In 2021, having an eCommerce website that works for everybody is extremely important, and making a website that services users will involve a cost. eCommerce website cost varies depending on the size of your business, the traffic you expect to receive, features you expect, and so much more.
You can spend hundreds on a website you build yourself, thousands on a website built by a single professional, or tens of thousands (or more!) with a professional eCommerce website development company.
The more you spend, typically, the better results you’ll see. Agencies deliver great results and even provide eCommerce SEO services to ensure your site is seen. Remember that your eCommerce site is the gateway to your brand, and for some customers, the only interaction they have with your business. It’s important to get it right.
The average cost of an eCommerce website doesn’t tell you much. Every website has a different total price tag because it has different features, a different person designs it, and it caters to a different audience. Ecommerce website design cost also varies depending on the experience of the people or agency developing the site and their commitment to your brand.
Still, there are some general expenses that you will need to meet for an eCommerce website development:
Using an agency that values the long-term performance of your brand will increase the price, and relying on a single developer who hands the completed website over for you to manage will reduce your price. Ecommerce SEO services also bump up your overall dollar spend, and eCommerce website hosting costs are impossible to avoid.
Pricing also depends on the eCommerce platforms you use. Popular ones include:
While there are more niche eCommerce platforms. today we want to focus on these three, which are the most accessible for anyone.
The Shopify website cost totals vary depending on which plan you choose. Shopify web hosting ensures your eCommerce website offers a seamless online shopping experience, letting people browse your products (and services) and make transactions online.
That’s powered by extensive Shopify web development done behind the scenes, justifying the expenditure for your online store.
Shopify’s basic plan for eCommerce is $29 per month. This increases to $79 per month for the next best plan, and the advanced plan is priced at $299 per month.
Payment costs for your eCommerce website depend on the plan you use. The basic plan includes a payment processing fee of a 2.9% + 30¢ fee for all transactions. For the next best plan, expect to pay a fee of 2.6% and a 30¢ fee for transactions. For the advanced plan, it is a 2.4% fee and 30¢ per transaction.
Design costs vary depending on your online store and your requirements, but an average price you might expect to pay for a regular eCommerce store is around $500. This increases the more elements and custom features you add and may run into the thousands if you require special features.
Shopify allows you to add extensions and add-ons, allowing you and your customers to use additional features on your eCommerce store. The prices of these apps and add-ons vary greatly but are often charged monthly. Expect to pay prices like $9.99 per month, depending on the app you use.
Shopify allows you to add extra filters for your eCommerce store’s products, letting people choose between size and colors. Additional functionality, however, requires purchasing one of the higher-end plans.
Perhaps your eCommerce store already uses a fulfillment platform that isn’t connected to your e-commerce site. Connecting the two can come at a price. You may also need customization on individual products, allowing people to choose between colors and sizes.
Shopify offers its own DIY marketing tool, baked right into its platform. It lets you upload your products, which will then be automatically added to the Google shopping database. It creates a Google Merchant Center and sets you up to add products in the future. This helps you expand your reach to include people searching for products like yours right in the Google platform. It’s ideal for smaller eCommerce operations but doesn’t offer the same reach as dedicated digital marketing strategies built by professional agencies.
The total sum of your Shopify eCommerce cost factors in the price of eCommerce development from a professional agency, your subscription to the eCommerce platform, the price of your hosting, and additional costs from plugins and extensions.
Of course, the total can have a substantial range, depending on the size of your eCommerce business, the number of products in your inventory, and other factors.
Shopify, being a user-friendly and popular option, means that while it may be slightly pricier than some of the other platforms out there, its usability makes it a cost-effective option for many businesses.
Magento is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms around. Magento website cost will vary depending on the features you choose to deploy in the platform. . Magento web design is built around your needs, thanks to a team of Magento eCommerce developers who bake in great functionality and features.
Let’s take a look at the factors that determine the cost of your Magento eCommerce website development.
The price of running a Magento eCommerce website depends on what you need, but hosting can start from as little as $10 per month or may increase to $250 per month. For dedicated servers, this may even increase to $500 per month.
