E-Commerce website cost

[Nikki]

We're considering opening an e-commerce business. It would be for both the general public as well as providing a product for a specific industry for resale (with that being our primary source of business). Our business clients would have a different price than our general public clients. Any ideas on what to expect for the cost of building this website initially? For maintaining the website?

Any other website consideration for e-commerce would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[Fulcrum]

Done right - not cheap. I'll let the designers weigh in on why.

[Nikki]

I definitely don't want to cheap out. I'm just trying to figure out what to expect. I'll get a couple quotes as well, but wanted to get some feedback here too.

[Harold Mansfield]

No way to say. You'd have to speak with some actual web designers who will need to know a lot more information about what you want, functionality, your own skill level and so on.
There is no boiler plate "It costs this much to build an ecommerce site" that anyone can rattle off. It also depends on the designer and what you want.

Not saying that I want you to post all of the details so that people start trying to give you quotes. I do not.

But first you'll need to know a little more about what you want. What you want the site to do?
How big is your inventory? Do you have any marketing materials, images of your product?

Is this 2 sites, or just one with 2 sets of prices?
How do you plan on, or want to, differentiate between buyers?
Is there some kind of membership requirement?

Do you have any skills? Do you want something that you can manage, or do you need an all in one solution with hosting, maintenance and tech support for a monthly fee?

Have you seen any similar sites that have everything you want, that you would like to emulate?

Those are just some of the questions that someone would need to ask before they can tell you it'll be $1k or $10k.

[turboguy]

Hopefully some of the web designers here will contact you directly for more information. You might want to think about having them build your site using a CMS such as Wordpress or Joomla which would let you do the updating yourself. I only have a little experience with having someone do updates but quite often they get busy trying to finish up a project and your updates may sit. Doing it yourself lets you do it whenever you want and you can play around if you don't like the results. There are other CMS programs but between the two I mentioned it is a lot easier to update a Wordpress site than a Joomla site.

The other thing as Harold mentioned do you plan to have two sites or the other option would be to have log in info for your dealers that lets them access pricing and info that anyone else could not see. I am sure the other thing that will effect pricing a lot is the number of products and the number of pages you need.

[bob1978]

We're considering opening an e-commerce business. It would be for both the general public as well as providing a product for a specific industry for resale (with that being our primary source of business). Our business clients would have a different price than our general public clients. Any ideas on what to expect for the cost of building this website initially? For maintaining the website?

Any other website consideration for e-commerce would be much appreciated. Thanks!


I definitely don't want to cheap out. I'm just trying to figure out what to expect. I'll get a couple quotes as well, but wanted to get some feedback here too.

As others have mentioned, the quotes will vary considerably, depending on your exact requirements, and design considerations. You're probably at least looking at CMS solutions such as WordPress, modified for use with your specs. If you need a unique design, that's added cost on top. Login functionality, more on top. Carts, more on top. A lot of folks will give you quotes on the lower to medium range on this platform, since it's so popular. If you require more advanced solutions with customized features, then you'll either need a Ruby on Rails or Django developer to help build it for you. However, if appearance is important for attracting customers, then you need at least a two-person team to build the site - a dev and a designer. Or you can find someone who can do both (full stack). Both solutions are not cheap, expect to be quoted on the medium to high end, especially if it needs considerable polish on the front-end. Those take time to do, especially if it also needs to be responsive (looks and works well in mobile and desktop). In all of the solutions above, you should be able to maintain it yourself - inventory at least. Text and image content on static pages on the other hand, you should bring it up with the dev on how you'd like to handle those.

[romels33]

Harold is pretty much spot on with this one. There are too many "unknowns" in the equation in order to provide you a quote. I've done an e-commerce site for a medium size private company a few years ago and it was done in ASP.NET with 4 of us in the team. The project took 6 months to complete (we were all freelancers in the team) and the quoted price in the beginning was for about 7500. It had all the features a common e-commerce site would have such as editing and adding new products, upload images, take credit card payments using PayPal API, track orders and shipping via UPS and USPS API, respond to customer service, returns, and etc. The company only had about 80 - 100 products, but in the end, the client ended up with a $9k invoice, due to additional features not mentioned in the beginning.

