How much for creation of a website?

Hulk

Supreme [H]ardness
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Nov 4, 2005
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I'm looking to take my store online and I need a website.

How much does the average website cost to make?
 
That is an extremely vague question to answer. We'll need a heck of a lot more information first:
- what kind of store?
- does it need a shopping cart? if so, will it need to handle foreign transactions?
- what kind of user features are you looking for? (e.g. personalized user accounts, search options, recommendations, etc, etc, etc...)
- will it need to be designed from the ground up or do you have an existing template?
- what kind of technology will it implement (database, scripting language, server platform)?
- what kind of hosting do you have?
- what is the time frame for completion?
- what kind of traffic do you anticipate?
- who will maintain the website after it is completed?


...and that's just the tip of the iceberg..
 
That is an extremely vague question to answer. We'll need a heck of a lot more information first:
- what kind of store?
Online store selling photos.
- does it need a shopping cart? if so, will it need to handle foreign transactions?
Yes. Yes it will.
- what kind of user features are you looking for? (e.g. personalized user accounts, search options, recommendations, etc, etc, etc...)
personalized user accounts, recommendations.
- will it need to be designed from the ground up or do you have an existing template?
from ground up
- what kind of technology will it implement (database, scripting language, server platform)?
I have no idea.
- what kind of hosting do you have?
So far just a .com name, no hosting.
- what is the time frame for completion?
2-4 months
- what kind of traffic do you anticipate?
I have no idea but I have feeling it's going to be BIG.
- who will maintain the website after it is completed?
Can I do it myself?


...and that's just the tip of the iceberg..
...
 
We're still to high level on this thread to give any proper estimations. Additionally, it appears that you've only got a domain name and an idea, but no requirements for: server operating system, shopping cart choice, website programming language, etc.

Staying at the same level as the answers provided to the initial round of questions, I don't really see anything mentioned so far that is not already available in canned or out-of-box packages. I'd suggest evaluating some of the hosts listed in this sticky, as many will have shopping cart as an option with their hosting plans (among other features). Try out some of them to see which has a set of features and support that you like, and run with it. Put the burden of server/network uptime and support on someone else (ie: webhost).
 
Pulling numbers out of my ass, you're probably looking at a minimum of $5-10k to have it done by professionals. This is a pretty bare-bones setup. If you want anything fancy, custom web design or anything 'non-standard' it goes up from there.
 
It will also depend on the extent of your product line. Are you selling just a few different items, or do you have an extensive catalog with hundreds or thousands of items? Someone is going to have to input product descriptions.

What about product photos? You're going to want professional looking photos, not like a lot of stuff you see on ebay where someone used a camera phone.

Do you have existing artwork that is suitable for a site, or are you going to need help in the graphics department as well?
 
Even with all those questions asked, it's still too vague. No offense, but you're not going to be able to get a proper estimate this way. Your best bet is to properly figure out your websites requirements. Don't be one of those guys that walks into the design studio, sits down, and tells the sales rep that they have a 'big' site planned, but not have anything actually planned for it.

I've worked on and heard of too many projects on great websites from great companies that go tits up before they even get their website done. The main problem with them is poor planning from the onset of the project, and too many changes from the client.

Spend some real quality time writing out your websites goals, required features, and functionality. Take that list to a design studio, be it by recommendation of peers, or just picking one in the local phone book, and see what they say.

That is THE best way to get a proper estimate on a project. Also, shop it around. Go to one design studio, talk to them, than go to another. Rinse and repeat until you find a studio you're comfortable with.

Or, take that list (no matter what you need to write it), bring it here, and maybe we'll give you some rough estimates (read; we'll probably just throw out a random figure based on experience).

Also, do NOT rely on a design studio to help 'work out' your list of requirements (i.e.: don't let them write it for you). They WILL try to take you for all your worth and give you features you don't need. They'll give you features you think you need, but you really don't. In the end you'll end up with a website that doesn't really fit your needs.
 
I'm looking to take my store online and I need a website.

