Cost of Setting up an e-commerce site

willis

Hi guys,

Have an idea and looking to set up an e-commerce site where people can buy goods from myself. Basically I want as good as site as I can, as it will be a large site with review functions, a forum, as well as of course the ability to buy goods using credit cards. I havent really got a clue where to start, more just an idea at this stage. Looking for rough costs etc, so any tips here or is there a guide somewhere on the site about doing something like this?

Thanks
Will

Swampy

I'm starting to use bigcommerce for the site and realex for payments.

Looking at around 70ish euro a month.

John_Mc

You can use an open source eCommerce system that is free to use. You'd be best off paying a designer to come up with a design, and then make that into a template that can be used by the eCommerce system.

There's a load of them out there, Magento, ZenCart and OsCommerce to name a few.

In terms of accepting credit cards, I'd recommend starting off by using Paypal. Non-paypal members can pay through credit card using it. If you are getting enough sales to justify the extra expense of Realex, them go for it.

Eoin

Zen Cart should tick those boxes. It is OSCommerce with loads of features included as standard. I started off using OSCommerce for a few sites, and spent aaaages installing different mods - only to find out that Zen Cart had them all installed by default!

It's also template driven, so it's a lot easier to customise and upgrade than OSCommerce. It also integrated with phpBB forum, as far as I know. I've integrated it with Realex very easily.

Two down-sides I've noticed:
1) It seems pretty hard to have a "checkout as guest" option. Some people want to be able to checkout without creating an account, even though the only real difference is that you're not specifying a password! Magento has a much nicer checkout procedure too - though you need a lot more resources to run Magento.

2) The layout is very generic in most implementations I've seen. The upside to this is that it's quite a familiar user experience to the customers.

The webdesign forum is probably the best bet if you want more specific information.

Edit - on the costs side:

It is possible to do it yourself and buy a template, but you'd really want some background in this area to make sure all the security measures have been put in place, not to mention any tweaks to the code that might need doing.

That's if all your requirements are met by the default installation of the eCommerce package you are using. You can spend a good while setting up a default installation of Zen Cart before you even add any mods yourself. Also, it would most likely be a pretty generic looking site that would most likely not have any real tie in to your corporate logo and colour scheme etc.

You will probably have to flesh out your requirements a little more before you get any estimates. Any halfway decent professional will talk you through the options.

J_Wholesale

Pricing an eCommerce site is a bit like pricing a car. Yes, you can pick up an old banger that will get you from A to B for a few hundred euro, or you can go see the guy down the road who'll give you a 'deal' for a grand or so - it might tip along fine, without any problems, or it might start acting up from day 1.

Or, you can get it done properly. As with buying a decent car, this will cost money. You'll need a web designer / programmer, firstly to design a look and feel for the site (some people call it a skin, but that makes it sound easy and cheap - it's neither if you want a decent job), secondly to set up the whole eCommerce side of it - this will likely involve using an off the shelf package like Zen cart, but it may involve tweaking that solution, making custom changes, etc. You'll need an ongoing relationship with this person or company, as successful eCommerce sites always require work. Most people forget to budget for this, but it is essential.

I'd budget an absolute minimum of €5000 - any less and you're verging on cowboy territory. You might strike it lucky and find a cowboy who does a good job, but you're more likely to waste your money. The worst part is, you might not realise you've wasted your money - all you'll know for sure is that nobody is buying from you. Good designers and programmers do not come cheap. If they're cheap, you need to ask yourself why.

I would say one thing to everyone who advises you to go down the cheap route: show me successful eCommerce websites who pay peanuts for website and development work. And by successful, I mean the owners make a good living from it. And to those who recommend starting cheap and then upgrading as you become successful, that's like suggesting a luxury cab company start up with an 20 year old Fiesta, or a high class jeweler starts out selling €2 costume jewellery. If you enter a market at the bottom, that's where you stay.

One last thing: you're very unlikely to be able to open an online merchant account without an online trading history (off line doesn't count), so you'll probably be stuck with PayPal for the first few months.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

willis

Thanks a million for all the responses, greatly appreciated and I will take everything on board. Im a total beginner at this so no doubt I'll be back asking more questions soon...thanks again for all the info!

Japer

J_Wholesale wrote: »

I would say one thing to everyone who advises you to go down the cheap route: show me successful eCommerce websites who pay peanuts for website and development work. And by successful, I mean the owners make a good living from it.

Ryanair....Michael O'Leary. I remember Michael O'Leary speaking on the radio once about when he went to set up the Ryanair website years ago, all he got was high quotes. He got two students to design the Ryanair website for him. I reckon Ryanair make a good living from it ...

moral of the story : shop around bigtime, + do not pay big money.
There are a lot of cowboys charging high fees.

SQ2

Try bang.ie too, no setup costs afaik, just a monthly commission

Pixelcraft

Japer wrote: »

Ryanair....Michael O'Leary. I remember Michael O'Leary speaking on the radio once about when he went to set up the Ryanair website years ago, all he got was high quotes. He got two students to design the Ryanair website for him. I reckon Ryanair make a good living from it ...

Ryanair at this stage has paid plenty for their website, don't be so naive!

While that story is true, it has no bearing on the high traffic site they have today, and remember their brand tries to shout "cheap" as loudly as possible - it all depends what you're trying to achieve.

J_Wholesale's spot on, either have a budget to do it properly, or use a hosted commission based service if you don't require anything too unique

Alligator Wine

Hi there,

I think this is on a related topic:

I was wondering what are the prerequisites for processing payments in an ecommerce site. Is there any way to process credit card details securely (e.g. using an SSL cert) and not be registered for VAT? I'm thinking of taking on a job where the client wants to avoid paying taxes.