It's really difficult to tell how much you're going to spend without some additional info on what exactly you want your site to do. I have to agree with turboguy that you would want to be able to "automate" some of the processes and have the ability to manage the products yourself. You just can't risk to have someone else (your developer) do these for you, since you'll never know when you would want to change, edit or add a product right away! =) Good luck and just let me know if I can be of any help.

Romel

[Nikki]

Thanks for the feedback. It will be one site with a different price for members with logins. Inventory will be low, but customization for each product high. I got a quote of about $3000 today. How many quotes would be good to get?

What are the pros and cons of using PayPal versus a merchant account?

[romels33]

Thanks for the feedback. It will be one site with a different price for members with logins. Inventory will be low, but customization for each product high. I got a quote of about $3000 today. How many quotes would be good to get?

What are the pros and cons of using PayPal versus a merchant account?

Wow, that's actually pretty good... =) 3K is a little bit on the cheap end in my opinion, but again, it really depends on what you're trying to do. Since you mentioned that you have low inventory, that's probably why its cheaper. You should try to get "AS MANY QUOTES AS YOU CAN" and choose the one you're comfortable with. Often, freelancers/developers will have some perks to offer up front, such as maintenance and code changes. For example, I'm not the cheapest price on the block compared to other developers, but I do weekly screen shares with all my clients just for their peace of mind. I also offer maintenance for free if the bill is large enough.

In regards to paypal vs merchant accounts, they are pretty much the same in my opinion, except for the amount of service charge they charge you. The project I mentioned above used Authorize.NET (for half - purchasing items, and other half is through PayPal for accepting membership payments) and I thought they were pretty good. Secured transactions and I was able to "piggy back" off their API for producing reports for tax purposes. PayPal is quite good as well, but takes more time to implement their API. If you're going to use PayPal and do all the credit card transactions on your website (without leaving your site to go to the paypal portal), it will take a little bit more time since you'll have to create a sandbox for testing.

Hope this helps and good luck =)

Romel

[Harold Mansfield]

Thanks for the feedback. It will be one site with a different price for members with logins. Inventory will be low, but customization for each product high. I got a quote of about $3000 today. How many quotes would be good to get?

Until you've gotten enough to feel like you have a grasp of the cost to get exactly what you want, and have found a company that you want to work with.
I cannot stress this enough, just make sure you give the people you are asking for quotes ALL of the information and all of your wants. Don't assume things are just automatically included in web design.

Things like SEO, responsiveness, copywriting...a lot of people assume are all included. They are not. Most reputable companies will tell you what's included. If it's not mentioned, it is not included.


What are the pros and cons of using PayPal versus a merchant account?

Depends. I don't really know your needs so it's hard to say what's the right solution for you.

Personally I use Pay Pal/Braintree and have for years and the pros have far outweighed the cons for me. It's easy, they have great tools and my clients immediately trust it whether they are in Minnesota or Australia. Although I don't use it for large invoices even though you can.

Nothing wrong with a merchant account either if that makes more sense for you.

A lot of people only look at the fees, and not the service. If you're dealing with small margins fees may be an issue. If not, just make sure you consider the services that you get for the fees. Low fees doesn't always mean that they do everything that you need.

[Fulcrum]

$3K sounds low. I got a quote for that to build a 10 page informational website without the members area and no e-commerce.

The amount (volume) of physical inventory shouldn't have any effect on the price of a website. Where you will get hit is in the high customization of your product as each option and combined options should have their own part numbers. When I was making tooling, the company I worked at had their website redone and it cost well over $100K (over 4K part numbers and live inventory tracking).

[Harold Mansfield]

The amount (volume) of physical inventory shouldn't have any effect on the price of a website.
No not volume. I don't care if you have a warehouse full on one product or only have one in inventory. What I'm talking about is how many individual products. 10 may be a few hours work. 100 is a few days work.

[romels33]

No not volume. I don't care if you have a warehouse full on one product or only have one in inventory. What I'm talking about is how many individual products. 10 may be a few hours work. 100 is a few days work.

Yeah this is true. As I've mentioned, the project I worked on had about 80 - 100 individual products, and it took us about a week to sort through them so we can define an Entity that would work for all products, when time comes for programming. The challenge in this specific scenario was that some products were only available for sale to specific "members" and some were only available to specific members at a specific level of membership... =) But yes, the volume should not matter, but the number of individual products would definitely factor in.

