eCommerce Websites
eCommerce websites allow visitors to purchase products or services from the website. Products can be physical, such as t-shirts, or downloadable such as e-books. Examples of services include consultancy and web design.
eCommerce websites bring extra considerations on top of Informational Websites.
If you are selling physical goods you need to think about how to ship them. In a low volume operation this can be done manually – once a sale is made, you are notified by email and then you organise the shipping and packaging. If you are running a high volume operation then you may prefer a fulfilment centre to do this for you. They will take care of storing your stock, shipping your stock and any returns process.
If you are selling digital products then delivery can be automated upon payment. Your major consideration is how you prevent a customer distributing further copies without payment and without revealing that it is your product and not theirs.
In either scenario, and indeed with services, you also need to think about how you will process payment and update your accounts.
Payment processing is obviously key in an eCommerce site. Your potential customers need to trust that their financial and personal data is secure, and in many countries government legislation demands this. Throughout Europe the most well known example of this is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations). These apply not only to eCommerce sites but to any site where you collect personally identifiable information (such as an email address).
We have incredible scope when adding eCommerce functionality to your website. For example, we can hide your store completely from general visitors, making it only accessible to website members. You might want to do this if you are a wholesaler who needs a prescence on the web, but only wants to sell to distributors. On the other hand you can display all your products, but only reveal prices once somebody has logged into your store with approved credentials.
How much does an eCommerce website cost?
This will depend on many things – each website is uniquely crafted to meet your custom needs. The question of how much does a website cost gets ever more difficult to give a blanket answer to, as the complexity of the site increases. You can expect to pay more than for an Informational Website or a Membership Website.
Things that will affect the price include the number of items for sale (for example a t-shirt in three sizes = 3 items; if a customer can choose any size in green, red or yellow that’s now 9 items; if you have three different designs, each with size and colour options you are up to 27 items and so on. For the customer visiting the site it’s a simple dropdown selection but behind the scenes each possible combination needs its own entry, its own stock control and so on.
Another thing that affects cost is how far from the “default” shop look you wish to venture. On the one hand you (and we) don’t want your eShop to look exactly like every other eShop, but the longer any customisation takes the more the cost increases.
Please see our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) guide for details of what is included in our quotes.
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Are there alternatives to an eCommerce website?
Yes. There are several “portals” – sites that have many different shops on them. You pay a fee and they handle the stock and payment processing side of things.
You’ll be on the same site as all of your competitors of course, and will have limited customisation capability. The other risk to consider is what happens if the portal goes out of business. This may seem unlikely, but things can change very quickly in the online world. Who remembers MySpace? It totally dominated the music and video genre not so long ago.
Well known portals include Amazon and eBay and for homemade crafts Etsy.