HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO BUILD AN E-COMMERCE WEBSITE IN 2019-2020

The e-commerce website can definitely enhance the profit you receive from your business. But how much does e-commerce website cost? The figures you will hear in an answer to that question can vary a lot. Even after development, you will have to invest money into maintenance, improvement and adding brand-new features that are constantly appearing on the market. That’s in case you want your e-store to be attractive and profitable, of course.

It’s even difficult to tell the average cost of how much should I charge for an e-commerce website. The numbers will vary due to different factors. In this article, we’re going to discuss them all in detail to help you grasp some idea about the money you need to pay for the e-store.

First of all, you need to decide what you want your e-commerce to offer the customers. It may be anything from small business e-store up to a large website with a big amount of integrated (useful or just good-looking) features. It is also a good idea not to wait until everything becomes outdated. We strongly recommend to update all the features continuously and save money for more innovations.

Website features you need for eCommerce:

Nowadays, as people are used to buying online, they already know what they want to see in any e-commerce site. The features that make the website user-friendly are a great plus to customers’ satisfaction. Here are some of the main custom e-commerce web development services we strongly recommend you to add to your e-store.

Integration with payment systems

The main objective of every e-commerce website is to sell products and receive profit. And here exists one crucial thing – you have to take care of creating comfortable conditions for the client to pay money for your goods. It is the main distinctive feature that differentiates e-commerce websites from all others,- converting a visitor of the site into a buyer. To implement this you need to add a must-have into your e-commerce website – a payment gateway and credit card processor.

Integrating a payment gateway is not a simple task, the main aspect here is the security of the customers’ money. That’s the case when you cannot pinch pennies, dedicate more time and effort, but make all the money transactions secure. In the opposite case, be ready for negative reviews and clients choosing your opponents’ shops.

Flexible push notifications

Why use push notifications? People tend to respond to them four to eight times more often than to emails. Usually, they serve to promote various deals, sales, and discounts available in the store. They notify users about the appearance of new products, collections. Sometimes personal promotions are offered to the registered users.

Recently viewed products

If you show your customers the products they have recently viewed, you get more chances that the users go back to those products and buy them. Why? The answer is simple – we look for those goods that we are really interested in and in such a way, we are more inclined to purchase them.

Sometimes by clicking too many products for comparison, it is possible to lose the one you like the most. The recently viewed section can help find it much faster.

Customers’ reviews and product ratings

Still not sure whether to give your customers the opportunity to leave their reviews and rate the products? ¾ of all e-stores buyers read the reviews to the products before making a final decision. And most people do believe these ratings as much as personal recommendations from people they know. Make the reviews visible for all the customers and increase their trust in your e-commerce business.

Search

Letting your customers express themselves is only half the battle. 40% of e-buyers prefer writing what they need in the search bar instead of scrolling the catalogs. Yes, a search engine is essential if you care about your consumers.

But bear in mind that the search engine will work for you only if its integration meets the requirements. Here are some tips to make it right:

• Include search within a given category (e.g. Arts&Crafts / books / computers);
• Provide the search bar on every page of your e-commerce website and make it visible for the users;
• Use the filters. It is easier to look for what one needs specifying such parameters as price, colors, size, etc.

Things that determine the cost of developing an e-commerce website

Let’s have a closer look at the main factors that have an impact on the professional e-commerce website cost.

The size of the business

As a rule, the number of goods it sells, how many customers it has and how much traffic it receives, determines the size of the business.

If we talk about a limited number of products or a start-up, when the customers don’t know well about the company, it means the business is small. That’s the case when smart investing in simple features and design can help you start improving your business.

In case the range of the product is higher and more people have heard of the name of your website, the business may be called mid-sized. Now your main objective is to maintain what you have and look for solutions to boost the number of buyers and profit.

And here we go, the range of your products is really great, a lot of people choose you to purchase what they need, you are well-known on the market or in other words, you have enterprise business. Don’t lose pace! But be ready, in such a case you need more money to invest in e-commerce.

E-commerce platform

If we compare, building e-commerce websites are far way easier with all the e-commerce platforms available. I’m positive, you’ve heard about following e-commerce solutions: WooCommerce, Magento, Shopify, Hybris, and Salesforce.

Ecommerce platforms can be a perfect solution for launching the e-store, as they are continuously developing. They can give you all the essential out-of-the-box features, functionalities, and an easy-to-use interface. It all contributes to making the store management process as easy as possible. But you still need people to help you launch and maintain your online business.

Design

A beautiful image often wins the comfort. This statement concerns not only women’s fashion. From an e-commerce point of view, a good design is a must.

In case you want your online-store look, not as all the others – you’d better ask UI/UX professionals for help. Yes, it will cost you a pretty penny, but users’ satisfaction will pay you back more.

