The era of online shopping has arrived. It’s time to choose a web development company and start enjoying the benefits of your online store. According to Statista, the amount of digital buyers will grow from 1.32 billion in 2014 to 2.4 billion in 2021. Sounds impressive, but there is an important question you are going to ask: how much does eCommerce website development cost?
The amount you spend will depend on many factors. We’ll describe the main ones in today’s blog post.
Factors that define the cost of e-commerce website development
Platform to build with
There are lots of platforms designed specially for e-commerce needs for you to choose from. According to BuiltWith statistics, the most popular platforms that top eCommerce websites are built with are the following:
First place belongs to WooCommerce, an open source ecommerce plugin for WordPress — a famous CMS. By the way, Drupal CMF also has its analog called Drupal Commerce. In the above chart Magento, which is also open source, goes third. For more advanced features there is Magento Enterprise Edition, which costs money.
Most of the platforms are configurable. To set them up in a proper way and do all testings, you need the professional help of programmers. The more customized and custom solutions you want to provide, the more the ecommerce development will cost.
Custom functionality
Many open source platforms like Drupal or WordPress have modules and extensions, developed by community, that are able to be downloaded and installed as well as updated for free. So first check whether there are some of them that provide the functionality you need. If not, you should ask a web development company to write a custom code, even if it increases online store development costs.
UX/UI web design
The way your ecommerce site will look is another important decision. You can install either free or paid (premium) themes and templates. However, they may not be a perfect fit for your business, so you can do minor alterations to the color scheme or element placement. You can also offer a completely custom design. This option is obviously the most expensive, but your budget will be justified as you’ll buy uniqueness and meet your special requirements.
Hosting costs
The monthly charges for hosting depend on your hosting requirements. Think about the level of scalability, security and speed you need. When choosing web hosting technical support, pay attention to whether it can manage with server problems, quickly troubleshoot downtime, restore data backups and also keep your consumers informed about any changes on a server.
Conclusion
Besides the factors mentioned above there are many others that impact the final cost of e-commerce website development. They are SEO, content creation, stock or custom product photos, email marketing, call tracking and so on.
So, as you see, there is no definite answer for the question of how much it costs to build an eCommerce website. Every project is unique and requires a case-by-case approach.
If you want to know the exact answer for your exact case, contact us with your requirements. We will consider all your desired features, budget, and business goals, and offer you an effective solution!
