Costing a full ecommerce web site
That is the inner expression of joy many web site designers feel (and I am going to be cast out of the brotherhood for giving away state secrets here) when they see someone who wants a full ecommerce web site. You see, the myth of the 'ten times the cost of a regular web site' is just that, a myth.
There is a small chance that somewhere, one or two web designers are still writing out thousands of lines of code by hand, but somehow I doubt it.
But much of the industry has got the business community - and I'm not talking about large businesses who like spending millions on a web site that doesn't look that materially different from those that only cost a few thousand dollars - convinced that they cost a lot more.
The incremental nature of languages; the fact that designers tend to keep lots of code around to begin with, and the simple human fact that we all tend to follow the path to the most efficient completion of a task, means that instead of ten times, an ecommerce site should cost perhaps 15% more than a standard web site.
Monthly carrying costs for a merchant account are another issue. Up to now I have only been talking about initial construction. Those other costs are something else entirely, and I may deal with them at another time.
But monthly maintenance costs are another myth of ecommerce web sites. It is in fact easier for me to maintain an ecommerce web site than a web site written with old-fashioned HTML. On an ecommerce site, if a client wants some new products, prices, descriptions, features, or anything, I usually only have to modify 3 or 4 words, plus a few sentences, per product.
For technical reasons the formatting of an ecommerce web site is easier to maintain.
Monthly maintenance costs (assuming of course that you don't have a hundred products changing daily) should be in the same range as that of any other web site.
My suggestion to you is to shop around very carefully. Even if you definitely want to sell products or services online directly, get quotes for both a standard web site and an ecommerce web site. If the price difference is too great, then you have just met the smiling boy in the picture.
An added bonus for those
Latest Articles