How much does an e-commerce site cost, beware of hidden expenses?
Are you a freelancer or e-commerce manager and want to start your own online business and want to know more about how much an e-commerce site costs and the hidden expenses?
Can't wait to start selling online? Well before you pull out your credit card, perhaps a little crash course on e-commerce costs is in order to avoid finding yourself with an empty bank account at the end of the month.
You are just in the right place! Appvizer explains in this article which elements determine the cost of your e-commerce site.😉
What is the cost of an e-commerce site?
If before you go on a trip you have to put a lot more than just the plane ticket into account, in the same way creating an e-commerce site means anticipating non-obvious expenses, depending on your needs you can open it from a few hundred euros up to thousands. The cost of your e-commerce site will depend on the objectives you want to achieve.
You should also consider that the cost of an e-commerce site is not just the initial cost, as you will always have to invest in running costs and adding new features to improve the customer experience on your site.
A website requires a large initial budget. If the site has multiple functionalities from the start, it will last over time and will need less intervention once the site is online.
The price of your e-commerce will depend on the technical solutions you choose, so it is difficult to define a budget.
What will the cost of your e-commerce site depend on?
As you can see, the price differences between one e-commerce site and another depend on many factors, but above all on the scope of the project and the options, the more functionality you need, the higher the cost of your e-commerce site will be.
The number of customers you have determines the technological requirements needed. If the number of customers is high, you will need to create a platform that can handle a lot of traffic simultaneously.
Another element you have to take into account is how many pages you want to create in your e-shop, as the more pages there are, the more the cost increases, as you will have to take into account coding processes, copywriting, etc. In addition, the more functionality you need, the more the cost increases.
Moreover, the more functionalities you need, the higher the cost.
You will also need to invest in coding processes and if you want your site to last, you will need to hire IT specialists in order to have a dynamic, intuitive and customer-friendly site.
Another element to be taken into account is the copywriting part, for which you will decide whether to hire external personnel or take care of it yourself. This means that
If you can establish all your needs from the outset, you will be able to reduce costs, as often e-commerce site owners realise later that a feature is needed or that they have added a useless feature that has increased the cost of the site while being useless.If, on the other hand, you have knowledge of how to create a site and the coding processes , you will be able to save a lot of money.
Another element is the cost of advertising and marketing campaigns for the site; if you decide to integrate SEO functionality into your site, this will cost more. However, this is a very important and useful element if you decide to make your brand known and acquire new customers.
You should also be aware that the site will certainly have an initial cost, but that there will be additional costs later if you need new functionalities.
First of all, you should tell yourself that your objective is not to create an online sales site that costs as little as possible, but to create a site that can solve your problems and meet your needs and objectives.
Furthermore, in order to be able to determine a better price and be able to save money, it is a good idea to know the basics of how a site is created, because once you have the basic knowledge, it is much easier to determine the right web solution and have an idea of how much it might cost.
What questions should you ask yourself to determine the final cost of an e-commerce site?
To help you determine more precisely how much it costs to create an e-commerce site, here are the questions you should ask yourself to determine the cost of your e-commerce site:
- What resources do you need?
- How many pages will there be on your site?
- How many products are available on your site?
- Do you need the help of an agency?
- Who will take care of the e-commerce site after its activation and what will be their salary?
Creating an e-commerce site and determining the final cost is complex as several questions and aspects need to be considered.
Once you have answered all these questions, you will know the needs of your online shop and whether it requires specific web development. You will then be able to identify whether only one page is needed or whether you need several pages, whether a showcase site with a landing page is sufficient or whether a more complex site is needed.
You should also know:
- Whether you plan to allocate a large budget or prefer to choose a cheaper solution. If you choose to allocate a low budget, the risk is that the functionality will be very limited.
- Which functionalities you will need and how much work time is required to realise them.
- Do you want to administer your site independently (without depending on an external agency)? If you are confident that you are able to create a website without help and that you will be accompanied, you can afford to save a large sum of money. However, in case of doubt you should consult a specialist.
- How much time can/will you devote to the design and management of your site.The design of the site is the brand image must be suitable for the product you sell and must be customised to allow you to stand out from competitors and mark the memory of consumers. It may seem trivial to you, but design is one of the elements that subconsciously can attract many customers, so it makes sense to spend time and set an appropriate budget, and in case you need to hire a graphic designer.
In this way, once you have completed this reflection, you will have all the cards in your hand, and clear ideas, to calmly select the best web solution for your project, and it is also important to think about the additional costs that there may be in order to choose the best solutions from the outset.
How web hosting affects e-commerce costs.
Every e-commerce site needs web hosting , i.e. a place where the website files are stored. In a nutshell, this means buying space on a server.
Depending on the server chosen, prices vary, as servers that can handle more traffic cost more.
You can choose between:
- Shared hosting: where servers are shared with other users.
- VPS: is a virtual private server and although there may be several VPSs on the same server, each one has a space dedicated to it.
- WordPress hosting: is designed for WordPress users.
- E-Commerce hosting: a system designed for e-commerce sites.
- Private server: The server is dedicated entirely to your e-commerce.
If you want to have quality hosting, the best solution is to choose paid hosting as in most cases the performance of free hosting is of low quality.
Conclusion
Although ostensibly creating an e-commerce site might seem inexpensive.
If one's ambitions are high, one has to invest a lot in the site to ensure that one has a service that matches the customers' expectations.
This is why it is difficult to determine the cost of the site as this can be more or less expensive depending on the functionality you need.
Article translated from Italian