Romel

[Harold Mansfield]

Yeah this is true. As I've mentioned, the project I worked on had about 80 - 100 individual products, and it took us about a week to sort through them so we can define an Entity that would work for all products, when time comes for programming. The challenge in this specific scenario was that some products were only available for sale to specific "members" and some were only available to specific members at a specific level of membership... =) But yes, the volume should not matter, but the number of individual products would definitely factor in.

Romel


And usually when people have that many products and you're the first web guy to really put it all online, they don't have images for all of them or they are of varying qualities, they have no product descriptions, sales copy, and so on and so on. So it becomes part of the job to guide them through either creating that stuff for the site, or having to help them create it. A lot of people just assume all of that extra time doesn't matter. That you're only worth the physical time spent coding or building the actual site. And yet they still expect your time and guidance on it.

This is why we have to ask A LOT of questions in order to give a price. If I listened to everyone who told me "I just want something simple" and priced every project based on that alone, I'd be out of business already. Everything looks simple when it's already done. Besides, most people bill on time. Not degree of difficulty. I don't care if it's just uploading images...if it takes me 10 hours to do it, then that's how you get charged. I don't do it for free just because in their opinion it's not that hard.

It's also very common for people to try and downplay the project and leave out key details in order to get you to commit to a cheaper price. This is why I keep saying, make sure you tell them everything and don't assume things are included just because you see it on other websites.

You can save A LOT of money by being prepared, organized, and having as many materials ready for your web designer as you can. Going in with nothing ready means more time that he has to spend helping you get it ready. Of course most are more than willing to help, or even do the whole thing for you...but that's factored into the cost and time.

[bhanks]

The resell vs retail price should probably be 30 - 40% different. I would bill by the hour. You can get upside down in a project pretty fast if you do fixed bid. The other option is to get a long term contract and just back it into the cost over the term of the contract.

[Brian Altenhofel]

Our business clients would have a different price than our general public clients.

This is where you get into a lot of complexity, especially if you operate like most wholesalers. It's probably safe to assume the general public will see MSRP. But what are your business customers seeing? Most business customers don't see the same pricing as other business customers, even if they are not purchasing for resale. If you want those orders to go through your site rather than remain offline, you've added more complexity to your site in exchange for simplifying your overall business process.

The original post is also vague on whether you will also be selling products that are complimentary to yours. If so, is the pricing for those products handled under the same pricing agreements for your products? Do you keep these products in inventory, or do you need to directly order them from a supplier? Do you need to know the current stocking status of your supplier(s) before allowing a product to be ordered?

Other scenarios that are common when selling to businesses (especially for resale) are allocations and backorder-bypass. An allocation is where you commit to setting aside a certain amount of product for a specific customer for a certain period of time. That's generally reserved for high volume customers that are really moving your product. For example, Customer X might have an allocation of 25 Widget A's per rolling 30 day period. In that case, either the inventory control system that your site is syncing to should support that, or your site itself if you are using it as an inventory control system or if your inventory control system doesn't support allocations. Backorder-bypass is where certain customers' orders are fulfilled first when a product is out of stock. Usually that's possible because a certain amount of reserve stock is kept beyond the "0" that is reported to the general public (business customer volume tends to be rather predictable), but in cases where there is no reserve or the reserve is depleted then those customers who have agreements in place get their orders fulfilled first while others who may have been in line longer still show as waiting on backorders.

If you only set two prices (one public, one wholesale) right now, you might be thinking that you don't need to consider what I've mentioned above because you don't do it right now. But what about when a customer comes to you asking for a special price for a volume commitment? What about when you start moving a lot of product through a major online marketplace with distribution centers spread around the country or globe? It's a lot easier to plan and prepare for it now (even if not actually implemented) than to re-tool later. That's why I would recommend using a system that has a sufficient database abstraction layer in place (like Drupal) so that database backends can be swapped out as needed (relational databases will grind your site to a halt if you have more than a few pricing variations between customers and products).

Also consider how you will reconcile your orders with your accounting system. Ideally, you would want to have your site automatically submit orders and transactions to your accounting system so that you don't have to do double entry of data. Some e-commerce systems will provide basic CSV/XLS exports of data, but often those have to be reworked to be usable in accounting.

Don't make the mistake of throwing your e-commerce site on shared hosting. It is impossible to meet PCI-DSS compliance requirements on shared hosting (and even on some shared tenant VPS services).