On the other hand, you can use Saas-based platforms. These offer you a big amount of ready-designed and some of them customizable templates. Remember that all these templates weren’t created for specifically your business. Don’t be surprised to meet a store like yours somewhere on the Internet.

But think twice – using e-commerce website design templates is much cheaper and faster. A great choice for starting a small e-commerce business.

What do you get with custom e-commerce development?

Custom development has a great advantage – it provides you with the opportunity to design an online store that is unique on the market. You can create and add any features you feel like you need or want, including custom layouts, scrolling animations, and more. You are the one who makes the decision here.
No need to say, you should spend more money, but the chances of some other site looking the same as yours are zero in this case.

Functionality

Choosing a suitable design is good, but it’s not why your customers visit the site. For leading the successful online business, you definitely have to keep up with the time and implement the latest, modern interactive functionalities to search for the goods and navigate the e-store fast and without difficulties,

Some platforms for e-commerce development provide with already developed functionality. It is not customized and in some cases may not respond to your business’s needs. But again, it’s less expensive and more time-efficient.

Data Imports

Database integration is usually what you may or may not add to a regular website — but it’s obligatory for e-commerce sites.

The integration of the database allows your e-business to store information about the products you sell, the people working with you, and customers all in one place. If you want your company to be allowed to see the necessary corporate information, you need a high-quality database integration.

On the other hand, database integration is a great plus for customers. With its help, your buyers can create accounts with set preferences, add their favorites and track new products. It is also possible to use database integration in order to store credit card data to save the customers’ time for not having to re-enter them.

Marketing and SEO

Having SEO features out-of-the-box within an e-commerce platform is a big benefit and could save you a great deal of money. Of course, simple marketing won’t place your website in the first place in Google search, but it is a step in the right direction. Copywriting is essential for any website, and that includes e-commerce. Fortunately, e-commerce companies don’t need as many text-only pages as other websites. The main pages you have to worry about our terms and conditions, privacy conditions, and other technicalities like that.

Company selection and location

The e-commerce development company you choose will certainly affect the money you have to pay. Some companies are based in your country, and some are overseas. People believe that higher-priced companies usually provide more qualitative work.

Be sure whoever you choose can be trusted, and communication with them won’t bring you any difficulties.

Developers rates

According to Upwork, e-commerce developers charge between $5 and $125 per hour. North American developers charge the highest. Then Western and Eastern Europeans, South American Asian developers go respectively. Don’t forget, working with an agency is a more reliable option than working with a freelancer.

Good e-commerce website examples

Here are some of the best examples of how the e-commerce website should look like. Some of them can boast their beautiful design, others are popular with their user-experience features.

Footshop

Sneakers and more. You can hardly resist the temptation to buy top-brand shoes visiting Footshop. SapientPro team can be proud to take part in the development of the biggest European e-store.

Amazon 

Is there still anyone, who hasn’t heard of Amazon? I really doubt it. The functionality set is perfectly matching the customers’ needs, thas why it is so globally popular.

Bang-Olufsen

That’s the case when the impressive website design makes you fall in love with the product!

Cost to build an e-commerce website at each phase

Each step of the development process has its price. You do not necessarily need all of them unless you want to build the website from scratch. In the table below we outlined the average pricing on the market for each process separately. Don’t forget that the size of your business matters a lot.

Additional Website Creation Costs

Besides all the basic e-commerce website features mentioned above, there are still more to add to launch a successful e-business. One of such features is buying a domain name for your e-commerce website. It should resemble the name of your company, easily readable and memorized.

The other one is hosting for your e-commerce website, or in other words, service, providing access to your e-store in the World Wide Web It affects the page loading time, so take it seriously.

You may also add flash and multimedia elements to make the using of your website more interactive and engaging.

Website maintenance costs

Ecommerce website maintenance includes fixing any bugs that may crawl into your e-store, adding new details and features to certain parts of your site, or generally speaking – keeping your site in working condition.
If you don’t pay enough attention to website maintenance, it’s just a matter of time when you start facing various kinds of problems. Take care of having specialists at hand to fix all the issues as soon as they occur.

Tips for choosing e-commerce development solutions

Don’t forget to follow simple steps like those, described below and decide for yourself how much money you are ready to spend.

• Choose a comfortable and nice design to attract customers;
• Add a search engine to make it easier for the users to find what they need;
• Spend the money for SEO and marketing – you will see the result yourself;
• Choose the right e-commerce platform;
• Take care of integration with payment systems;
• Add push notifications and useful sections (e.g. Recently viewed products);
• Don’t grudge money for website maintenance.

Don’t panic if you feel like not ready to implement or even estimate the expenditures on your own. Our team with a profound experience in e-commerce development can give advice or do it for you. All you have to do is to contact us and provide information or idea about your project.