eCommerce, How much does it cost?
by Dennis Dadey
Making profits with your existing website design or creating a new online store can be exciting, affordable and most of all; rewarding. Mmmm . . . that's what the last sales guy told me.What is eCommerce (or selling via the Internet)? It is similar to selling through a physical building's business storefront, with one big difference: the costs for eCommerce are lower. The lower costs alone make it a lot more affordable for someone to start up a business or expand their storefront business onto the Internet.
So, the cost to do online business depends on how much time and effort you are able to put in and the eCommerce developer you choose to work with. Generally, developers should try to enable their clients to be as independent as possible in areas such as daily site updates, processing online orders, customer feedback and low or no cost (except time) online marketing.
Hosting costs are determined by: the amount of 1) server space you require for product photos, e-mail accounts, and 2) bandwidth - the more customers that visit your store, the more bandwidth you will require. Typically an online store setup may cost $15 to $90 per month for hosting.
Other costs include online store program and designing the storefront. There are many programs to choose from with some being free to some costing thousands. As with anything you buy, you do get what you pay for. Clients like to use online store setups that are easy for them to use when they need to do product updates and simple design changes. That way the initial higher cost for the client's online store will be offset by ease of use and low maintenance costs to operate over the long term.
Next we have graphical design costs, that can range from $70 for a pre-designed store template to a built from scratch setup that can cost $500 and up. If you have only a few products I would suggest starting with the pre-designed store template as the cost is low and the look is quite professional, with only a small amount of time required to input text and make some minor modifications to suit your requirements. If you have quite a few products and they are quite different from each other, you may incur more cost to develop the graphic design as each product category will have a look designed just for that category.
Finally, we need to open up the store for business: market the store and bring in some customers to buy the products. As mentioned earlier, there is no-cost marketing that can be done. For example, the site can be submitted to the primary search engines, adding the store listing to online directories that are relevant to the product or service, and exchanging store links with other sites that are similar but not direct competition.
What are we selling? When your starting out with a new product, try to stay with a unique product that is light in weight, as shipping costs are often overlooked in starting up an online business. If you already have existing products to sell, revisit shipping costs and see where you can find savings.
I find most business owners sell what they are most passionate about. Some of your present hobbies or interests could sell as the end product, as items purchased by other people. Some of the most successful online stores are a result of one's passion and desire to share their dream with others and if done logically and thoughtfully with a good web developer, can result in financial rewards at a low investment cost through an online store.
- About the Author -
Since 1997, Dennis Dadey, Chief Designer at IR Design, has been helping people with e-commerce applications. Find out more about IR Design at http://www.irdesign.com.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Online Business Help Articles
More By Developer Shed
 developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
Hear how IBM Rational Project and Portfolio Management integrated solutions help teams put the right tools and processes in place to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of project teams and ensure that the business vision is being executed correctly. Learn how to automate and integrate requirements prioritization, top-down project planning, communications and controls, and methodology deployment to keep your scope, costs, and schedules under control. Tackle with an end-to-end approach the management of scope and scope changes, usage of methodology to control and empower project teams, and optimization of resources to align activity costs with the overall project plan.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Learn to enable users to both rate existing animations and to combine existing animations into new snippets. This is the third in a series of three tutorials that chronicle the building of a site that enables collaborative discussion and animation building using Domino and OpenLaszlo.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join us for this on demand webcast to learn about developing complex systems more quickly and efficiently. We'll cover market drivers for developing, governing and reusing systems software assets and how you can develop system software assets with Rational Asset Manager.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Join this webcast to see how IBM Data Studio Developer and pureQuery can take the pain out of Java data access. uApplications developed using both Java and SQL have become a common requirement. Database connectivity using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) to create an application is a multi-step tedious process, and tooling that covers both SQL and Java has been unavailable, until now. IBM Data Studio introduces the pureQuery platform: a high-performance, Java data access platform focused on simplifying the tasks of developing, managing, and optimizing database applications and services.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Analysts, architects, and developers who have existing COBOL or PL/I skills and want to extend those skills to deploy new workloads on the mainframe can use the IBM Enterprise Modernization Sandbox for System z to find hands-on walkthroughs of common real world scenarios. The scenarios provide examples of how to rapidly design, create, assemble, test, and deploy high-quality Web, Web services, portal, and SOA applications for IBM CICS, IBM IMS, and IBM WebSphere Application Server.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Listen to this webcast to get an overview of Info 2.0 and a technical demo of how to quickly build an enterprise mashup. IBM's Info 2.0 technology leverages emerging Web 2.0 technologies such as mashups, feeds, AJAX, and JSON in order to simplify assembly of information using feeds and services. Come learn about the technical elements of Info 2.0 including the Feed Generation framework, Mashup Engine, and mashup assembly components. Learn how to pull information from databases, departmental information, and the Web to create mashups critical to your company’s success. We will also discuss best practices to help you get started.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Get a free trial download of IBM Lotus Forms V3.0 (formerly Workplace Forms), which provides a zero-footprint eForms solution to help you automate and move forms-based business processes off the desktop and onto the Web. With Lotus Forms, you can extend applications beyond the firewall by creating a single electronic form document ready for use in both thick and Web 2.0 thin client format.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Attend this launch webcast with Scott Hebner, Vice President of IBM Rational Marketing and Strategy, where he will overview Rational’s new offerings and programs to help customers accelerate software innovation on System z. He will discuss how these solutions help organizations extend their core business processes toward modern architectures such as SOA and web technologies to deliver business improvements that stand the test of time.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
The discipline of assembling and delivering software is maturing beyond standard developer-centric compile/test software builds. The end-to-end software development lifecycle is emerging as the new focus moves “Beyond the Build.” Join this on demand webcast to learn about methods for streamlining software delivery and key capabilities of the IBM Rational Build Forge framework for automating build and release management in environments of any size.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Viper 2 brings a great value to developer communities including SQL, XML, PHP, Ruby, .NET and Java. You probably already know that DB2 Express-C is free for developers to develop, deploy and distribute. Viper 2 provides a variety of means that help move your application from the development stage to deployment more rapidly. This webcast shows how to best utilize the latest tools available for developing DB2 applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