The payment processing fee depends on the payment processor you use on your Magento eCommerce website. PayPal, Authorize, AmazonPay, and Braintree are four common processors used on this platform.
The cost of designing an eCommerce website with Magento can range from anywhere between $1,500 to $100,000, depending on your requirements. The bigger the site and the more features you need, the pricier it becomes. But, the more you spend on a website, the bigger your opportunity to make a good return.
Many extensions and add-ons are free, but some range from the $79 mark to several hundreds of dollars. You can browse the add-ons and extensions in the Magento Marketplace, where you may filter by category, feature, and price.
Like most eCommerce platforms, Magento allows you to add variables to your products – from size and color to fabric or design. It also offers advanced tools that our team at Catapult Revenue can make use of the advanced tools on Magento to create a more complex eCommerce store for your business, connecting your online store to an eCommerce platform if you already use a different fulfillment platform.
Through Magento, you can also apply additional functionality that allows you to sell products and services business-to-business (B2B) or to dealers and brokers. These features allow brokers and other dealers to sell through your website, giving your customers a greater range of products but requiring additional programming.
How much you spend on marketing is dependent on your revenue goals. Your budget and your business aims should dictate how much you spend. However, the U.S. Small Business Administration advises that between 7 and 8% of your company’s revenue should be used for marketing. At Catapult Revenue, we typically see customers starting off their eCommerce marketing budget at around $2,500 per month, which increases to as much as $15,000 as the businesses grow.
The total cost of your Magento website combines eCommerce development, hosting, additional plugins (if any), and digital marketing fees.
BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform that allows you to build a website, host it on their servers, and even make use of their own SEO and marketing features.
BigCommerce website cost varies, much like with Magento and Shopify, owing to the wide range of features you can choose from.
The basic plan for BigCommerce is $29.95 per month, the Plus plan comes in at $79.95 per month, and the Pro plan is $299.95 per month. The plans vary in terms of features, though every plan lets you host an unlimited number of products on your eCommerce store.
BigCommerce charges a payment processing fee for each product sold on your eCommerce website. This fee is waived for some gateways, but special credit card rates range between 2.2% and 2.9% per transaction, plus a fee of 30¢.
The cost of developing a BigCommerce website depends on who you hire to build it and may range from $500 to tens of thousands of dollars. The more you spend, the greater the functionality and the better it looks. It gives you a long-term assurance that the eCommerce website functions well, is intuitive, and keeps people browsing your products.
The more you’re willing to pay, the better website design and features you get, too. Opt for the Pro package ($299.95 per month), and you’ll get custom product filtering, allowing people to browse your products with specific prices or attributes in mind.
BigCommerce has its own app store, which allows you to download additional tools for your eCommerce website. From live hats to custom headers, there are many to choose from. Some are completely free, while others may have monthly fees of $9.99 – or more. It depends entirely on what you choose.
As mentioned in the previous two sections, eCommerce platforms allow you to create customizable options for each of your products. This allows customers to choose between variations of your products or services.
Custom B2B features allow dealers and brokers to sell through your site, or you may need to connect your existing fulfillment platform with your new e-commerce system. These incur additional expenditures but make your website more intuitive and provide a great user experience.
BigCommerce doesn’t have a built-in marketing function or service. Your eCommerce business will depend on the expertise of web developers to help with this. At Catapult revenue, we create e-commerce marketing campaigns based on your company’s vision and goals. Typical campaigns range from $2,500 per month up to $15,000 for bigger clients and more demanding projects.
The total cost of your e-commerce website depends on what you need. It may be several thousand dollars, and it may be several tens of thousands of dollars. It is also likely to include monthly charges, as any profitable online business utilizes eCommerce packages to provide a seamless shopping experience for customers.
WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin used on WordPress. Your eCommerce website price will depend on multiple factors relating to your new WooCommerce site, including eCommerce website development cost, plugins, hosting, and more.
WooCommerce has many hosting partners, with some starting at just $3.95 but others charging thousands of dollars. Your hosting fees depend on the size of your e-commerce website and your expected traffic, as well as your requirements with regard to domains and email addresses.