I got a quote of about $3000 today.

That is extremely low. That's less than what it would normally cost to offshore a basic e-commerce site, and what you've mentioned is not basic.

[BNB]

What is wrong with just using an out of the box storefront? There is a ton of them. You can make an online store for $29. Let's face it, most people who start online stores will crash and burn. It's an "idea" they want "ecommerce" .... I wouldn't spend thousands of dollars on an idea unless it's pretty well established. There is a ton of online ecommerce solutions where it's about as easy as uploading a logo. You can maybe have a designer help you with a few bits and pieces to make the store branded for you. A few hundred bucks. Besides that, just spend your own time entering products and learning the store. Figure out which one works for your business and has the features you need.

Though I'm not surprised the recommendations here, from a bunch of designers, would include hiring a designer/developer and paying thousands and thousands of dollars.

[Harold Mansfield]

What is wrong with just using an out of the box storefront? There is a ton of them. You can make an online store for $29.
Because he has special needs and wants custom functionality that you aren't going to get with an of the box solution.


Let's face it, most people who start online stores will crash and burn. It's an "idea" they want "ecommerce" .... I wouldn't spend thousands of dollars on an idea unless it's pretty well established.
And how do you get it "established" without investing time and money? Most people crash and burn because they do just that...stick a toe in to see if magic happens and then when it doesn't they're at a loss for what to do next.
Yep, it still may fail. But if you don't give it 100% if will definitely fail. It all comes down to how much do you really believe in it and do you have a plan. If you're just messing around hoping to get lucky then you can do that over and over again forever and never hit on anything.


There is a ton of online ecommerce solutions where it's about as easy as uploading a logo. You can maybe have a designer help you with a few bits and pieces to make the store branded for you. A few hundred bucks. Besides that, just spend your own time entering products and learning the store. Figure out which one works for your business and has the features you need.

Though I'm not surprised the recommendations here, from a bunch of designers, would include hiring a designer/developer and paying thousands and thousands of dollars.

If we thought something out of the box would do what he's asking for, we would have recommended it. There's nothing out there that does what he wants. It has to be built, which means someone has to build it.

[BNB]

There is nothing out of the box that can do group pricing? You mean, like this: https://apps.shopify.com/customer-pricing

Jumping in and spending $10k may be horrible advice. Considering most ideas are terrible, marketing is terrible, people just don't know what they are doing. EVERYONE has an idea for an ecommerce website. They should absolutely keep their costs very low and focus on selling and marketing. It's exactly what I do when I introduce new products and items. Some, that I 100% believed in, have failed gloriously and people simply were not interested and I'm seasoned, you may say an expert. Thank goodness I didn't drop $10k on it. Dipping your toes in is exactly what you should do. I disagree with you completely.

Only this person knows their true needs. But if you can get a hosted solution for $29/mo and add on the customer pricing for $29/mo... you are at $60/mo investment. $60/mo is cheaper than a decent VPS. Maybe $300 - $500 to get a logo designed and someone to make some hero graphics for the template. Keep it simple. Then go SELL SELL SELL. Investing so much time, energy, and effort into a shopping cart for a startup like this, and someone without much experience, seems insane to me. Plus, a hosted solution is more manageable, easier plugins, etc. It just makes sense for someone like this.

Some complicated ecommerce site is probably the last think Nikki needs to be worrying about. A simple catalog and a Freshbooks account would probably suffice. SELL SELL SELL. I can't stress that enough. I know companies that do $40M a year selling both retail and wholesale, they have informational pages, barely a catalog, and you email/call your rep to place your order. It's highly unlikely Nikki needs to waste months and months of time with a designer doing some custom ecommerce site, at least, not yet.

[Harold Mansfield]

There is nothing out of the box that can do group pricing? You mean, like this: https://apps.shopify.com/customer-pricing

Jumping in and spending $10k may be horrible advice. Considering most ideas are terrible, marketing is terrible, people just don't know what they are doing. EVERYONE has an idea for an ecommerce website. They should absolutely keep their costs very low and focus on selling and marketing. It's exactly what I do when I introduce new products and items. Some, that I 100% believed in, have failed gloriously and people simply were not interested and I'm seasoned, you may say an expert. Thank goodness I didn't drop $10k on it. Dipping your toes in is exactly what you should do. I disagree with you completely.