Before you get a web site, make sure you have a plan, a good and feasible plan, on how to turn that web site into profit. There are approximately 28 fifillion web sites out there, and odds are a good portion of those sell the same product or service as you do.

Before sinking any kind of cash into creating a web presence, spend some time and money on figuring out how to cash in on that web presence once you have it. I have seen lots and lots of stores, that do extremely well locally in the real world, totally fizzle online.

Do you really want to sell online, or do you want to create a web presence that will direct customers to your B&M store? If you do want to sell online, and you do have a good marketing plan, then what about shipping, returns, payment processor, payment fraud, fraudulent charge-backs, customer service for online customers, etc. etc.

Obviously it's hard to say how much of that you already thought of and have a plan for, but just in case you didn't think of it, the whole "get online and start making profit while you sleep" basically doesn't work anymore.
 
It depends on the features and the functions of the website and as well as the orginilaty.

An E-commerce website can be very cheap if you aren't looking custom/exclusive/original stuff. (This is basically clone of several other website codes, though the website itself wont look like a rip off)

But if your ideas are very original, then you will have to find a coder who can develop your site from scratch.

Have a look at this website : www.getafreelancer.com

You can find many programmers who have pre-made (ready) scripts for e-commerce websites, The site can be delivered within a month or even week.

Prices may vary from $100 to $1000 depending on the requirements as stated above.

Regardless you can find all kind of web developers on that site, From professionals to intermediate to beginners.

But of course to be able to develop such a website, you first need to have domain(s), webspace etc. This again depends on what you have in mind and what are your requirements.

Hope this helps.
 
Also when using a website like getafreelancer, or rentacoder, or any of the others, be very careful when working with people. You'll find that everyone can do what you need, in the time frame you need, and it's "no problem". But come crunch time, you'll have missed deadlines and all sorts of other crap.

Make sure you accept a bid from a well reviewed user.

I've worked with a wide range of programmers found on those types of websites (for some reason the name escapes me of the specific site) and we had countless problems with under qualified people bidding and eventually wasting A LOT of our time.
 
Thanks for all the info.

I am checking out getafreelancer.com right now.

Question - is it legal to clone a website? Obviously the colors, names, products will be different.

I see a lot of people on there posting that they want a clone of a website. Would a clone website be a lot cheaper than making one from scratch?
 
A cloned website is a very sketchy area. First, if it's a straight clone, you are technically violating copyright law. But copyright law on the web is... well it's tough to explain / understand and most importantly enforce. I'd go to a lawyer for a good answer on that.

Now from what I remember of my copyright and art class, 35% of the original work needs to be modified in order for the copyright to longer hold.

If you change the layout / template enough, and 'clone' the features, than you're good to go. Features on a website are generally not trade secrets, and are common features across multiple ecommerce solutions.

Really instead of asking for a clone, I would go to the websites you're looking to clone and make a list of the features you want on your site. Than take that list to those sites and see what happens. Be open to the suggestion of custom built, vs out of the box solutions.

Be aware that doing it that way is going to give you a huge range of bids. Also consider that if you weren't going through a freelancer like that, you'd EASILY be paying well over double what you're paying there.

Even though I get work from those same sites from time to time, I generally dislike them A LOT. There are foreigners that bid next to nothing on projects and eventually bring down the price of the market on a whole. They also don't do nearly as good of work most the time either.

Just my 02 cents
 
I found a website that has the features that I want.

However, I am not exactly sure just which features it has since I don't know that much about webdesign.

If someone could PM me I could send you the link to the site and if you would be kind enough to tell me what features it has I would really appreciate it. Thanks!
 
OK I'll just post here then.

In the website I posted here's what I've been able to notice:

Gift Certificates
RSS feed
cart
blog
lots of photos
 
Just in customizations to an existing ecom system, I'd charge around $5,000-$7,000 to setup something like threadless. That's without any design work, hosting fees, product setups, etc.
 
Sorry to sound rude, but... how can you know threadless has the features you want, when you can't explicitly say what those features are? Those five things listed are barely features at all.

