How hard can it be to get a website made

carrot-cake_2

I have contacted lots and lots of webpage designers for prices and they have either promised to email me some examples with prices and haven't or given me a price of thousands of pounds for a basic website.

I have tried making one myself but because its ecommerce it really doesn't have all of the functions I need and its way to complicated and time consuming to be doing this when I don't know much about it.

This is the only thing stopping me from starting my business now I have the money waiting for the website and all of my stock ready to sell.

Its so frustrating!

Atidi

Its not that hard to get a website.

But if you really do want one with all the bells & whistles, and you can't do it yourslf, then you'll have to pay the going rate.

Presumably you've had more than one independent quote, and if so, and the prices of the independent quotes are in the same region, that's probably the going rate.

In the meantime, you could always stick your stuff on ebay and/or amazon to try and shift it. At least both already have a shedload of (virtual) footfall.

xxJudexx

I used https://www.weebly.com. You can use your own domian name and they have a dedicated e commerce option. Have a look at their website and see if it is what you are looking for.

GolfBravo

What sort of features do you need/want? Which bank are you using (merchant account)? Are your product images and product copy ready? Is your content already edited and SEO optimised? How many products and categories?

A fully featured ecommerce website IMHO would cost around £1000 and should take 3 to 4 days max (using a template). You can obviously spend more and have more features, but IMHO for a startup shop it is imperative to generate traffic and sales ASAP, and then add further functionality when/if needed.

For a start you obviously need a website designed, built, full of products (and categories) with quality images and good SEO descriptions, ready to sell with a good payment gateway in place. The most cost effective solution would be to start from a template (Wordpress, Opencart, etc.), adding branding and customization and using PayPal Standard. So you need a domain name, web hosting and payment gateway, plus the template and pay for customisation.

Take a look at this website - it's just a $60 Wordpress template that needs to be setup and customised. Or this.

Then you can start thinking about custom product pages, a custom checkout, and additional design details - you can add those once your website is generating cash-flow.

From my own experience the 3 most difficult things when creating a ecommerce website are:
- deciding on functionality: not too much, and not too little
- attractive and original product images and good advertising copy: first impressions count, you need images that are twitter and facebook-worthy, text must be SEO optimised.
- getting the necessary website traffic and converting it into sales: you can buy almost anything from Ebay or Amazon these days, so it is quite a challenge to stand out from the crowd.

Also when you have the shop setup, you need to learn how to add new products and update the existing (prices, descriptions, etc.) - you need to be able to run the shop yourself to minimise costs.

GolfBravo

Atidi wrote: »

In the meantime, you could always stick your stuff on ebay and/or amazon to try and shift it. At least both already have a shedload of (virtual) footfall.

Agreed.

Ebay is a good way to learn. You'll see exactly how many views your page is getting, your conversion rate, you can SEO optimise the content, payment and returns is already taken care of (for a start you don't see your money for around 21 days).

Just make sure you have enough margin to cover their fees and commissions, plus the costs of eventual customer returns. And beware of copycats.

The main problem is that Ebay is all about rock bottom price IMHO - it is a race to the bottom, not very good for your product brand.

monkeymo

Have you seen https://www.1and1.co.uk ?

They allow you to buy a website "off the shelf" but you can then customise it as much as you want to/time allows. They offer different packages depending on what you need e.g. e-commerce, databases etc

I use them and would use them again.

HTH
Mo

InsideInsurance

GolfBravo wrote: »

A fully featured ecommerce website IMHO would cost around £1000 and should take 3 to 4 days max (using a template). You can obviously spend more and have more features, but IMHO for a startup shop it is imperative to generate traffic and sales ASAP, and then add further functionality when/if needed.

Agree that a standard ecommerce shop with a single simple semi-bespoke template and simple logo should be around a grand if all product images and descriptions are given with only some fairly basic SEO done to any copy, page titles etc.

I disagree on the timescales but it is very dependent on the accuracy of the client brief and how quickly they sign off the templates. Certainly once the design is sorted then it is only a couple of days effort.


To the OP - web designers/ developers can be a funny bunch and at times a pain to deal with. It is hard to judge which are professional outfits and which are kids in a bedroom who just post the job on a freelancer site and buy the services of the lowest bidder in India.

Many pro companies also have fairly selective markets that they are interested in dealing with. If you had come to my old company we'd probably have declined to quote unless it was exceptionally quiet time because our area of interest was bespoke development and not a run of the mill ecommerce solution.

The other issue is that probably about 1 in 10 approaches from a start up ever turn into a job for anyone as many people have their idea of the next eBay or Twitter but no funds to pay for it. Sometimes companies can get a little reluctant to invest time giving quotes if for whatever reason they think it may not turn into a job - its bad enough when a competitor wins the business, its worse when the job just gets canned.

Ultimately keep contacting companies and you will find one that you gel with and you'll be right for each other.

carrot-cake_2

I was hoping the website would cost in the region of £1000 to £2000 however I have sent the webpage designers a link to the basic website I have made on webeden and asked them how much it would be to recreate this but with better functions such as customer log in, payment options etc and some have quoted around £3000 and one said £7000!!!

I am unable to sell via ebay, amazon and facebook due to a clause with my supplier. If I wanted to sell via these websites I would need to sign a contract and pay a large fee so the website is my only option. Until then I am pretty much stuck and its so frustrating when I have the money waiting! I just don't want to be ripped off x

Smallbizpro

I created my simple yet highly effective single page website with Telnames.com. For just £14.95 for the year I got top level domain, easy to use template that works on all devices and is smartphone friendly and full hosting. It has everything I need for customers to understand what I do and how to contact me: full contact info. inc. click-to-call/email, social media links, images, Youtube link, voucher creation and I can even take payment from it via PayPal. If you're a small biz or professional that needs something basic that works and is easy and quick to set up and maintain via PC or Telnames iPhone/Android app, it's a winner. They even submit to local search sites automatically. Their service is excellent (UK based people and live chat/email). They're supporting Small Business Saturday on Dec. 7th and new customers can get a third off using code 'SBS' I think until until year end. I've told loads of biz contacts about it and they've all been really pleased.

GolfBravo

carrot-cake wrote: »

recreate this but with better functions such as customer log in, payment options etc and some have quoted around £3000 and one said £7000!!!

>>wordpress + template + plugins + payment gateway<< Customer login, a choice of payment options (credit cards, bacs, paypal, etc.), coupons, bulk discounts, etc.

See my comments above.

carrot-cake wrote: »

I am unable to sell via ebay, amazon and facebook due to a clause with my supplier. If I wanted to sell via these websites I would need to sign a contract and pay a large fee so the website is my only option.

How are your customers going to find your website? Social media, Google adwords?

InsideInsurance

carrot-cake wrote: »

I was hoping the website would cost in the region of £1000 to £2000 however I have sent the webpage designers a link to the basic website I have made on webeden and asked them how much it would be to recreate this but with better functions such as customer log in, payment options etc and some have quoted around £3000 and one said £7000!!!

In an ideal world the dog should wag the tail but ultimately we dont all have unlimited budgets.

Off the shelf engines like Magneto will have a lot of the functionality that you require and certainly there are reputable companies that will create a site based on it for the £1k previously mentioned.

There are off the shelf plugins available for the more popular engines which can add further functionality which may be free or licensed and the developer shouldnt charge much more for adding these for you.

If you cannot afford what you 100% want then you should see how close you can get with what is readily available and within your budget (Magneto itself has an open source version). The challenge is getting someone to invest this amount of time for free unless you are willing to do the legwork yourself.