Only this person knows their true needs. But if you can get a hosted solution for $29/mo and add on the customer pricing for $29/mo... you are at $60/mo investment. $60/mo is cheaper than a decent VPS. Maybe $300 - $500 to get a logo designed and someone to make some hero graphics for the template. Keep it simple. Then go SELL SELL SELL. Investing so much time, energy, and effort into a shopping cart for a startup like this, and someone without much experience, seems insane to me. Plus, a hosted solution is more manageable, easier plugins, etc. It just makes sense for someone like this.

Some complicated ecommerce site is probably the last think Nikki needs to be worrying about. A simple catalog and a Freshbooks account would probably suffice. SELL SELL SELL. I can't stress that enough. I know companies that do $40M a year selling both retail and wholesale, they have informational pages, barely a catalog, and you email/call your rep to place your order. It's highly unlikely Nikki needs to waste months and months of time with a designer doing some custom ecommerce site, at least, not yet.

Sure that all makes sense for you, but that's not what he asked for. He told us exactly what he needed and we advised him based on that. He didn't ask us to re-evaulate his business model. Of course you can do basic eCommerce cheaper, but he didn't ask for something close, he asked about exactly what he wants.

Also, I didn't put any prices out there because I don't know enough about the project and this isn't the place for bids. I merely tried to make the point to make sure you tell whoever you're working with everything about your needs so that they can give you a price based on all of the information.

So far he's only told us one thing. I'd bet all the tea in China there's more to it. Hence, "talk to some people and tell them ALL of your needs".

[BNB]

Sure that all makes sense for you, but that's not what he asked for. He told us exactly what he needed and we advised him based on that. He didn't ask us to re-evaulate his business model. Of course you can do basic eCommerce cheaper, but he didn't ask for something close, he asked about exactly what he wants.

Also, I didn't put any prices out there because I don't know enough about the project and this isn't the place for bids. I merely tried to make the point to make sure you tell whoever you're working with everything about your needs so that they can give you a price based on all of the information.

So far he's only told us one thing. I'd bet all the tea in China there's more to it. Hence, "talk to some people and tell them ALL of your needs".

We actually got quite a bit of information. "We are considering opening an ecommerce business" - this suggests startup. And "Any other website consideration for e-commerce would be much appreciated." - this suggests that they are open to other suggestions. And there are comments here telling them they need a Ruby on Rails developer! It's a bunch of developers talking about PCI compliance, .NET, hosting, all sorts of stuff. For someone who is doing a retail/wholesale startup. That's the epitome of cart before the horse. I was doing over $1M/year on Freshbooks before I did much with my website. And my website is really just info collection and invoicing. We do several million a year. Technology for a startup is almost meaningless. Make a catalog, put it online, gather leads, and pick up the phone. In fact, going with an ecommerce solution that doesn't generate leads (prior to the sale) may be a bad decision. Most companies I know that operate in wholesale don't have automated websites. It's much more personal, and really, much simpler.

What we see is newcomers who have grandiose dreams or a misunderstanding of business and how to do business online. I need a big ecommerce website, handles inventory, invoicing, fully automate the process, a little Facebook and Hotbot.yahoo and we'll be millionaires next week. It'll be great!!!! It happens every time. Save the money, go sell your products. The hardest part is finding someone to give you money. A pretty website and fancy .NET backend isn't the golden key.

[Harold Mansfield]

We actually got quite a bit of information. "We are considering opening an ecommerce business" - this suggests startup. And "Any other website consideration for e-commerce would be much appreciated." - this suggests that they are open to other suggestions. And there are comments here telling them they need a Ruby on Rails developer! It's a bunch of developers talking about PCI compliance, .NET, hosting, all sorts of stuff. For someone who is doing a retail/wholesale startup. That's the epitome of cart before the horse. I was doing over $1M/year on Freshbooks before I did much with my website. And my website is really just info collection and invoicing. We do several million a year. Technology for a startup is almost meaningless. Make a catalog, put it online, gather leads, and pick up the phone. In fact, going with an ecommerce solution that doesn't generate leads (prior to the sale) may be a bad decision. Most companies I know that operate in wholesale don't have automated websites. It's much more personal, and really, much simpler.

