How much can I expect to spend on an e-commerce site

Hello to all,
Any information here is very much appreciated
I am in the process of setting up my vendors and points of purchasing and am now needing to get my site developed and set up. I guess the questions I have are:
How much to develop or have an e-commerce site developed
I am assuming the shopping cart is an added recurring fee?
If I have the site developed, I want to be able to go in and change/add products and descriptions without going back to the developer. I currently use Contribute on my other sites (non-ecommerce)

I will use paypal as my payer source - is that recommended?

This forum has been great for overall knowledge and seeing what others are doing...
I thank you in advance for your input!!

 

I would suggest you look at Magento which is enterprise level stuff or Prestashop which is really easy to use.

Both are free open source apps so you just have to design it and input products etc. and you are all set. No recurring fees for cart usage. How much you ultimately spend depends on how professionally you want it done

hope that helps,
Nigel

 

Hello,

How much depends entirely on what you want to spend. Volusion to me is the best but I am sure if you are just starting out, you can start off with something a bit cheaper such as oscommerce. I didn't really like Prestashop, but then again, that's my own personal opinion.

 

im a big magento fan personally. what kind of produts will you have on your site?

 

Magento script is too heavy not recommended for any hosting( good eCommerce software). Pretashop is too complicated specially when it come to adding attributes something you'll have to deal with in. For starter i think Zencart is the best!

 

the cheapest i could do for it is to use magento. its will not exceed $50 i guess.
but promoting it will of course cost more. what are the products to be sold anyway, these vary too.

 

Check out corecommerce or volusion. Both very straightforward and easy to use. Plans from $40 a month.

 

If you are under a budget try going to bigcommerce.com. They have a great site builder that is drag and drop and it is naturally SEO optimized so you get traffic from the search engines.

 

What sort of initial budget do you have, and do you want to have a recurring fee associated with the shopping cart?

There are basically 2 types of carts. The first is a managed cart like Volusion. You pay them a fixed monthly fee, and they provide the cart and hosting. You can use your own or their merchant account to accept credit cards through their shopping cart. You can also use Paypal, and other 3rd party processors like Google Checkout, 2checkout.com, or Amazon payments. You have a little control over customizing the system but you are at the mercy of the software and it's unlikely that you can do any major modifications. On the bright side if something breaks, you don't have to worry about getting it fixed, as they will take care of that for you.

The other type is the Magento, or Oscommerce type. These are totally free, but you would need to find a hosting provider to host your site on. The best way to get going with these is hire a professional to design and setup the cart, and then you manage everything yourself. Again, you can use your own merchant account to accept credit cards, and can also use Paypal, and other 3rd party processors like Google Checkout, 2checkout.com, or Amazon payments. These all integrate into the shopping cart. The only recurring cost is the hosting, which is normally much cheaper than the managed type carts. If you hire someone to design and setup the cart there will be a start-up cost which could be substantial depending on the person who sets it up, their experience, and how customized you want the system. You have much more control with these types of carts, but if something goes wrong, you may need to find someone more experienced to fix the problem.

It really comes down to your initial budget, how much work you are able to do yourself, and if you want a higher recurring cost. If you want no start-up cost and very little self-management, a managed cart is probably the best way to go. If you would rather have more control and a lower monthly cost, the customized magento, or oscommerce would be the way to go.

A few words of warning about the managed carts. I mentioned Volusion which I think offers a great package. There are a number of other providers that have similar services, Volusion stands out in my experience. I would stay away from Yahoo stores or any service that takes a % or your gross revenue. For example Yahoo stores takes a % of gross revenue from any sales on top of an expensive fixed monthly fee, and on top of any fees that it costs you to accept Paypal or credit card payments. These sort of fee structures make it very difficult to create a sustainable business, so I strongly recommend avoiding any provider that takes a % of revenue. You're going to end up paying a % to accept payments. Don't add unnecessary % fees on gross sales unless you absolutely have to. Volusion and others have a fixed monthly fee which includes hosting, SSL and everything else, which is reasonable. If you go for a managed cart, look for these. Also, once you chose a managed cart it is almost impossible to break away if you want to in the future. These are all proprietary systems and there may be no easy way to migrate to another system without major repercussions in search ranking and customer usability. Choose wisely....

 

Hi

We will be more than happy to give you a price for seting up an Ecommerce Shop

Can you drop me a PM with all your requirements on.

Thanks

Mark
AMPG IT Services Ltd

 

Always stick with OS. I recommend osCommerce.

 

That's difficult to answer without more of an idea what your site is going to be. How large, what kind of content and services, etc. If you're doing something small or modest, you could try someone like Square Space, but if you are more ambitious you might have to go with a more enterprise-level solution (and enterprise-level pricing).

 

do you need products drop shipped for you?

 

ARe you a dropshipper, I am interested

 

you should not spend more than 100$

 

i think it will cost about $50 to $75 to get done.