For instance 'cart' means... well very little to me considering a 'cart' can mean MANY things. Compare a website like newegg, to threadless, to amazon, to a paypal shopping cart. Those are all vastly different from one another. While they all have 'shopping carts', it's the features of them that make them stand out from each other.

It's also how those features are implemented. Threadless's size selection is MUCH different than an amazon item with sizes. And neweggs searching capabilities are much different than amazons as well. Amazons personalized shopping experience (how it shows you similar items, or recently viewed, and recently purchased items) is different than both neweggs (actually, newegg has none of that to my knowledge).

Gift certificates and a blog are the only somewhat 'clear' features you specify. You'll still want to flesh those out more though. Do you want people to purchase gift certificates and email them to a friend? Or are you physically shipping out gift carts for people who buy them? Are you just allowed coupon codes? Can they be used multiple times, or only once? And so on.

Blogging also needs to be thought out more. Do you want the blog integrated into the main website? So you can go to the administration panel and write new blog entries than add more products? Do you want blog entries to have links to other products that are little more integrated than just a static link? Do you want to tie blog entries to products? So when people are viewing the product they can go to the related blog entry? Or do you want them completely separated?

I'm not trying to be a dick about this. Please don't think that. I'm just trying to get you thinking about the big picture! Asking for a website without knowing what you want is the worst thing you can do, and the easiest way to have someone take you for all you're worth! The former design studio I worked for had a horrible CEO and sales agents that would take clients for all they could, just because they didn't fully understand how or why websites worked. We had people pay thousands of dollars for an ecommerce website that never made a single sale. All they needed was a microsite, instead they got a HUGE website with tons of features, and had now idea what to do with it.

My new employer is a very large company that outsources their design and the preliminary development work. We have vendors give us bids on projects for well over $60k+++. It's absolutely ridiculous. The only reason they do that is because they know our the people that make the decisions don't understand the medium.

Yes, I'm a wee bit bitter and skeptical about business transactions...

I think your best bet is to set up an appointment with a design studio and really work out your website details with them. Or hire a consultant to help you figure out exactly what it is you want and need.
 
what is the difference between price and unique price?

At templatemonster when you buy the non-unique version of the template, other people can go and buy the same template as you.

If you buy the unique template, they take that one off the market, so only people who have already bought it can use it. So potentially you'd be the only person to own the template, making it now unique.
 
At templatemonster when you buy the non-unique version of the template, other people can go and buy the same template as you.

If you buy the unique template, they take that one off the market, so only people who have already bought it can use it. So potentially you'd be the only person to own the template, making it now unique.

Ok thanks. What is the difference between the OS, CRE, and Zen Cart templates?

My business will be online only. I don't know the difference between the CRE and Zen Cart templates.
 
OsCommerce, CRE Loaded, and Zen Cart are all shopping cart systems. Those templates are specifically for each shoping cart. OsC and Zen are open source, while CRE Loaded is not.
 
Thanks.

What software was used to make the threadless website?
 
I think it's safe to assume that threadless's back-end is completely custom and proprietary. If not, it's most definitely a highly customized commercial shopping cart.
 
I think you need to look at your requirements and make absolutely sure that a custom (or even boxed) solution is what you need. From what I can tell so far, you're just selling photos. Flickr offers a premium account that would allow you to charge for photos based on your own requirements. They cover all of the technical aspects in exchange for a very nominal fee, plus you get the use of an extremely polished system.

I realize that is much more cut down then what you were initially considering, but you need to really ask yourself if you NEED to get into the web development game. You aren't the first person to have an idea, maybe a painless solution already exists.
 
OK I'll just post here then.

In the website I posted here's what I've been able to notice:

Gift Certificates
RSS feed
cart
blog
lots of photos

All of that stuff is pretty basic. You should be able to get a top of the line job for ~$550, possibly more depending on what you mean by a lot of photos. Gift certificates is easy enough to even setup on your own when using OScommerce. OSC is also what I would suggest for your store, IMO it's the most user friendly and most supported cart software that there is right now.
 
