How much do
ecommerce websites cost ?
Identifying all the main factors
When there are so many eCommerce website companies with all kinds of different stuffs to choose from, it’s quite hard to find the correct one without the knowledge of how much an eCommerce website costs and all the factors that affect development pricing. It is very important to understand all of those if you don’t want to waste all of your money just for your website to fail before it’s even launched.
Usually there are two things you need to verify before starting your own eCommerce website : your sales / traffic goals, and the amount of features that you’d want on your website. It may also includes development time, human resources (if you want to hire other people to build the website for you), and the type of eCommerce website company you chose. So when it comes to determine the cost of your website, you’ll need to look out for some main categories :
Infrastructure : basically this is what powers your eCommerce website. You’ll need a eCommerce software to provide your site with core functions, a hosting service to keep it open, a domain name for your visitors and potential customers, and an SSL certificate to encrypt data.
Design and functionality : this is what your users will see and interact with. In short, it is the design of your site, the user interface and the functions that are presented on your site.
How much does each factor of an eCommerce website costs ?
eCommerce software - From $0 to $30+ per month
Instead of creating and designing your own software from literally nothing, some eCommerce platforms like Shopify or Magento can help you build your own website with a very reasonable price, especially Magento because it’s a free, open-source and hosted platform, so you don’t have to worry about hosting and maintaining the website yourself.
Domain name - $10 per year
The domain name - or the link that shows on your browser when you’re in your website - is basically the permanent address of your site on the Internet. It’s what people type in or search for if they ever wanted to visit your website.
Website Design and functionality - From $0 to $200+
In those days, you don’t need to design the look of your website from scratch to turn it into something that attracts customers. Instead, you can choose from a lot of pre-made themes and templates on the internet and tweak it to your liking. If you can do either of those, then your website designing cost is essentially zero.
All the major eCommerce platforms usually have their own themes, including free and premium ones. Most of the time you’ll want to use the high quality options, so here’s how much you should expect to pay for a premium eCommerce website theme :
- Shopify : Usually $160+
- Magento : Typically $84+ (for the first 6 months)
Whichever you choose, some extra functionality will be incredibly useful for promoting and growing your website. Like themes and templates, those functions are usually pre-built so you don’t have to code them yourself. They are typically known as apps or plugins, and they also come with free and premium options.
Overall, if you can’t or don’t want to create the whole website without any extra help, you’ll probably end up spending over $50-$250 per year just to keep those premiums extensions running, and that’s just the bare minimum.
How much does an eCommerce website cost ?
Thanks to eCommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, WordPress … it’s now possible for every users to set up their own functioning eCommerce websites, even people without any technical and website development knowledge.
All things considered, you can create and maintain a fully designed and functioning website for $500+ per year. On the other hand, if you want somebody else to create and design everything, then you’re looking at around at least $5000+ for a standalone website.
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