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How much does your eCommerce website cost your business?

(Looking for pricing information for our eCommerce service? »)

Commonly asked: How much does an eCommerce Website cost?

Of course, there are many answers, and different people will give you different answers. There are several options (including):

A 'website-in-a-box' solution with a built-in shopping cart
An open-source system, which could be customised to meet your needs
Bespoke software developed precisely to your specification

Obviously, the extent to which eCommerce developers or professionals are involved will have a significant bearing on the overall cost of your site, however, this does not mean doing it yourself is cheaper.

View pricing information for Mattched IT eCommerce »

Should be asked: What is the value of an eCommerce website?

Value is rarely the same as cost - if you pay £100 for something which you could pay £1000 for, it doesn't always mean you have gotten a better deal. If you pay £100 - you're likely to get £100s worth of work (which may not be much). If you pay £1000 - you need to make sure you get £1000s worth of work (rather more).

Return on Investment is key to working out the value of an eCommerce solution - the site needs to be efficient to run and easy for customers to use - it should be attractive, and produce a good conversion rate. It's less a case of getting what you pay for, and more a case of getting value for your money.

It seems clear: You can save money by doing the work yourself.

However, if your real job is making widgets to sell online - should you really be building an online shop?

Surely you wouldn't expect an eCommerce developer to be spending their time making widgets?

Don't forget how much your time is worth

A lot of people venturing into eCommerce for the first time feel that they are saving vast sums of money by building their own site - and end up investing a significant amount of time - without necessarily achieving the results they were after.

Time is money. An hour of your time isn't necessarily worth minimum wage (or the amount you pay yourself), just because it is your business.

If in an hour, you can produce a widget which will sell for £10, you could argue that every hour spent working on your website has cost you £10 in revenue.

So if you spend 4 hours a week working on your eCommerce website (a modest amount of time), you could extrapolate that you are spending £40 a week, or £160 a month on your website. If it took you a whole week (35 hours) to set up initially - then thats another £350 to add to the pot.

Add your hosting costs, plus any other incidental costs (purchase of website in a box package, for example), and suddenly, you've spent more in a year than our professionally developed, managed eCommerce solution costs - with a bespoke design.

Crazy, isn't it?

Let us know what you think »

Read our article about budgetting for an online shop »

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