What realistic Budget is required for new website

[cazza]

What realistic budget do I need to migrate from a cre loaded website with 7000 products to either Opencart or Magento. Site design is required as well. We have no coding skills at all so would appreciate a guide to what it would cost to have ongoing support for either of these platforms after migration.

Have spent a lot of time researching and my husband is leaning towards Shopify, whereas I feel that opensource with support would be a better option.

I appreciate this could be “how long is a piece of string” question, but any guidelines would help.

 

[ryedale]

Hi

There is a migration service called Cart2Cart that we use to move clients to Opencart from other platforms. This includes an option for CreLoaded or Loaded Commerce as it is now known.

See more here - http://www.shopping-cart-migration.com/

The service does an excellent job of migration carrying across all products, categories, orders and clients. Cost of the actual conversion is usually less than £200

With regard to the actual site design cost and ongoing support, it can vary wildly really depending on what sort of additional functionality you'd require and future plans for the site.

If you lay out a detailed specification of how you envisage the site working, then we should be able to give you a reasonably accurate figure.

Hope this helps!

 

[studioraygun]

Hi Cazza

This is a difficult one, it depends on a number of factors - the functional requirements, the skill level required, the actual time it will take amongst other things.

I wrote an article a few months ago which attempts to tackle some of these points. Unfortunately I can't post the link yet as I've not reached 30 posts, but if you'd like to message me I can send you it.

Price is also going to be governed by how many people you have working on it and how much they charge (as obvious as that sounds). Some creative agencies may charge £700/day, others may charge half that. You might even get a freelancer for as low as £240/day (or £30/hr). If you go much less than this you start to enter more junior territory where the skill and customer service levels required aren't as high as you might need.

 

[makeusvisible]

I can give you a fairly accurate estimation from what you have described, being that we do quite a few bespoke migrations from various carts to Magento.

We have occasionally used Cart2Cart, but have had mixed results. They have occasionally done a great job, but often we simply elect to extract the products/categories/orders directly from the database, then write a conversion script, and an import script into magento.

To give you a ball-park figure, we have just done a 7k product migration for a customer, along with the design and development of a fully responsive, Magento website. We have done the full import, along with relevant redirects to avoid any impact in Google search. Total cost was £4,000+VAT. Obviously each project is different, but hopefully that provides you with your ball-park figure.

 

[Timothy Willis]

Migration (of data I presume?) and design is one aspect, what about the features and functionality of the website? What tie ins, if any, will you have with 3rd parties? I would gather a specification to send off to prospective agencies before you make any decision. Most Magento agencies (including us) have a starting price that they work from.

 

[Paul Murray]

As mentioned, your best bet is to probably write out a brief or a summary of the work required in as much detail as possible and ask local agencies that specialise in this sort of thing to quote. The piece of strong analogy is appropriate, especially with regards to complex websites.

 

[fisicx]

Have spent a lot of time researching and my husband is leaning towards Shopify, whereas I feel that opensource with support would be a better option.

Not Shopify. you will be forever spending money to get the functionality you want.

Thes other have all given good advice so I will just add that you should treat the new website as an investment not a cost. Putting a bit more in at the beginning will reapay you multiple times in the future. Do be tempted to select a developer on cost. You need someone you can trust and feel comfortable working with. The sort of person or agency you can pick up the phone to if you aren;t sure. My test is always: would I like to go down the pub and have a beer with this person?

 

[finleydesign]

Have spent a lot of time researching and my husband is leaning towards Shopify

Have to agree with above, stay away from shopify, you only need to read the amount of people coming from Shopify to other platforms, I do agree with you long term a opensource solution with the ability to keep adding features as you go would be far more cost effective and in my opinion be better ROI

 

[cazza]

Hi
Thank you all for your input, i do see our new website as being an investment and not a cost and this is why it has taken me so long to choose simply what platform to go with, as swapping and changing is really out of my comfort zone. Going down the pub with someone who just happens to be a webdesigner is my sort of scenario, pity i never have time to go to one

Seriously tho, we have a really basic website presently, with no add ons, no 3rd party extensions and only Paypal as a payment provider. The new website would ideally be responsive, have weight based postage options, voucher codes, product bundles, variants etc, possibly an extension to import products from suppliers csv files and possibly e-bay intergration, although we only sell around 20 products on ebay, so even that is currently not that important.

