How much does an e-commerce cost? I hear this question more and more often from friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. Given the historical period we are living in, I think this question is being asked today by many entrepreneurs and companies intent on reorganizing their business model. With this article, I would like to clarify some details that should not be underestimated, presenting an overview aimed at illustrating the work and strategies behind a winning e-commerce project.
So, how much does an e-commerce site cost? Price, especially on works of ingenuity, is usually governed primarily by the complexity of the work, then by the know-how of the person doing it and, last but not least, by the subjective self-evaluation of the person doing it. It is precisely from these concepts that the formulation of e-commerce pricing is structured.
Let’s delve deeper into this topic, projecting it onto the current scenario. To determine the price of an e-commerce, the first variable to evaluate is the complexity of the work, then the platform to be used as a base and the result you want to achieve on the front-end side (the graphic design for the uninitiated).
The complexity of the work affects the cost of an e-commerce
Shopify? Woocommerce? Prestashop? Magento? Each agency or professional in the field will have their own opinion, so much so that they will propose to the client the technology that best suits their skills, to avoid being in the uncomfortable position of working with a platform they do not have complete mastery of.
There are indeed many, but in principle, should you choose an open source CMS (without licensing fees) or develop the entire custom platform, there would be no fixed licensing fees. In the case of SaaS platforms – such as Shopify or Bigcommerce – we will have a small monthly cost, including hosting, which for the vast majority of cases will not go beyond 100-150€/month.
Platform selection is a very delicate phase that-if not approached with due caution-risks limiting the project and not getting it off the ground. To be clear, if our company wants to run an international B2b/B2c business, integrating CRM, PIM and more, it is unlikely to use a completely open source solution or one with a monthly cost of 100€. In addition, you will probably even need to think about a maintenance and support fee because you could not be totally autonomous in managing the entire infrastructure.
In case, for example, we were a brand with a catalog that was not too articulate and oriented more toward style than technological complication then we could certainly rely on a streamlined and inexpensive platform to focus our economic efforts on design and usability of content.
In addition, two very important aspects are both the size and experience of the company. When I was still a freelancer more than 20 years ago, I did everything myself and, of course, my cachet was sized according to the hours/work and what I thought was fair to ask for my experience as a young webmaster. As a result, I was attractive to micro/small companies because I reflected their needs 100 percent without exceeding their budget. I would never have been able to serve more structured companies or companies with complex technological demands alone because humanly I could not have sustained the workload of a team of professionals.
From 2000 to the present things have become more complicated in no small way, and of course we are becoming more and more demanding and detail-oriented, so much so that within an e-commerce agency there are different professionals with specific vertical skills, there are those who take care of the systemic side performances, the back-end programming, of usability study, graphics and so on. For example within our company usually for a small e-commerce project at least 4 different resources are involved while for a more complex project even more than 10.
The average implementation time for a small platform that has been taken care of in detail is about 30 working days, so when someone tells me that they have seen ecommerce sales as low as €3,000 I personally consider it to be a poor quality job done by a freelancer, an ‘unserious’ proposal submitted by an agency with poor skills, or a red herring that hides pitfalls.
How much does e-commerce cost? It depends on the know-how of the person doing the work
Very frequently this aspect is underestimated by the client.‘The programmer takes two minutes!‘,‘The graphic designer can do it right away!’… Such exclamations always make me smile, and I promptly reply: should this be true, in your opinion, how long did you have to study/work and how many times did the programmer/graphic designer have to make mistakes in order to succeed today in two minutes?This is the know-how. In the world of the Web, it is a crucial and often underestimated aspect to consider when choosing a vendor. E-commerce is in fact a store and accommodates people. Do you like to go inside a nice store? Would you rather have your cousin furnish your store (little experience but + savings) or pay architects/interior designers (lots of experience but + expensive)? Business is about choices , and if there is a sound and solid idea behind your project, I highly recommend a specialized and experienced company. Maybe you will spend a little more, but as soon as your e-commerce is open to the public, you can take some nice satisfaction both on the vanity level and on the turnover level. It is irrefutable that an e-commerce that is engaging, fast and usable will sell more for the same amount of traffic than one that is less polished on these aspects.
A detail not to be underestimated: subjective self-assessment
Finally, we come to the most volatile aspect that determines the price of an e-commerce, subjective self-evaluation. This factor is undoubtedly related to the decision-maker-that is, the one who holds the helm of a company. Reasonably, I think everyone values themselves and places value on their company and the people on the team. When we determine the price of an e-commerce, like in the kitchen, we add the various ingredients: platform used, project characteristics (infrastructure, features, integrations, design), dedicated team and estimated development time.
I like to compare development work to the world of cooking. Fortunately, just as in cooking, the same recipes lead to different results depending on the skill of the chef and his team, even in our highly automated, schematic, and data-driven IT world the subjective human factor is still a crucial variable in obtaining an excellent result that can support the success of an e-commerce project.
If you think your e-commerce should be a tool for your company’s work and development, try not to dwell only on the mere economic aspect, but try to make an overall assessment by trying to find a compromise that satisfies you between the above factors and your budget.