Any idea what I should advise him? As far as I can see if you set up your payment gateway through realex for example you need to have a VAT number. Is paypal the only option?

Thanks

antoinolachtnai

The Ryanair story is not in fact true. The cost bandied around covered developing the front-end. The back-end was purchased as part of a package supplied by (I think) HP.

Pixelcraft

Funny when you read things X amount of times you assume it's true. Thanks for the clarification

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Japer wrote: »

Ryanair....Michael O'Leary. I remember Michael O'Leary speaking on the radio once about when he went to set up the Ryanair website years ago, all he got was high quotes. He got two students to design the Ryanair website for him.

I'm friend with the guy who wrote that version of the Ryanair site. Lets just say the guy is incredibly talented and the proposal he put in was killer. And the price for the site wasn't cheap.

As pixelcraft said its important to understand what you get for your money. Any platform will do those basic functions you require, but it comes down to who your designers / coder's are and how capable they are. Find a go to guy and go with whatever platform they know how to use. Its important that they already have clients doing the same volume of sales as in your business plan. Best of luck with it.

MOH

Alligator Wine wrote: »

Hi there,

I think this is on a related topic:

I was wondering what are the prerequisites for processing payments in an ecommerce site. Is there any way to process credit card details securely (e.g. using an SSL cert) and not be registered for VAT? I'm thinking of taking on a job where the client wants to avoid paying taxes.

Any idea what I should advise him? As far as I can see if you set up your payment gateway through realex for example you need to have a VAT number. Is paypal the only option?

Thanks

There's been a few threads on here about various payment systems, or check out http://www.webpayments.ie

Kent Brockman

willis wrote: »

Hi guys,

Have an idea and looking to set up an e-commerce site where people can buy goods from myself. Basically I want as good as site as I can, as it will be a large site with review functions, a forum, as well as of course the ability to buy goods using credit cards. I havent really got a clue where to start, more just an idea at this stage. Looking for rough costs etc, so any tips here or is there a guide somewhere on the site about doing something like this?

Thanks
Will

Not sure if it is an option for you, but Facebook can provide all of the above and its free.
I have set up a business page, there are review and discussion tabs and I am using a free app called Vendorshop.

http://www.facebook.com/Prints4gifts?v=app_138996027389&ref=sgm is what my shop tab looks like, there is plenty of options available. Check it out.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Not a good road to base the business on a social network you can't control. You need to control of the platform to run a serious sustainable business. FB may be a sideline income generation tool, but shouldnt be the base.

Kent Brockman

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan wrote: »

Not a good road to base the business on a social network you can't control. You need to control of the platform to run a serious sustainable business. FB may be a sideline income generation tool, but shouldnt be the base.

Like I said it might not be for him. It will depend on who you are targeting and what the product is.
A lot of my target market use FB and word of mouth/referrals is very important for my product.
It has proven very good for local networking even at this early stage.

It works great for me at my startup stage of business, and is a good way to advertise and test the market for free.

Show and Tell is obviously going to be the best way for me to promote my business (trade fairs/ stands/ promotions etc) and although I agree FB is certainly not the be all and end all, I would also not dismiss its benefits.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

I certainly don't dismiss it, we probably have one of the most active business face book pages in the country at the moment (due to Halloween ofcourse) and generate pretty decent turnover from it. But it is important to direct the sales to a website with proper conversion optimization and security so that you can own the customer.

Japer

Pixelcraft wrote: »

Ryanair at this stage has paid plenty for their website, don't be so naive!

While that story is true, (" Michael O'Leary speaking on the radio once about when he went to set up the Ryanair website years ago, all he got was high quotes. He got two students to design the Ryanair website for him. ) it has no bearing on the high traffic site they have today,

I would imagine Ryanair would have paid more for the high traffic site they have today. However, I would imagine if Michael O'Leary was starting out in a small business with say less than 10 employees ( like in the days before he joined Ryanair ) I could not see him paying 5 or 10 grand to a bunch of ***** ( as he would put it ) for a website. He would get it for 500 quid. In that radio interview what came across was his attitude towards those who charge high fees for websites, which are often not very good..

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Japer wrote: »

I could not see him paying 5 or 10 grand to a bunch of ***** ( as he would put it ) for a website. He would get it for 500 quid. In that radio interview what came across was his attitude towards those who charge high fees for websites, which are often not very good..

Michael O Leary is far too smart to fall into the trap of paying peanuts and getting monkeys. You can't compare websites in this fashion. Yes you can get a brochure website for 500 quid and then learn & implement SEO / CRO yourself, but you can't use a brochure site to create as much sales as a fully optimized e-commerce site. It's not like big sites spend huge amounts on our code because we're naive.

Obviously some web firms aren't as good as others and there are sharks out there, but unless you know the fundamentals and can talk techie at their level its hard to distinguish the difference. The truth is some firms get paid insane fee's because there are contracts out there that will spend 10 times the value of the work, to ensure their job is safe by making a safe decision about sometime they have no clue about (I'm about the huge gov contracts for sites without basic canonicals etc). Other firms will over charge for good work, some will be reasonable. Many will low ball to give you a basic site and then have you on the hook for tonnes of hourly fees as you find out they haven't included your basic design needs and are slow at delivering once on the clock.

Its a bit of a difficult game. The best designers and coders have so much potential business on their plate they pick and choose who they will work with. There's so much talk of sites that can be done for 200 quid that most business plans cheap out on their only point of customer contact and never get off the ground.

The only tip I can give is if the web developer doesn't give you rough maintenance and support rates without you asking run a mile. A good website is like like a horse, it needs constant feeding and attention.