When you visit a website of any online business, you are met with desirable features. The vivid colors, images, designs down to the format of the wordings, the font, the size and everything else. All these peculiarities must and should be unique in every aspect specific to your brand. But if you have been paying keen attention to the e-commerce sites today, you will notice that there is a trend of similar-looking sites. This is deliberate as the competitors of a well-known site want to look somewhat similar to the bigwig so that they can get more clients. But that would be useless unless they have a well-set website. And to get a great site you have to pay good money for it.
In this piece, we shall be taking a look into how much an e-commerce site would cost you and how much goes into each aspect. So let’s begin.
E-commerce platforms – $20 to $5 000
When you are making your budget, the platform you are to use is perhaps the first thing you will look at. An e-commerce platform refers to the channel you would like to use to sell your items online. When you decide to use an e-commerce platform, your money will go into the payment of the licensing and other rights. The cost will, however, depend on the size of your business and the type of platform you would like to use. You can select an industry-specific solution or Software as a service offerings (SaaS) that help you with the setup and configuration of your page.
The cost for these platforms can cost as cheap as $20 and pile up to a maximum of $ 5000 and beyond. These prices are set depending on the value, performance data, and the size of the business as well as the feature sets extended to you, technically.
E-commerce web design- Free to $ 100 000
Well, web design has an extensive price range. And that is solely dependent on the specifications you would wish to have. The design of a website is based on both the creativity of the inventor and the imagination of the owner. The aspects held for discussion is everything from how the galleries of the site will look like, the size of the images/videos, the themes to be used and the templates adopted. Each element is formulated from an idea, and the cost will depend on the complexity of each. The more customized the site, the more expensive the payment. So much so, if one wishes to use pre-designed templates and fills in the blanks with their items, it might cost them nothing. But if they insist on having a coded formulation, them they should be ready to part with hefty amounts of money.
The upside of using a pre-made design is that you can set up your site in a short time. On the other hand, your website might not be as unique as you would have loved it to be. If you decide to go for customized web design with your specifics, requirements and a unique depth-of process, you will enjoy being the only site with the chosen features, but the downside is that it will take longer and cost so much more. That is why the price range is a vast one- free to around $100 000.
E-commerce custom-programming and functionality- the cost varies
As aforementioned, customizations cost a bit more, and so if you wish to get extended support services, you will have to cater for the additional cost. Here, you will have to consider aspects such as evaluations done on your site. These include audits and tests to check for quality, security, features, and support. On the quality, a team will have to look into the functionality of the site. Do all the buttons work? Do all the links work? So on and so forth. For security, they will have to look if the site is secure from scammers and hackers. Your clients have to trust that their transactions are safeguarded; otherwise, they will not use your website. The features have to be at par, and the support has to be at their beck and call ready to assist them in case of any inquiry or issue.
These aspects have to work seamlessly; otherwise, they are useless. The more the customization, specification and better security, you will have to pay for top-dollar to get the best.
E-commerce web hosting-$20 to $2 000
Having a functioning site is good, but having one hosted by a trusted body is even better. With that said, you must then make sure that your website is hosted and managed in the best way possible. Some of the things a host does are make sure that storage, traffic, products, customers, and orders are organized. There has to be a working network for all these aspects linked to the inventory and dispatch department so that a client will receive their order on time or as agreed upon. Additional services are like the redundancy, speed, scalability and the security of the site. Which must also be at par.
The Software as a service offering provides its clients with a level of hosting in their packages. This means you will not have to worry about some technical issues as they will sort it out for you. But if you are using a custom-coded host, then it would cost you less, but the work of regulating the site is on you. That means more time, and you must also be qualified with the necessary skills to do so, and if you make a comparison, you will end up spending more cash on the customer choice. Regardless, each side has pros and cons, and you must balance both to find one that suits you. That is why the hosting fee ranges from $20 to $ 2000 a month.
Conclusion
To conclude, it is good that you realize that you have to spend money to make it. So much so, regardless of the services and channels, you wish to use for your site, while making a budget, remain open-minded and consider improvisions. Remember, it is your site, so follow your intuition.