What is important to us is having someone available to help with bug issues and problems that arise, hence the support package.

 

[antropy]

I appreciate this could be “how long is a piece of string” question, but any guidelines would help.

You'd probably find an inexperienced freelancer would charge around £500 - £1000
A small designer/developer team might charge £3000
A small agency perhaps £5000
A bigger agency £10,000
A well-known London agency £20k+

 

[Simon Brummitt]

Hi Cazza
iShop would provide you with all the functionality you have mentioned and much more. We have been providing solutions since 1998. Our latest sites are fully responsive (see www.orientique.co.uk ) right through to the checkout. We take a long term view with new customers so set up is next to nothing. Our monthly charges are 2% plus 20p per transaction (limited to £6 on any one order). If you are interested in taking a look drop me a line and I will send you full details. Everything is included. www.ishop.co.uk/ecommerce

 

[JamieM]

Not Shopify. you will be forever spending money to get the functionality you want.

We pay $39 a month for our Shopify site and have MailChimp integration, reviews (with automated email requests), abandoned cart recovery, autoresponders, exit offers, Google Shopping integration, Facebook store, Facebook remarketing integration so a decent amount of functionality for a low price.

Granted you can build up higher monthly costs by using a lot of apps but if you just make sure you only use ones that you need (and add profit) then it's a good way of doing it rather than shelling out a lump sum for custom development work.

 

[Will_Authentic_Style]

Have you considered Woocommerce (an ecommerce plugin for WordPress)? It's pretty sturdy and has a lot of options for customisation.

I think the best bet is to put a 'spec' together and contact some web designers and agencies. Just putting together the spec doc in itself will be a good exercise and probably get you thinking about things in more detail and raise some questions. I've actually put together a collection of eBooks that help with this sort of thing. They're free.

In terms of design, are you looking for something completely bespoke and unique? I'd always advise going down that route as the site can then be your brand exactly the way you want it. Avoid templates and modifying them unless your budget is really small (e.g < £2k)

 

[fisicx]

We pay $39 a month for our Shopify site....

Or $470 per year. That sort of money would get you a decent self hosted site. All of the features you list are freely available as plugins or modules to all the major ecommerce platforms. There is no need for custom development work - you can get really good themes for well under $100.

 

[Colourscope]

I have charged for differing solutions. My average range is about £900 - £1200 for the standard WooCommerce shop selling a small number of items. I've charged and sold an ecommerce system for about 12k using Magento but their requirement was much more intense including variations on discounts etc. Having said that WooCommerce seems to be coping very well with the middle-range online retailer websites.

 

[vivente]

All costs of a business should be an investment and if it isn't then you need to question your ability to manage your business. Blunt yes but lets not overcomplicate things - you spend money - it's a cost. You spend that money to generate a profit. That's an investment. One shouldn't exist without the other in a for profit business. Even committing time to a social media profile whilst apparently costless is an investment because the cost is your time and the investment and the aim greater profits and if its not don't do it.

As regards the self hosted v hosted sites one thing that they trumpet is that you are tied into ongoing costs with the hosted solution well guess what unless you are really good with coding then you will want to have some sort of SLA with someone to manage your site and that includes upgrades when those nasty little bugs arise that mean a software upgrade is required somewhere in your cart software or server stack. That's an ongoing cost. Be sure to ask about that

I will be moving to a self hosted platform in the next year but do I think my hosted solution held me back. Only marginally however I started in my first year generating a profit of a few thousand on sales of £10000 so I couldn't afford an investment of £2000-£3000 for a long term solution. It was perfectly fine for me then and works now. I'm on EKM and if you listened to some you would think that I'm dead in the water just by using them. Guess what most of products are high up Google rankings. I get asked constant by my suppliers and others how I appear so high. My answer is an honest one that I'm not entirely sure but what I do is concentrate very carefully on my meta tags and creating listings that reflect what customers search for. Having T1 hosting isn't everything. There are issues I'd like to solve and that's why I will move but my profits 000s% higher (and yo'd be right I couldn't go much lower ) now and I can afford to make that commitment.

My advice is keep all options open and concentrate on your content as that's what is really important.