All of that stuff is pretty basic. You should be able to get a top of the line job for ~$550, possibly more depending on what you mean by a lot of photos. Gift certificates is easy enough to even setup on your own when using OScommerce. OSC is also what I would suggest for your store, IMO it's the most user friendly and most supported cart software that there is right now.

I hate to rain on your recommendations, but OSC is great for some things but I know for myself and through a great deal of my various clients experiences that many users turn away soon as they recognize an OSC store - and regardless of what you do unless you spend many, countless hours changing everything, you can always spot an OSC store.

If he's using a store for photography, he's going to at least want a store that incorporates ImageMagic for displaying thumbnails - something that OSC doesn't do out of the box, so you end up with pixelated thumbnails. Interspire make a good commercial cart software, ClientReady and a few others.

If you really are looking for free, check out Magento Commerce.
 
All of that stuff is pretty basic. You should be able to get a top of the line job for ~$550, possibly more depending on what you mean by a lot of photos. Gift certificates is easy enough to even setup on your own when using OScommerce. OSC is also what I would suggest for your store, IMO it's the most user friendly and most supported cart software that there is right now.

I would disagree with two things, first the price. Going off ONLY the items listed earlier, the OP should expect AT LEAST $1500 from a reputable business / freelancer. Since we all know there will be many more 'features' than just those listed, I wouldn't even want to imagine how expensive it could get. Especially since threadless seems to be the end goal here. To duplicate that site in any shopping cart available, there'd have to be a lot of customization done to it. More than $1500 worth.

Also, think of it this way; would you expect a quality (and secure!) ecommerce website, fully featured, for $550? If you do, than you need to realign your understanding of the industry and also realize that you need to invest a larger amount of money into your business.

Sure someone could throw up an install of Magento, even through 1-click installs through the host, and have a store 'up and running' in an hour. But that doesn't include any design work, and don't get me started on customizating the shopping cart system. If you pay $550 for someone to do that, well you're literally throwing away your money. That will do absolutely NO good for you.

A lot of people don't realize that when opening an online store - especially when it's their only point of sale, you can not be cheap on that part of it. For crying outloud, it's the cornerstone to your business!

---

2nd point; You honestly are recommending OSC? No offense, but have you actually used OSC? I have, it's horrible. Horrible template system, code that breaks with even the most basic tweaks, no centralized add-on system, meaning you have add-ons telling you to go and modify 'line XXX of file XXXX' over and over again, which after all is done, breaks your store. NO support from the creators - the last release of v3 alpha 4, was in March 2007! Over a year ago! Sure they have a lot of live sites, and community members, and add-ons. But that doesn't mean it's good, by any stretch of the imagination.

I find it amazing that people STILL recommend that steaming pile of dog crap.
 
I'll second the recommendation for Magento, after only a couple hours of playing with their software I was able to make some working modifications. I'm currently creating a couple stores using their software.
 
I hate to rain on your recommendations, but OSC is great for some things but I know for myself and through a great deal of my various clients experiences that many users turn away soon as they recognize an OSC store - and regardless of what you do unless you spend many, countless hours changing everything, you can always spot an OSC store.

If he's using a store for photography, he's going to at least want a store that incorporates ImageMagic for displaying thumbnails - something that OSC doesn't do out of the box, so you end up with pixelated thumbnails. Interspire make a good commercial cart software, ClientReady and a few others.

If you really are looking for free, check out Magento Commerce.

Np, the more info and differing opinions the OP gets, the better he'll be able to make an informed decision. As far as OSC being accepted or not goes, I guess that all depends on the industry. The market that I'm in, which is aftermarket performance products for sports cars, OSC is actually very common and those stores thrive just as well as the ones using paid-for software. But, again I can see that differing depending on the market at hand.

