eCommerce Website

[TimmyBoston]

A few friends and I have started a very small MMA apparel company. We need a website, I've been pricing local website design companies and the typical cost for a simple eCommerce site is around $5000, which at the moment is very much outsite of our budget. Is this normal? Does anyone know about these types of designs or have any useful information for me?

Thanks

 

[mretzloff]

Tim, as someone who just launched a website I can help you. The price of launching an eCommerce website all depends on how complex it is. If you want a fancy website, unless you are a web designer yourself, you will need to pay someone to do it. I took a little time to learn basic HTML, CSS, and PHP and created mine, which was not too hard with Zen Cart's incredible support.

$5000 seems like a lot. Usually professionally designed eCommerce websites start at around $1500 and go up to $3000 or so. Pick an eCommerce website you like and see who designed it (there is usually something at the bottom). Most designers would be more than happy to offer you a quote. Quotes will be pretty broad, unless you know exactly what you want.

Good luck!

 

[Hutch1]

Check out weebly.com to build and host your site for free. They also have ecommerce pages built in, if you chose to add that feature. It's totally customizable, or you can use/modify standard templates.

 

[Confuzius]

My 2 cents: for an E-commerce site, there is no point in going local for your web design unless "local" is going to be a selling point.

 

[Jasonian]

I'm no professional, but I've built all of my own web sites.

http://espressotrainer.com and http://ajcoffeeco.com are the currently active ones.

The cost was the domain plus the server space (which is more than enough to handle my tiny web sites)

 

[gaseousclay]

get a basic site through bigcartel.com, find someone who knows how to code and bob's your uncle. $5000 for an ecommerce site is highway robbery imo.

 

[raisindot]

$5,000 is not unreasonable for a true ecommerce site--i.e., something this is transactional in nature, has an ordering system and shopping cart functionality, and allows for numerous item descriptions.

If all you're trying to do is put a simple site to promote a store (with no purchasing or item descriptions), then you can do this for a lot less.

Keep in mind that if you go cheap you get what you pay for. Off the shelf sites don't often look as good or have as much functionality as those designed by professional designers. The way your site looks and functions represents your brand in the marketplace. If your storefront looks cheap and out of date, that's the way your potential customers are going to look at it.

Jeff in Boston

 

[aimsport]

You might consider exploring companies like http://www.volusion.com .