 

[Cherrie Hub]

Hi, I am currently using Shopify, and I can recommend these guys as the best providers for anyone thinking of running an online shop. I am pretty sure they can migrate the shop for you, but you might need to speak with them about the details. The back office / the design suite / is very straightforward, and they do have a very nice selection of templates (free and not free). You can modify any function you can dream of now, or in the future, once you start growing, with their add on apps. You don't have to use them and I am happy without any at the moment. But it's nice to know they are there. And the customer service is spot on. I cannot praise them enough

 

[serpyre]

2.5% of the revenue you expect to generate or 5% if you amortise over 2-3yrs - then you need to build in growth - standard ecommerce growth is 10% YoY, department stores are 62% - if it's high you need to loss lead a better platform otherwise you hit the limits rapidly and need a re-implementation.

You can also look at it by business revenue stream efficiency, Shopify/WooCommerce are 50%, Prestashop 100%, Magento CE 200% - however most run at 0-50% due to over-engineering the implementation reducing it's 'natural' efficiency - clean installs are the way to achieve maximum efficiency with good hosting and matching product counts. The lower the efficiency the more you have to work for the same growth. For reference Amazon are 1,400% efficiency & Google 2,000%.

 

[redacris]

If you need any help contact me

 

[tylnewcastle]

Magento is what I would suggest. I think you can get it developed for somewhere between $1500 - 2000. Also add $500 for an year worth of on-going support. This is from the requirement you have stated, if there are any changes the pricing may vary.

 

[Flipptree foundation]

What realistic budget do I need to migrate from a cre loaded website with 7000 products to either Opencart or Magento. Site design is required as well. We have no coding skills at all so would appreciate a guide to what it would cost to have ongoing support for either of these platforms after migration.

Have spent a lot of time researching and my husband is leaning towards Shopify, whereas I feel that opensource with support would be a better option.

I appreciate this could be “how long is a piece of string” question, but any guidelines would help.

We have just built our through magento with full integration and modules that personalizes your business if you want to know more send me pm ill be happy to help you out with support.

Mark

 

[Faevilangel]

IMHO 7K products is best added to a dedicated ecommerce system such as OC or Magento (and maybe Prestashop).

Adding to Shopify will cause a lot of issues including fees, lack of import functions and you are at the mercy of their systems.

Using woocommerce is also a no go, WP / WOOc is great for small ecommerce sites but in my experience it's not very good for large sites without a lot of customisation and quite a lot of server configuration.

Personally it's far better to use a dedicated ecommerce system so you have full control, you know it's built to handle the current setup and future upgrades. My personal preference is OC but Magento is also a great peice of kit but does require a bit of work to get it running well (so choose an expert).

Cost guides, I (as a freelancer) wouldn't touch it for less than £2k (to OC) due to the data move and the custom theme, I would expect to pay a company £5-£50k depending on whether OC or Magento, and the size / location of the agency.

You would need to choose a platform before getting a quote as rarely does an OC developer do Magento as well, once you know the platform you want to use then you can start writing a brief for the developers to quote on.

 

[vivente]

@Faevilangel OK you can set the OP will a website that meets their requirements for about 2K. What would an ongoing support contract to ensure that their platform remains patched at all times cost? Now lets not confuse something proactive from the OP with something proactive from you. With Shopify if there is a major bug anywhere in their platform they will have to fix it so what is the equivalent cost in your service if you were to provide a similar level support?

 

[Faevilangel]

@Faevilangel OK you can set the OP will a website that meets their requirements for about 2K. What would an ongoing support contract to ensure that their platform remains patched at all times cost? Now lets not confuse something proactive from the OP with something proactive from you. With Shopify if there is a major bug anywhere in their platform they will have to fix it so what is the equivalent cost in your service if you were to provide a similar level support?

Depends on which platform they choose and what level of support they want but would start in the region of £200 a month, they may just want security updates done, they may want regular backups of the site done or they may want someone to help them with updating elements of the website.

If they are technically minded they could do it themselves but they could also just pay for the developers time to just install the updates they want added, there are a lot of options available for ongoing support.

 

[vivente]

OK so let's go with those costs. Say £2K every 3 years for a complete website refresh. £200 per month for support. So TCO over 3 years is £9.2K or an equivalent monthly rate of £255 per month. At least now there is a basis to begin comparing offerings. I'm only interested in getting answers to these questions because it is something that I will be dealing with within the year therefore the ongoing costs are an important issue as far as I'm concerned and one that is often not talked about when people start comparing hosted versus self hosted solutions.