The one thing that I feel is untrue however is in regards to thumbnails. There's an excellent script that you can install that will automatically create thumbnails for you. So, you don't get the pixelated or distorted preview images. Instead you get very clear and great looking thumbnails without having to do any extra work, besides putting in the script which takes about 5 minutes to do.


I would disagree with two things, first the price. Going off ONLY the items listed earlier, the OP should expect AT LEAST $1500 from a reputable business / freelancer. Since we all know there will be many more 'features' than just those listed, I wouldn't even want to imagine how expensive it could get. Especially since threadless seems to be the end goal here. To duplicate that site in any shopping cart available, there'd have to be a lot of customization done to it. More than $1500 worth.

Also, think of it this way; would you expect a quality (and secure!) ecommerce website, fully featured, for $550? If you do, than you need to realign your understanding of the industry and also realize that you need to invest a larger amount of money into your business.

Sure someone could throw up an install of Magento, even through 1-click installs through the host, and have a store 'up and running' in an hour. But that doesn't include any design work, and don't get me started on customizating the shopping cart system. If you pay $550 for someone to do that, well you're literally throwing away your money. That will do absolutely NO good for you.

A lot of people don't realize that when opening an online store - especially when it's their only point of sale, you can not be cheap on that part of it. For crying outloud, it's the cornerstone to your business!

---

2nd point; You honestly are recommending OSC? No offense, but have you actually used OSC? I have, it's horrible. Horrible template system, code that breaks with even the most basic tweaks, no centralized add-on system, meaning you have add-ons telling you to go and modify 'line XXX of file XXXX' over and over again, which after all is done, breaks your store. NO support from the creators - the last release of v3 alpha 4, was in March 2007! Over a year ago! Sure they have a lot of live sites, and community members, and add-ons. But that doesn't mean it's good, by any stretch of the imagination.

I find it amazing that people STILL recommend that steaming pile of dog crap.

Yes, in fact I do own an online business which uses OSC. So, I do have a lot of experience in using it and modifying it with custom scripts in which I personally have found everything easy and reliable to do. As I mentioned earlier OSC is the most used software in my industry, so you can be succesful with it.

As far as pricing goes I think it's all about establishing a good relationship with quality freelancers in order to receive good pricing. I have a couple people that I work closely with that I found from namepros.com
To the OP I would suggest checking that site and getting a quote. As you'll see there's a reputation system in place, much like what you'll find on ebay, so pay close attention to that.
 
One way of putting costs into perspective is in the UK at least, a contractor would expect to be paid at least £350/day. Large companies would charge more than this for someones time. For someone to knock up just a requirements document would probably take a few days.
 
Np, the more info and differing opinions the OP gets, the better he'll be able to make an informed decision. As far as OSC being accepted or not goes, I guess that all depends on the industry. The market that I'm in, which is aftermarket performance products for sports cars, OSC is actually very common and those stores thrive just as well as the ones using paid-for software. But, again I can see that differing depending on the market at hand.

The one thing that I feel is untrue however is in regards to thumbnails. There's an excellent script that you can install that will automatically create thumbnails for you. So, you don't get the pixelated or distorted preview images. Instead you get very clear and great looking thumbnails without having to do any extra work, besides putting in the script which takes about 5 minutes to do.




Yes, in fact I do own an online business which uses OSC. So, I do have a lot of experience in using it and modifying it with custom scripts in which I personally have found everything easy and reliable to do. As I mentioned earlier OSC is the most used software in my industry, so you can be succesful with it.

As far as pricing goes I think it's all about establishing a good relationship with quality freelancers in order to receive good pricing. I have a couple people that I work closely with that I found from namepros.com
To the OP I would suggest checking that site and getting a quote. As you'll see there's a reputation system in place, much like what you'll find on ebay, so pay close attention to that.

I think you got lucky than. I've setup OSC on multiple sites, for many different purposes, and had nothing but headaches for everything that's not just a straight install. Sure from time to time you find a plug-in that works like intended from the get go, but I can't count the number of times I've had a botched install due in part to the instructions (or lack there-of) from the creators.

