Before we dive in, a quick tip that any web designer/developer will thank you for when it’s time to talk about your needs & budget. To help quickly get an idea of what your budget could look like, provide example ecommerce sites that you’d like us to review & use as a comparison. Benchmark sites are the name of the game, giving us developers and our clients common ground to start from in order to talk about your needs. Just be aware – benchmarks are benchmarks for a reason. You can’t won’t be able to build a Tiffany’s website while paying Temu prices. Seek out comparable businesses to your own who you could expect to have had a budget in the neighborhood of yours.

Now let’s dive in…

How much will my ecommerce site cost? Here are a few key questions to think through:

  • What shipping options (and fees) will be offered?
    Flat fee, free shipping, ship by weight, etc.
  • How customizable are the products?
    For example, variations in specs (such as size or color), bulk pricing discounts, etc.
  • How many products are to be included in the site?
    And perhaps even more important… how organized are they right now? Can their data be bulk-imported via a spreadsheet? Do everything you can to organize your data up-front in order to avoid having your web development company perform expensive manual labor.
  • Will international orders (and shipping) be an option?
    Hint: Unless you’re already doing serious international business, wait on hopping into this particular mud puddle.
  • What payment options would you like to make available (only credit card, e-check, Paypal, etc)?
  • Will you be interested in offering discount codes?
    If so, it’s good to consider how sophisticated you’d like to get. Most clients are OK with discount codes that simply take a flat % or flat dollar amount off per order. But if you’d like to be creative (codes that only apply to specific products, have minimum quantities or total order minimums, etc), that’s important to know up-front.
  • Is this replacing an existing system?
    Will we need to consider legacy factors such as migrating accounts, notifying customers & providing customer support, importing order histories, etc.
  • How serious are you about tracking & analytics?
    This is one area we don’t recommend cutting corners on. We are huge fans of gathring as much data as you can and using it to drive your decisionmaking process. Take full advantage of Google Analytics and LookerStudio reports (or similar) so that you know what products are popular, what products get strong views but weak sales, what channels are driving users, etc. Then use that info to refine your store & increase sales.
  • What’s your post-launch plan?
    Even in B2B environments, an e-commerce system is never “set it and forget it.” First, the system needs to be maintained regularly so that it is fully functional, up-to-date on fluid aspects like sales tax rates, and as protected as possible against hacking. You should also plan to invest in a CRM & automation system to nurture your customers – both current, prospective, and past. Automate follow-up communications, send promotions, encourage repeat purchases, etc. through email and SMS/text so that you’re doing everything you can to maximize revenue from every visitor.

Bottom Line about the Bottom Line

There’s no question that a good ecommerce site will be a bit of a capital investment. If the hype from cheap platforms like WIX or AI-powered site builders was real, everyone would be rich by now through online sales. And unfortunately the amount of potential variables make it impossible to provide an upfront, meaningful range of what to expect for costs. We joke with a lot of potential clients that an ecommerce site could cost from $5K to $5M. Or more! Or maybe even a little less! It all depends on your answers to questions like those above. As we often tell clients, ecommerce development is the easy part. A well-trained monkey could spin up a bare bones ecommerce site in an afternoon. It’s the customizations that drive up costs.

The key is to think of ecommerce by always focus on your bottom line — this is an investment and you have to do everything it takes to ensure that the investment pays off. So don’t go overboard early – better to launch a site with 75% of the features you really want right now, but have budget left to promote it and nurture customers. Grow your sales & then enhance the system later when your data tells you that the enhancements are justified.

Bonus Thoughts: Shopify or WooCommerce?

We consider Shopify and WooCommerce to be the two best options available for the majority of our clients, but we almost always recommend WooCommerce overall. WooCommerce can integrate directly & seamlessly into virtually any current open-source site (it doesn’t have to be a WordPress site – just throw a new WordPress installation in a folder). Hosting costs for WordPress/WoocCommerce sites are always very reasonable as well. We usually recommend WPEngine for hosting.

WooCommerce has similar one-time setup costs to Shopify, and many similar options such as template themes to speed things up for businesses who don’t mind a bit of a “canned” user interface. WooCommerce usually has lower long-term/ongoing costs since there isn’t a monthly fee for the software. With WooCommerce, there are a few annual software licenses you can expect (it’ll depend on how many premium features we include), and of course payment processing costs per transaction (we recommend Stripe). WooCommerce is also virtually infinitely flexible and customizable, and there are vast resources available to enhance your site, from plugins to third-party integrations, to great documentation so that top-shelf developers like us can get under the hood and build functions to meet your most unique or craziest requirements. Lastly, since the content in the shopping area lives on your site, there are some SEO benefits to WooCommerce as well.