Online Store Costs
This article is about online stores with shopping carts. If your store is only going to have a few items, you might be able to just get a regular brochure website with some "buy now" buttons, and this route is generally much cheaper.
TWO WAYS TO BUILD A STORE
There are two ways to build an online store: with a self-hosted shopping cart or a third-party hosted shopping cart. With self-hosted, you pay a higher fee up-front to set up the store, but then ongoing costs are less. With third-party hosted, you pay a smaller fee up-front, but then your ongoing costs add up and are eventually higher after a few years than they would have been with a self-hosted shopping cart.
I would suggest self-hosted if you know your store is going to be a success, and third-party hosted if you just want to test the waters first. Either method will give you a powerful, fully functioning, user-friendly online store.
SELF-HOSTED COMMERCIAL SHOPPING CART
For self-hosted, you'd need a shopping cart (about $350), setup and configuration costs (about $225), hosting ($99/year), and training and troubleshooting ($150). You would also need to upgrade the shopping cart for new features, bug fixes, and security at least every two years, so add another $350 every two years.
SELF-HOSTED FREE SHOPPING CART
While there are free self-hosted shopping carts, I don't usually recommend them as they: 1) come with zero support, so you (or I) have to search through forum posts and outdated online manuals for possibly hours looking for answers to simple questions, 2) some of them don't look so great, though there are exceptions, 3) they're hard to upgrade, customize, etc. The added time it takes to get them functioning optimally can come to the same cost as just buying a good shopping cart to begin with.
Still, they are an option to consider if you don't need too many custom features or a completely custom look. If you choose a free shopping cart, you'll still need hosting ($99/year), setup and configuration ($225) and training and troubleshooting ($225).
The setup, configuration, training and troubleshooting costs are obviously not hard and fast fees. Some stores take a little more troubleshooting, and some less. Impossible to know until we actually get into it.
3RD PARTY HOSTED SHOPPING CART
For a third-party hosted shopping cart, the fee depends on the number of SKU items in your catalog. If you sell a shirt in five colors, and each color is a different item #, then that's considered five item SKUs. But if the shirt has just one item # no matter the color, then that's considered one item SKU.
Refer to the table below for the 3rd party hosted shopping cart fee:
|
$24/mo. |
$59/mo. |
$99/mo. |
$249/mo. |
$699/mo. |
SKUs |
100 |
2,500 |
10,000 |
25,000 |
50,000 |
Storage |
100mb |
500mb |
1000mb |
2.5gb |
5gb |
Transaction |
2% |
1% |
1% |
0.5% |
0% |
You will notice there is also a per-transaction fee for most of these plans (this is not the same as the per-transaction fee that your payment processor will charge). Hosting is included in these fees, as is an SSL security certificate and all shopping cart upgrades for the life of your site. There might still be training and troubleshooting costs ($150). As you see, the initial-front cost can be much lower than with a self-hosted shopping cart, but after a certain period of time, it will start to come even and then surpass the costs for self-hosted.
But if you find after six months that your store is not selling, you have the option of abandoning it without having spent as much up-front.
HOW WILL THE STORE LOOK?
Another consideration as far as pricing is how you want your store to look. All stores come with a default look. The more you want to customize that look, the more of my time is required (and consequently the higher my fee will be).
If you just want to change the logo, a background image, and some font colors, the customization costs will be minimal, maybe $75 to $150.
Or perhaps there may be a third party template we could use. These generally cost $50 to $150, and there would be additional minor customization costs (change your logo, background image, some colors), again maybe $75 to $150.
But if you want a completely unique design like no other website on the internet, then customization costs could go as high as $1000 or even more.
If you need a logo, a simple text-only one costs around $25. A more 'branded' yet somewhat generic one costs $100, and a more unique branded one costs $225+.
HOW WILL YOU ACCEPT PAYMENTS?
PayPal is a popular choice among online payment processors, and while they have no setup fee or monthly fee, they do have the highest per-transaction cost of your choices, at 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (though if you process more than $3k a month, you're eligible for lower fees of 2.5% + $0.30).
Another option is to get an internet merchant account and payment gateway. If you get one of these through Crunch42 Web Design, there will be no setup fee. The per transaction fees are 2.25% + $0.25, but there is a $10/monthly fee and a $20/month minimum service charge.
A good proportion of customers, for whatever reason, prefer PayPal over entering their card data into the website, and vice versa. For this reason, I usually recommend that online stores offer both options in order to appeal to the widest range of customers. Of course, you can always start with PayPal and then add a merchant account later.
If you do get a merchant account and payment gateway, and you have a self-hosted shopping cart (free or commercial), you will also need a "SSL security certificate and dedicated IP", which I can provide for $125/year.
WEBSITE CONTENT / CATALOG DATA ENTRY
The next consideration is your website's content. If you provide the information for the About Us and other static pages in a digital format, I can put them into the website at minimal cost (a few dollars per page). If you need content written for you, my fee is $0.25 per word.
For the product catalog, I can show you how to enter product data into the shopping cart's database yourself. Or if you prefer that I do it, my fee will depend on what your product data looks like. If it's a paper catalog, that will take longer to get into the database than an Excel spreadsheet, for example. And if each product has ten pictures and ten options, that will take longer than if each product has just one picture and no options. Then of course the number of products matter.
I can really only give an estimate for my entering your product data after I've seen your catalog, but again, if you can do it yourself then there would be no extra costs from me.
DOMAIN NAME
Oh, then of course, there's the domain name (www.yourwebsite.com). I usually recommend you register this yourself at moniker.com if you haven't already. That way you, not me, will own your name(s).
SEARCH ENGINES AND ONLINE MARKETING
It's (very) rarely a case of "build it and they will come" when you open a new online store. Most online stores will need to spend ogoing effort and money on marketing before they're successful. Both online and offline marketing will need to be considered. This is really a project in and of itself, and can be addressed after your store is online.
As you can see, there are a lot of variables. But you should be able to get a sense of what your online store will cost.
"Ever since Crunch42 re-designed our existing business website we have enjoyed a 25% increase in sales."
Ron W., Owner
Weekes Autographs, LLC, New York
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