What we see is newcomers who have grandiose dreams or a misunderstanding of business and how to do business online. I need a big ecommerce website, handles inventory, invoicing, fully automate the process, a little Facebook and Hotbot.yahoo and we'll be millionaires next week. It'll be great!!!! It happens every time. Save the money, go sell your products. The hardest part is finding someone to give you money. A pretty website and fancy .NET backend isn't the golden key.


OK, all sounds great, but isn't it possible for you to have one opinion, and for others to have their opinion without suggesting that no one else knows what they're talking about and are wrong? All of that "I see it all the time..." stuff is great. So do I. So do we all. But how about letting him hear all of the opinions and options and letting him decide for himself?

The reality is all of those things are important, especially if you're doing it yourself. Sure some hosted solutions can take care of most of it, but self hosted you have to worry about it. And not everyone wants to start with just the basic, cheapest thing out there. Some people actually want to do more than just enough to get by. What's wrong with that?

[BNB]

Are we reading the same thread? Is there information I'm not seeing here? Nikki said they want to start an ecommerce business, and open to suggestions. The only "feature" was for different wholesale/retail pricing. A simple shopify cart with a plugin will do that, and provide merchant, hosting, everything. A hosted option doesn't necessarily do anything less, and often does much more, than a custom built shopping cart. And obviously Nikki is getting bids in the $3k range, so not a big budget. What a mess they will get into with a custom solution.

An expensive self hosted option with months of development, based on the limited information we have, is clearly the wrong direction. I wish you could step back and read through this thread again. A bunch of developers trying to get overly technical and forgetting about the most fundamental business practices. It's almost comedic.

[Harold Mansfield]

Are we reading the same thread? Is there information I'm not seeing here? Nikki said they want to start an ecommerce business, and open to suggestions. The only "feature" was for different wholesale/retail pricing. A simple shopify cart with a plugin will do that, and provide merchant, hosting, everything. A hosted option doesn't necessarily do anything less, and often does much more, than a custom built shopping cart. And obviously Nikki is getting bids in the $3k range, so not a big budget. What a mess they will get into with a custom solution.

An expensive self hosted option with months of development, based on the limited information we have, is clearly the wrong direction. I wish you could step back and read through this thread again. A bunch of developers trying to get overly technical and forgetting about the most fundamental business practices. It's almost comedic.

First of all Nikki isn't getting bids. We don't do bids around here. People are giving him a range of what it MAY cost once someone has ALL of the information for everything he needs. So that he can be prepared.

Second, other people around here have opinions just like the range of opinions he's get when he actually starts talking to developers when he's ready to hire someone. Saying that your opinion is the only one that matters is short sighted. Everyone has given him truth and different ways to approach it based on what they know. The comedic part is that your opinion was just as valuable until you started belittling everyone elses.

This thread is all just speculation trying to cover all of the bases based on what we've been told. There's more to actually pricing a project than 3 sentences about one feature. First and foremost this is a new website build. What about the rest of the site? You're only concentrating on one feature and deducting that's all it should cost. No one is going to price and build an entire website for the cost of one feature.

[BNB]

First of all Nikki isn't getting bids. We don't do bids around here. People are giving him a range of what it MAY cost once someone has ALL of the information for everything he needs. So that he can be prepared.

Second, other people around here have opinions just like the range of opinions he's get when he actually starts talking to developers when he's ready to hire someone. Saying that your opinion is the only one that matters is short sighted. Everyone has given him truth and different ways to approach it based on what they know. The comedic part is that your opinion was just as valuable until you started belittling everyone elses.

This thread is all just speculation trying to cover all of the bases based on what we've been told. There's more to actually pricing a project than 3 sentences about one feature. First and foremost this is a new website build. What about the rest of the site? You're only concentrating on one feature and deducting that's all it should cost. No one is going to price and build an entire website for the cost of one feature.


You seem to just kind of make things up as you go along then get offended when someone calls you on it. I've said what I needed to say on this thread.

[Harold Mansfield]

You seem to just kind of make things up as you go along then get offended when someone calls you on it. I've said what I needed to say on this thread.

So this is personal against me and you were just looking for an argument?
I was pretty clear. You're jumping up and down about one thing and not considering anything else.

We're all taking everything into consideration and understand that building a website is more time than just finding an out of the box plug in for one feature. And then you're belittling the other members of this forum for participating and expressing their opinion and going off on web developers. That's what I'm offended about.

