The Right Price: How Much Should You Pay For Your ECommerce Website?
If you’re looking for the right company to build your new eCommerce website, you might be confused by the sheer number of options available to you. There are hundreds of different companies that offer this service and choosing the right one can be an intimidating task.
One of the primary things to consider when choosing an eCommerce website developer is cost. You don’t want to spend over the range of your budget but you want to pay someone enough to ensure a good result. It can be tough to determine how much you should spend. A good way to get an estimate of how much you should spend in the development of your eCommerce website is to be realistic about your goals.
Our eCommerce orange county web design team believes if you run a local business and want to market to customers in a relatively small area, you may need fewer features and tools in your website design. This could translate to a development cost on the lower end of the scale. On the other hand, if you run a large corporation and you’re aiming to make millions of dollars per year in sales, it’s likely that you’re going to need a full-fledged set of tools and design options for your eCommerce platform. As with anything else, extra features come at an additional cost. If you want to start a smaller website, you can find a good eCommerce platform developer for several thousand dollars. For a larger site, you may end up paying well over $10,000.
Determining what you will need to do with your eCommerce website is the best indicator of how much you can expect to spend.
1. How the Prices of ECommerce Sites are Determined
Features and Tools
If you’re familiar with eCommerce sites, you know that nearly all of them come with a set of standard features. This usually includes product features like customizable product pages, categories and links to similar products on your site. Most companies will offer these features as part of a basic package that is included on all of their website platforms. As such, you really shouldn’t have to shell out extra cash for these features. Most reputable ecommerce orange county web design developers consider these features par for the course. The real development costs start to come into play when you require extra features for your website.
For example, if you want to be able to send out promotional email campaigns at certain times of the year, you may expect to pay extra for that feature. If you want to include multiple photos of items from different angles or include advanced inventory management tools, you’ll likely face an additional cost. Of course, these tools may require a bigger investment initially but they may save you money in the long run by eliminating the need to put in extra work hours or hire additional help. Plus, if these features help you sell more products than you would otherwise, they could pay for themselves over time. Carefully consider what tools and features you will need to create the eCommerce website that will grow your business. This will be helpful to you and the developers you talk to when you’re deciding on an eCommerce platform.
2. Extra Features Like Advanced Inventory Management or Additional Product Photos can Increase the Cost of an ECommerce Site
Layout and Appearance
The way that your website looks can have a huge impact on the success of your business. If your website looks like it was created by an amateur, you can expect less than fantastic results. The simple truth is that people are impressed by professionally-designed, attractive and clean website designs. You don’t want to lose potential customers because they’re frustrated by unreadable text or a website that is hard to navigate. Online shopping is extremely popular these days and people are doing their online shopping on mobile devices at an increasing rate. If you want to attract customers as much as possible, your website will need to incorporate mobile responsive design. This will allow your website to be fully functional whether it is accessed on a laptop, tablet or smartphone. Again, you could potentially lose customers if they can’t buy products from your website on your mobile devices.
Mobile responsive design, logos and customized layouts can all increase the price of an eCommerce site. Be realistic about your goals and consider how you want to attract customers.
3. Creating a Website that is Professionally-Designed and Functional on Mobile Devices Requires Increased Development Time and Costs
Search Engine Optimization
Not all eCommerce companies include an SEO marketing package as part of their standard feature set. Opting to do the SEO work yourself could save you some money upfront but will require a huge investment of your time in the future. SEO needs to be continually reassessed and updated as time goes on. It may well be worth the additional cost to choose a company that will do this work for you. Effective SEO-based marketing can have a huge impact on the success of your business in the long term. Choosing an eCommerce company that has a track record of successful SEO marketing is a smart choice. Read reviews of different companies and ask others about the specifics of how a company handles SEO marketing.
