How much?

Shayman

How much would it cost for an e commerce (online shop) site? I'm on a fairly tight budget initially but would be in a position to pay a little up front and more in a few weeks... Any ideas?

aidan_walsh

What you would be paying would depend on what you would be looking for. The best thing to do is put together an idea of what you want it to be able to do, and then post in the jobs thread at the head of the forum. Interested parties will be able to message you with quotes or requests for more information.

Shayman

ah. yeah. I kinda guessed that. Hence why I'm looking to find out what that would be... I need ideas. That's why I'm here...

daymobrew

What will you be selling?
How many customers will you have each day/week?

bobbytables

Hey Shayman, there are actually quite a lot of threads on these boards that have addressed the sort of question you're asking.

Instead of going in to massive detail, here's the general summary of the response...

• How long is a piece of string?. I know you probably want a ballpark figure, but the reality is that every project is different and without getting in to the details of what is required, not even a ballpark quote could be offered.
• Also it is not necessary a good idea to believe that you will know everything that should be done without consulting with a professional first. It's not a case of sitting in front of a professional that will try and sell you something you can't afford. It's a matter of getting someone who knows the web as a business platform on board and with an understanding of your business needs, comes up with a set of goals and a strategy to achieve those goals through the application of various technologies and skills.
• Don't expect anything professional if you have little to spend, that's the bottom line. There are plenty of people out there (probably your neighbours' son, the local whiz kid) who will claim to offer you what you need for cheap. You haven't indicated what your budget is, so I am reluctant to comment any further on what is within your reach or not.
• Visitors to your website can tell the difference between a cheap job and professional quality. If you present them with cheap, then you will just associate that concept with your brand/identity. In nearly all cases it's better to tell your customers that you have a quality on the way than offend them with a cheap rush job today. You know yourself that you wouldn't throw your credit card details in to any 'ol website and your potential customers are no different. I (as a consumer) have U-turned on many websites offering "value for money" because of my lack of confidence in the site they provide, and ended up spending a little bit more elsewhere, but I had more confidence in the shopping experience they provided.
• The fact that websites can be done on the cheap, doesn't mean they should and it is the largest misconception facing the web industry in Ireland. The topic of this thread has been addressed many many many times before on these boards alone and we are well aware of the fact that this isn't necessarily something that people looking for websites on the cheap want to hear. However, it is the truth.
• It isn't a case either that if you just throw lots of money at the problem it will be sorted. There is a very wide range of skills required from strategy development, standards compliance, development, design, security, usability, testing, consulting, etc, etc, etc that are all required in order to do the job properly.
• One of the greatest problems that face people looking to have a site developed is that they don't realize what "properly" entails until they find themselves in a situation where their cheap site is doing nothing for them or worse again, doing them a lot of damage. E.g. hackers will target websites that they know have owners who will not invest in getting the thing developed properly. Why?, because they are the low hanging fruit.

I am not trying to scare you OP, but seriously for your own sake don't try and get the likes of an e-commerce site done cheaply. You could end up spending much more in the long run trying to get yourself out of the trouble it could bring you.

tomED

Would have to agree with bobbytales.

There are many cheap solutions available - sure you can buy templated open source shopping cart systems for as little as €140 on some sites - but you still need some expertise to get up and running.

Shayman

Thanks guys!

cormee

Excellent posting Bobblytales

mneylon

Since this seems to get asked once every 2 days it might not be a bad idea to split off that excellent post which summarises the last 7 odd years of threads and make it a sticky

Just saying

bobbytables

That's a great compliment, thank you very much for such high praise. It's great to see others acknowledging this pattern also. It is unfortunately an on going problem that doesn't seem to be going away. I also want to point out that I believe it's not the customer's fault, but rather the cowboys that benefit from keeping the customer misinformed.

The cowboys tend to come in two dominant flavors:

1. Those that prey on customers who don't know what they need, tell them what they want to hear and offer it at a price that is far lower than what professionals would require to just break even, never mind make a profit.
2. Those that don't even know themselves what is required to do the job right, and convince the customer "what they don't know, you don't need to know".

So given that the customer is not a professional, they generally don't know the difference between what they want and what they need. If the cowboys can offer what they want at low low prices, then what incentive is there to discover what they need and invest in a professional service...

...until they are probably on their 2nd or 3rd website and their experience has taught them a costly lesson.