital]

Being stuck with WordPress is not bad thing. It's really flexible and offers a huge range of plugins and extensions to add features as and when you need them.

 

[Rob2012]

if you know what youre doing you can do it yourself for under 1k and under 1-2 weeks time.

if youre going to hire someone foreign then you can do it for around 2k with a lot of communication difficulty

if you want to get someone from uk they will charge you from 5-12k

I guess realisticly you should hire someone from upwork and pay them the minimum as it doesnt sound like you know aht youre doing... but you will learn for future that way

 

[Iain_Henderson]

Can someone please advise of external and ongoing costs when working with something like WP/WOO? As previously explained my retail site is built on an 'all in one' platform who look after hosting/SSL and they built in our payment providers etc..

My site is Woo/WP and I don't have any external developer. I pay £10 pcm for hosting, £90 pa for eBay integration, £90 for Amazon integration, £30 pa for a Google product feed (so £330 per year) for a solution which integrates all my orders and syncs all my stock across those platforms.

SSL from LetsEncrypt is free, Stripe and PayPal are both commission based. The amount you pay for advertising is obviously variable!

 

[antropy]

(so £330 per year) for a solution which integrates all my orders and syncs all my stock across those platforms.

What solution is this?

 

[Iain_Henderson]

The eBay and Amazon integration plugins are from WP Labs - highly recommend both the plugins and their developer.

 

[antropy]

the question is; how much do I need to pay?

To go back and directly answer the original question, it depends on the size of the agency from single freelancer to large London design agency and the range will be £250 to £250,000 but to give you an example from the middle ...

We're based near Gatwick Airport in Crawley, there are just under 10 of us (including freelancers), our price list is here:
https://www.antropy.co.uk/pricing/

And the sort of site we can achieve for those prices is here:
https://www.antropy.co.uk/portfolio/

Hope that helps!

Paul

 

[Barry khay]

I know this is an almost impossible question to ask; but i'm going to anyway.

Im in the process of developing my own brand and will be looking for platforms to use and an agency to build in the near future. My previous retail store was built using 'Visualsoft' on their own platform. Whilst it was feature rich I was advised later on by a few people that I was over charged for what I had. I think it's really difficult to find a solution which is 'worth the money' when you can literally pay £250-£250,000 for an e-commerce store.

I have done quite a bit of research and like the idea of a Wordpress/woocommerce website as I want the site to be content led. BUT the question is; how much do I need to pay? A few things I will need the site to do:

- Sell products
- Manage inventory
- Product reviews
- Multi lingual (currency & language)
- Discount & loyalty points system (advanced)
- Good base for SEO
- Social Media link up
- Mobile friendly first

I'm sure there'll be some I've forgot but they're the obvious ones.

Hi JJwinst.

Little I know about eCom. Most are now base on one single page.
i.e eCom with sales page.

 

[antropy]

Little I know about eCom.

You said it!

Paul

 

[merchado]

You said it!
Paul

 

[Barry khay]

You said it!

Paul

Well if its against what you know that doesnt mean it's not work.. sale page is not only for digital product but also in recent times use effectively for physical products.

 

[myweb masteruk]

Speaking from my professional experience, if your business is internet only focused, then you should go with either Magento or Prestashop. Because these platforms are both designed specifically to sell online. With great technical support team and value for money. I use Wordpress all the time, I know its potential, but as a proper e-commerce solution, you should avoid it, its too fiddly and requires maintenance.

 

[Samiara SIngh]

You can easily develop a site using WordPress, Magento as has been elaborately discussed above. There are many other platforms which you may try if the technical aspects involving WP and other platforms worry you. There's a platform which I have used to develop a website and they offer many other things too like easy logistics, security, domain name etc. An all-in-One package I can say. It is buildabazaar. You can go through their portfolio first and then decide.

Other than that there are ample other platforms to help you get through the hassles of building a website. They provide you a user-friendly platform and a support team.

If you are using any platform, do share your reviews and spread the good news!!

 

[antropy]

It is buildabazaar.

Paul