Like I said, your opinion was just as valuable. And then you kept talking and disparaging others and ruined it.
It takes a variety of opinions and options. People want to hear more than one opinion. That's why it's called a "Forum".

But for some reason it upset you that others had a different approach and opinions. Go back and read my posts, I never said any price. So I have no idea why you've decided to apply all of that anger against web developers and prices to me.

[BNB]

So this is personal against me and you were just looking for an argument?
I was pretty clear. You're jumping up and down about one thing and not considering anything else.

We're all taking everything into consideration and understand that building a website is more time than just finding an out of the box plug in for one feature. And then you're belittling the other members of this forum for participating and expressing their opinion and going off on web developers. That's what I'm offended about.

Like I said, your opinion was just as valuable. And then you kept talking and disparaging others and ruined it.
It takes a variety of opinions and options. People want to hear more than one opinion. That's why it's called a "Forum".

But for some reason it upset you that others had a different approach and opinions. Go back and read my posts, I never said any price. So I have no idea why you've decided to apply all of that anger against web developers and prices to me.


I never said anything about you quoting. Nikki said they got a quote for $3k and was wondering if they could get more. That is all I referenced.

Not all advice and opinions are created equal - even if you think so. I was pointing out that you have a bunch of web developers (not necessarily you) who are giving advice that is very fundamentally bad. It just is. Want an example? One of the posters was talking about a project taking 6 months, ASP, all sorts of development.... I say all that over engineering is bad business for a little startup and they need to focus on business fundamentals. On his own website front page:

"Although this project was abandoned and never got the opportunity to fully complete and launch live due to lack of funding from small company, it was intended to implement a "custom" online store. The website application implemented its own custom shopping cart mechanism and as well as PayPal Application Programming Interface (API) integartion to allow customers pay for the products online via credit card. The application was written in ASP.NET 3.5 and C#, with a SQL-Server 2008 R2 database backend. Web services were also implemented in order to consume the PayPal API, which is the one ultimately responsible for processing customers' credit cards behind the scenes. "

Does that not seem incredibly obvious to anyone else? Super technical (selling development, fair enough), and the people ran out of money, probably time, and never even got a website off the ground. And here this same person is, suggesting a bunch of custom development.... Nikki is talking about $3k quotes. This isn't a large project. Keep it simple, focus on selling and testing the market. Simple website, HIRE A DESIGNER to help with some graphics to make it professional looking. Nikki seems to be the poster child for an out of the box hosted ecommerce solution. It's really fundamental. As you establish yourself and prove the concept, then put money into development. Again, cart before the horse - pun intended.

[Harold Mansfield]

I never said anything about you quoting. Nikki said they got a quote for $3k and was wondering if they could get more. That is all I referenced.

Not all advice and opinions are created equal - even if you think so. I was pointing out that you have a bunch of web developers (not necessarily you) who are giving advice that is very fundamentally bad. It just is. Want an example? One of the posters was talking about a project taking 6 months, ASP, all sorts of development.... I say all that over engineering is bad business for a little startup and they need to focus on business fundamentals. On his own website front page:

Yes, but people need to hear that when they are just starting out. They need to know it's not all the same, and that they should expect to get all kinds of answers when they start calling people.


"Although this project was abandoned and never got the opportunity to fully complete and launch live due to lack of funding from small company, it was intended to implement a "custom" online store. The website application implemented its own custom shopping cart mechanism and as well as PayPal Application Programming Interface (API) integartion to allow customers pay for the products online via credit card. The application was written in ASP.NET 3.5 and C#, with a SQL-Server 2008 R2 database backend. Web services were also implemented in order to consume the PayPal API, which is the one ultimately responsible for processing customers' credit cards behind the scenes. "


Does that not seem incredibly obvious to anyone else? Super technical (selling development, fair enough), and the people ran out of money, probably time, and never even got a website off the ground. And here this same person is, suggesting a bunch of custom development....

Yeah, Brian works in IT and deals with security and sees people make mistakes in this area all of the time trying to save money, or looking for the cheapest option. So his insight is also important since we don't know all of the details.