Payment fees are applied to your account by the payment processor you choose. So whether it’s PayPal or Amazon pay, you should expect these fees to vary and base your decision on which gateway is most functional and affordable for your eCommerce store.
Your custom eCommerce website must be built through WordPress to make use of WooCommerce. Custom eCommerce development ranges in price from around $1,000 to several tens of thousands of dollars depending on whether you use an independent web designer or an eCommerce web design agency.
WooCommerce features many extensions and add-ons available through WordPress, many of which are free, many of which come with a small one-time sum, and others charging a monthly fee. This all provides great adaptability for your eCommerce store.
WooCommerce is free but boasts a seemingly endless range of features when you utilize third-party extensions for your eCommerce website. As mentioned previously, these add-ons can be free, but some may require a monthly or one-off fee.
Communications features range from being completely free to as much as $328 per year, eCommerce SEO can be handled for free but may cost $89 per year, and security can again be free or incur a rate of up to $300 per year.
Your WooCommerce eCommerce platform allows you to sell products online but must be complemented by an effective marketing strategy. Expert web development agencies like Catapult Revenue can help you build your online presence through Search Engine Optimization and other forms of online outreach, which can range anywhere from $2,500 per month to $15,000 per month, depending on your company’s needs.
The total cost of your website is the sum of your eCommerce plan, monthly hosting bills, and your marketing expenditure, including eCommerce SEO.
For now, we only discussed the upfront costs of building an eCommerce website, but after you build one you need to keep it running and it comes with new costs as well. Here are just a few of them:
The average cost of an eCommerce website probably won’t mean much to you. Every website is different, and every company has its own specific needs. Catapult Revenue is an eCommerce marketing agency and web development specialist offering customized services and a long-term commitment to your brand and vision.
As a full-service agency, we offer eCommerce marketing tailored towards your needs, taking all SEO tasks off your hand and putting your products in front of potential customers in your preferred markets. The cost of your site will depend entirely on the intended reach of your business, the functionality you require, and how much marketing you need. Your eCommerce platform charges a fixed monthly fee, and our agency assigns talented developers and web experts to your project for a monthly fee.
Our commitment to your brand’s long-term success is what makes the eCommerce website design cost so worth it.
Our eCommerce web development company will pose a series of questions to tailor our services to you. Answering these questions is essential to ensure your business gets the eCommerce solutions it needs, implemented in a custom website that best displays your products and turns traffic into paying customers.
The more products in your online store, the more filters are required. Customers need an efficient way of filtering through products to find the ones they want. It may also determine the general style and layout of your site.
If you own a clothing eCommerce store, you know exactly what this means! Special attributes for products allow customers on e-commerce websites to choose between different variations of one product, from color and size to design and fabric. As we mentioned above, functionality and programming fees are tied to these features.
Your eCommerce digital marketing and web development agency will also need to know your shipping options for each of your products, so it can be built to allow customers to choose the right options and to integrate a line of communication between your business and its shipping systems.
If you already use a sales stack, we need to know which one so that it can be integrated into your new site. In-built shipping calculators on your eCommerce website can also be developed to give customers accurate quotes for different kinds of shipping.
Rewards shoppers, special members, or employees, and partners who all need discounts will need a bespoke customer area on your e-commerce site that offers extra features.
The price of your website will also depend on the eCommerce platform you use. The four platforms we mention in this piece are great options with clear pricing structures.
Your e-commerce business is only as successful as your e-commerce website. After all, it is the backbone and the engine of your business, and it must be intuitive and easy to use.
The simple truth is that developing a genuinely effective eCommerce website takes time and money, but this should be viewed as an investment — a necessary one at that — in your business.
Working with an expert agency is a smart move for small and midsize e-commerce companies looking to grow their revenue in meaningful ways.
We are invested in the long-term success of the businesses that seek our guidance and would be more than glad to perform a full assessment of your current eCommerce website and business goals. We’ll formulate web development, digital marketing strategy, and eCommerce solutions based on your needs to offer customers a seamless online shopping experience and the increased traffic and revenue needed to grow your business. Our assessment is completely free, and our plan is yours to keep whether you sign on to work with us or not. It’s that simple.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch to see how we can help!
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