Also, IMO it doesn't matter if OSC has successful shops or not. That doesn't make it a good ecommerce package. Part of their success is only because they've been able to partner with such a huge amount of hosts and control panel applications that they just inheritely get a huge amount of market saturation. That doesn't mean that it's warranted at all.

Unfortunately the open source shopping cart system market is pretty limited, so IMO it only really became successful due to their being little to no competition in the first place.

It's definitely not for someone that doesn't understand what they're doing. That's for damn sure. I should know as well, since I've had to train people how to use it, not to mention use it myself.

While I'll be the first to admit that 'quality' does not correlate to price, it still is a good general rule of thumb. I know I would not trust an ecommerce site I only paid $500 for. Especially if it's heavily customized. I know how much work goes into creating and customizing the systems behind them, and know that anyone that has the chops to do it won't be charging that small of an amount, unless of course they're from India and charge next to nothing.

I know my arguments are starting to sound like I'm some ranting, asinine asshole. OSC really gets my blood boiling. I'll just refrain from continuing that conversation.
 
I think you got lucky than. I've setup OSC on multiple sites, for many different purposes, and had nothing but headaches for everything that's not just a straight install. Sure from time to time you find a plug-in that works like intended from the get go, but I can't count the number of times I've had a botched install due in part to the instructions (or lack there-of) from the creators.

Also, IMO it doesn't matter if OSC has successful shops or not. That doesn't make it a good ecommerce package. Part of their success is only because they've been able to partner with such a huge amount of hosts and control panel applications that they just inheritely get a huge amount of market saturation. That doesn't mean that it's warranted at all.

Unfortunately the open source shopping cart system market is pretty limited, so IMO it only really became successful due to their being little to no competition in the first place.

It's definitely not for someone that doesn't understand what they're doing. That's for damn sure. I should know as well, since I've had to train people how to use it, not to mention use it myself.

While I'll be the first to admit that 'quality' does not correlate to price, it still is a good general rule of thumb. I know I would not trust an ecommerce site I only paid $500 for. Especially if it's heavily customized. I know how much work goes into creating and customizing the systems behind them, and know that anyone that has the chops to do it won't be charging that small of an amount, unless of course they're from India and charge next to nothing.

I know my arguments are starting to sound like I'm some ranting, asinine asshole. OSC really gets my blood boiling. I'll just refrain from continuing that conversation.

Nah, you bring up good points and I'm sure you've worked with more e-commerce sites than I have. Also, yes I'd say about 95% of the people charging the estimate that I gave are from India or other similar countries. But, if the work turns out to be just as good, I think that's still a viable option. The quality is usually about the same, it's just that our differing economies allows them to charge less. Always ask for a preview before being fully committed though.
 
Nah, you bring up good points and I'm sure you've worked with more e-commerce sites than I have. Also, yes I'd say about 95% of the people charging the estimate that I gave are from India or other similar countries. But, if the work turns out to be just as good, I think that's still a viable option. The quality is usually about the same, it's just that our differing economies allows them to charge less. Always ask for a preview before being fully committed though.

And then that brings up a whole different topic of stimulating local US economy, granted that's if you're from the US. :)
 
I agree with the $1,500 estimate. He's not asking for groundbreaking novelty. Any professional web-developer will have written shopping carts galore and probably still have the code ready to use. At a rate of $50/hr., 30 hours of work for a website like that may be reasonable.

The more you pay, however, the better the site will be.... just make sure the developer has a healthy portfolio of sites (preferably some high-profile e-commerce sites) and you'll be fine.
 
200-6000

But most are around $500, $100 a page is the general rule of thumb. Shopping carts and complex scripts will get you up into the thousands unless you want to be a slave to some company's free hosted shopping cart.
 
200-6000

But most are around $500, $100 a page is the general rule of thumb. Shopping carts and complex scripts will get you up into the thousands unless you want to be a slave to some company's free hosted shopping cart.

Who made that rule of thumb?

Also, he DOES want a shopping cart. A fairly customized one at that...
 
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