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Written by: cmtrig | May 2, 2011 7:44 AM in Web Designers & Computer Services | 553 views | Tags: budget , seo , web design , e-commerce , price , cost
I get asked this question a lot; what e-commerce solution is best for me? The answer, of course, has a lot to do with the budget involved but most of my clients are not trying to build a site like amazon, they just want to sell some items easily online. I've been building sites for over a decade and I've tried or worked with just about every e-commerce system out there from Microsoft to Open Source. Here are some solutions based on budget.
Less than $5,000 - If your total budget is less than $5,000, you should stick with an open source solution like Virtuemart for Joomla. Joomla is extremely robust, with over 7,000 extensions available to make it do just about anything; while VM is the most user friendly e-commerce package I've ever worked with. Clients are able to grasp it quickly, making training easier.
Cost breakdown: For as little as $2500, we can build a professional Web 2.0 CMS (Content Managed Site) website with Virtuemart installed and configured with your payment gateways, shipping preferences, 5 categories and 5 products to get you started. If you want extra extensions, you can get some of the best add-ons and still stay with budget, while adding great programs like a Newsletter, Social Networking, Forums, Calendars and much more.
Important to note - We use some of the most effective SEO extensions Joomla has to offer to make store items completely SEO friendly, with Sitemaps RSS feeds to tell the world about your products.
$5,000 - $10,000 - For this kind of budget, you can afford a website like above, but with more categories and products programmed for you, and some Internet marketing thrown in for instant results. Even with great SEO, search engines take awhile to index your website and start placing you in top results. PPC (Pay Per Click) programs like Adwords are a great way to jump start traffic to your new store. You can also get extensions like Facebook integration, product newsletters, interactive Maps if you have a retail location, as well as extra content pages in your site.
$10,000 - $15,000 - This kind of budget usually involves large corporations that want a complex website along with e-commerce. With this kind of budget, we can build a complex e-commerce solution, using Joomla and VM, with advanced internal social networking, up to 100 products (or import of an existing database), event managers, download management, affiliate banners, Facebook integration, and more. depending on the complexity of the site, an opt-in email marketing programming can be included to get the word out to a targeted demographic to jump start sales.
Over $15,000 - If you're looking to build a national brand and offer thousands of products on your site, you may want to consider Microsoft .Net with the MS Shopping Cart. This robust e-commerce solution is single minded in it's programming to sell products online, and has some incredible tools to market your website in unexpected and profitable ways. Site built with .Net can cost many thousands of dollars, but if you have the budget for it, there is no better way to go. Note: the newest edition of the shopping cart has better SEO systems.
There's a little more to the whole equation that's hard to quantify solely based on price. Your designer should be able to project the right image of your company with images, logos, colors and typography to make your site yours.
To see some of the best e-commerce sites we've built, see my website at Trig Web Design.