As regards Shopify I would never consider using it simply because abhor the idea of transaction fees. Why should they get a bigger slice of money from me because my business is generating more sales. They don't upgrade my server spec, give me more bandwith or give me a higher level of support based on my sales as that is already determined by the package I'm on so I see no coherent argument for supporting such a model.

 

[Faevilangel]

OK so let's go with those costs. Say £2K every 3 years for a complete website refresh. £200 per month for support. So TCO over 3 years is £9.2K or an equivalent monthly rate of £255 per month. At least now there is a basis to begin comparing offerings. I'm only interested in getting answers to these questions because it is something that I will be dealing with within the year therefore the ongoing costs are an important issue as far as I'm concerned and one that is often not talked about when people start comparing hosted versus self hosted solutions.

As regards Shopify I would never consider using it simply because abhor the idea of transaction fees. Why should they get a bigger slice of money from me because my business is generating more sales. They don't upgrade my server spec, give me more bandwith or give me a higher level of support based on my sales as that is already determined by the package I'm on so I see no coherent argument for supporting such a model.

That £2k does include the intial setup, training and the initial client "setups" e.g. phone calls to go over needs.

If you are staying with the same platform, a new refresh should come in a bit under the £2k as the developer would be creating and installing a new theme, no platform modifications etc, so lets say a refresh is £1200 due to the amount of work being done is reduced.

I am personally of the same feeling of Shopify (and other hosted solutions), they do limit what you can do with your site and can literally hold you to ransom. They are great for startup sites to test the water but are a poor option for others.

 

[vivente]

OK so £255 per month in the first 3 years and then £240 after that. Still substantial and we haven't included the hosting costs (which could be substantial depending on the server requirements). It's relevant here because with a hosted platform the hosting is integral to the cost of the package. I think that after 3 years with major overhauls on both OpenCart & Magento with a major reworking of the underlying architecture that more than a new theme is going to be required and that assumes a fairly static business

 

[Faevilangel]

OK so £255 per month in the first 3 years and then £240 after that. Still substantial and we haven't included the hosting costs (which could be substantial depending on the server requirements). It's relevant here because with a hosted platform the hosting is integral to the cost of the package. I think that after 3 years with major overhauls on both OpenCart & Magento with a major reworking of the underlying architecture that more than a new theme is going to be required and that assumes a fairly static business

It can be quite expensive (compared to alternatives) but you would hope in the 3 years you have made at least profit to pay for the initial build (and monthly costs) along with the upgrade costs). At the end of the day, the opensource build route comes with higher costs but it gives you total control of everything (from payment processors to functionality) where as a hosted solution you're generally locked down to what they say you can do (shopify is actually quite flexible on functionality and designs, but the payment processing part is poor).

You can cut the cost down of the build by using a pre-built theme (themeforest.net do high end premium oc and Magento themes) which are around £40-£100. The only issue with that is you could have a site which looks like a competitor (seen it happen, a client of mine decided to use a pre-built theme, within weeks a competitor bought the same theme).

I have a client on a custom OC theme with a few hundred products and it's running fine on a £30 a year hosting, it's only when you start hitting thousands of buyers a day then the costs can start to spiral but if you go with a dedicated system for the platform, you can generally get a better hosting experience with less cost (they would optimise their servers to be friendly).

 

[vivente]

After 3 years I would hope that I have made considerably more profit than the cost of the website and associated upgrade. I'm not Amazon with peope falling over themselves to invest money in my unprofitable business

I do take all those considerations into account and I do appreciate the ability of others copy what you do as I have a competitor, much larger competitor at that, who started stealing all my pictures so I watermarked them along the bottom so he just cropped them so I had to go right across the middle in a diagonal to stop him doing that That was on Ebay who to be fair did take down images when this was pointed out however the sheer volume of requests got too much.

 

[cazza]

Thanks guys, that really helps me narrow things down a bit. Vivente, thank you for your input your asking all the right questions and getting the answers i need.

I'm leaning towards Opencart, had a play with the admin and to be honest althought different to what we have now, it's not complicated. I've even managed to get my husband to take a look and even he said "yeh i could work with that" so at long last i'm getting somewhere.

To be honest i don't think we would need a dedicated server to start as we run on a shared server now and have no problems, hopefully the new site would bring in new traffic and if so we could move over then.

Faevilangel thanks for your input, it's give me some figures to work on and i can put together a more comprehensive brief as to our requirements.