The OP left it pretty open so there's no way to know if he'll eventually self host, process his own credit cards or what. May as well get as much info as possible to help make that decision. It's also good to know that all hosts aren't the same nor practice the same level of security, so maybe this helps ask the right questions so that you don't just go to Go Daddy and get the cheapest thing they have and expect AWS level security.


Nikki is talking about $3k quotes. This isn't a large project. Keep it simple, focus on selling and testing the market. Simple website, HIRE A DESIGNER to help with some graphics to make it professional looking. Nikki seems to be the poster child for an out of the box hosted ecommerce solution. It's really fundamental. As you establish yourself and prove the concept, then put money into development. Again, cart before the horse - pun intended.

That's one way to go. Not the only way for every body and every possible situation. Some people don't want to start simple. They want to put out a product or service that's 100% because they feel THAT'S the way they want to go. Again, I see you disagree with that, but that doesn't mean everyone who doesn't agree with you is wrong. And generally other people other than the OP read these posts so it's nice to hear from a variety of people with experience in the situation.

[BNB]

Yes, but people need to hear that when they are just starting out. They need to know it's not all the same, and that they should expect to get all kinds of answers when they start calling people.



Yeah, Brian works in IT and deals with security and sees people make mistakes in this area all of the time trying to save money, or looking for the cheapest option. So his insight is also important since we don't know all of the details.

The OP left it pretty open so there's no way to know if he'll eventually self host, process his own credit cards or what. May as well get as much info as possible to help make that decision. It's also good to know that all hosts aren't the same nor practice the same level of security, so maybe this helps ask the right questions so that you don't just go to Go Daddy and get the cheapest thing they have and expect AWS level security.



That's one way to go. Not the only way for every body and every possible situation. Some people don't want to start simple. They want to put out a product or service that's 100% because they feel THAT'S the way they want to go. Again, I see you disagree with that, but that doesn't mean everyone who doesn't agree with you is wrong. And generally other people other than the OP read these posts so it's nice to hear from a variety of people with experience in the situation.


Your comments are fair enough. We disagree on "100%" - because there really is no such thing as 100%. It's infinite. So you don't make decisions that way in business. I'll never reach 100%, there is always something I could do different or better. It's never ending. There is only so many hours in the day and funds to spend. A startup of that size (thinking $3k) probably does not need to spend a whole lot of energy on a fancy website. And really, a hosted solution with some design help can be a very fancy and robust website. We see it time and again. People focus so much on the technical side because it's easy - mentally. A pretty website, make money!!!! Nothing could be further from the truth and some of my biggest competitors practically have no website at all. Marketing, selling, etc. That's hard. Get out and sell.

[Harold Mansfield]

Your comments are fair enough. We disagree on "100%" - because there really is no such thing as 100%. It's infinite. So you don't make decisions that way in business. I'll never reach 100%, there is always something I could do different or better. It's never ending. There is only so many hours in the day and funds to spend. A startup of that size (thinking $3k) probably does not need to spend a whole lot of energy on a fancy website. And really, a hosted solution with some design help can be a very fancy and robust website. We see it time and again. People focus so much on the technical side because it's easy - mentally. A pretty website, make money!!!! Nothing could be further from the truth and some of my biggest competitors practically have no website at all. Marketing, selling, etc. That's hard. Get out and sell.

I don't disagree with what you are saying. I just don't think that one way works for every possible scenario. The web, and doing business online cannot be summed up into one way for every start up, no matter what. I can think of many instances where failure to pay attention to the technical side for what you want to accomplish, has been detrimental to the success of the start up. Not doing the tech correctly or well and now having to redo or fix it is 90% of my phone calls today.

I just got done with a company that was trying to use Woo Commerce to do something that had absolutely nothing to do with what Woo Commerce is for, and they were loosing money...$300 a pop (and their credibility) because it was the wrong tool for the job. They tried to simplify it with an out of the box solution ( and had the wrong web person) with the intention of going back and doing it right later...and it was detrimental.

It's all important. Certainly marketing is the thing that most people never have a plan for. And many people do concentrate on things that don't make much difference like business cards and stationery. But if your entire business model depends on the tech, then the tech is important. Especially when the tech is the cash register. To me there are no shortcuts worth taking when it comes to putting the money in the drawer. The cash register has to be flawless. Most times you only get on chance to get it right.

We just have two different outlooks. Nothing wrong with that. Everything everyone has said has merit when generally talking about starting an ecommerce site.