Cost of ecommerce site?

D

Duster

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
May 4, 2002
Messages
5,838
I am wondering what the cost of deploying a e-commerce sight?

Something based on my-sql and some open source e commerce stuff.

Assuming the people do not have an electronic catalog already they have a pdf but nothing electronic. they also do not currently have a web page. I would say there are about 2000 items

I know there are a lot more questions but I am just looking for a general idea of cost of something like this?
 
Are you looking for "what should I charge as a provider", or "what should this cost me as a customer"?

Some factors to consider:

- Payment methods involved
Different merchant bank accounts have different costs, percentages, transaction fees, etc.

- Security certificates
Lots of vendors that all pretty much provide the same general product (albeit a few variations). This is a cost above and beyond the website itself as it must be in the customer's name.

- eCommerce application (open sourced vs. licensed)
osCommerce is free, pretty simple install... the real time is in customizing the theme to be unique to the customer. That said, if you're the customer and you're looking for real support you're probably better with a licensed application.

- Data migration
If you're expecting your developer to take the photos, product, description, etc. out of your 2,000 item PDF then expect a hefty chunk in labor charges associated with the development.
 
A good place to start would be one of the following.

PrestaShop, OpenCart, CubeCart, Zen-Cart, or even StoreSprite. StoreSprite and CubeCart are not open source like the others, but still free. They require that the copyright and URL not to be removed. Also StoreSprite has AD's in the admin panel. Zen-Cart is probably a more robust platform, OpenCart is easy and clean, Presta is clean, fairly easy, was buggy(with tax settings) last time I messed with it. I have not actively messed with storesprite or cubecart. Just fired up a demo and they seem fairly decent.

I would lean toward OpenCart or Zen-Cart for the most part. For example www.untangleappliances.com is Zen, and its not completely fugly. Also templatemonster has nice templates if you want to go that route vs custom design. It all depends on needs, budget, security, features, etc.

In other words, the platform could be a low-cost to start. Just choose a solid platform to build off of. If you go open source you can obviously customise till your hearts content. If going commercial then you can wait for the developers to add features based on requests and complaints. Each side has it's pros and cons as well as costs associated with them. I am fairly certain that with some of the open source carts you can contact the developers directly for additional "paid" features you might require. Of course after you check the library of free plug-ins they have. However that goes back to security, how well are those coded, will they be kept up to date, etc.

With your pdf's you are going to be doing a lot of manual data entry for products. Somebody could be hired part time fairly reasonably for a few weeks to hammer the stuff into whatever system you choose.

SSL is generally not an option if you are serious, depending on your needs, RapidSSL or similar is a good place to start. For payment PayPal is the easiest, however others like Authorize.net or 2CO.com are good. (I use PayPal and Authorize.net with no problems and fair rates with Authorize.net) But back to SSL, there are many options to consider, from Comodo to Verisign (which begin costing more per year, but you get their more known security seals)

Then you can get into PCI complance for your site/server from mcafee or trust-guard, but that is getting into another chunk of annual cost. Many things to consider, it all depends on your needs and how far you want to go from the start. Start small and grow into things, or just hammer down from the start, it all depends.
 
Last edited:
MikeTrike said:
For payment PayPal is the easiest, however others like Authorize.net or 2CO.com are good. (I use PayPal and Authorize.net with no problems and fair rates with Authorize.net) But back to SSL, there are many options to consider, from Comodo to Verisign (which begin costing more per year, but you get their more known security seals)
Click to expand...

Totally agree with your comments MikeTrike. I've mainly used Authorize.net due to how mature their API is. You can adapt their API to perform the transactions without redirecting the user to another page or vendor. 2CO has decent service, but the last time I had to work with them (it has been a while), you had to redirect the user to a 2CO.com page to process the payment. That's the same issue with PayPal in my view. PayPal is crazy easy to setup, and it's cheap, but depending on your market it can look very unprofessional to send your user to PayPal's website to process the transaction.

The route I always recommend to my customers is Authorize.net, again because it's a robust and mature product that has the API and hooks to really customize it and make a professional storefront. There's extra costs in needing a merchant account, and if you're solely an online store, you probably don't already have one. I highly recommend MerchantPlus if your current bank doesn't offer the service.

Just to addon to what mikeTrike said with the SSL routes. Security is something you should NEVER cheapen out on, especially when it comes to the safety and security of your customer's data. Get your certificate from a reputable company, Comodo is good, Verisign is good, and there's a couple other big ones that are decent. Just do your research. PCI compliance, as much as it's a pain... is part of doing business online.
 
Another note: PCI Compliance on the web is only half the battle. Don't forget about your local systems, employees, etc. As they can potentially see sensitive data, keep things restricted to specific personnel. Also keep your local systems secure and clean. Proper anti-malware, anti-spyware, anti-virus, and even a network security appliance such as Untangle which makes for a great cost savings. There is also Endian, and Vyatta, etc.

At any rate, keep in mind that the security of client data does not end at the website. You really want to avoid an OMGWTFBBQ situation with stuff like that.
 
Duster said:
I would say there are about 2000 items
Click to expand...

Would they be expecting you to do the data entry? There's probably a lot more work involved in just building out the catalog than everything else combined. Very painful, tedious work.

Honestly, I'd turn down the job if I had to the data entry.
 
no not my job. someone was just asking me and I have no clue as I have never done it, and it got me wondering what would something like this cost

I wouldn't take this job if the offered it to me just because I have not done it or anything like it in the past.
 
totally forgot about this thread and let it kind of go...


Thanks for the input though
 
I just built a site with Zen Cart... and it's completely customizable. For a CSS junkie like me... I love the control it offers. I started with a free Zen Cart template, and I modified it.

Zen Cart also has a huge community... so you can Google "zen cart _______" and find the answer to your problem quickly.

http://www.carlsclogging.com/
 
Magento is another open-source e-commerce package that I have tried and like. Keep in mind that fees and PCI compliance levels will vary depending upon the transaction volume and revenue amounts that are involved.
 
Yes Magento Commerce is very good and probably the best from all the shopping carts. I used to use it for my electric bikes store but the problem really was to get the decent hosting provider. For Magento it is important to have good server, best to have a dedicated one then the application runs really fast and smooth. Now I got new site designed with Dreamweaver CS4 and designed my own site with smart templates enabling me to control everything in nice and easy way. There is however few other problem with using Dreamweaver as my electric bike store does not have many products. If I would have 2000 products then it would be very difficult to manage the content.

Anyway, don't want to go off topic so I must say that the open source shoping carts are very goods as these don't cost you a lot, just a good hosting and that is it. I would certainly recommend OS Commerce and even more Magento so go for one of these
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top