How much will an Ecommerce website cost ? A detailed Guide

Read Time 9 min

For any eCommerce business, an efficient eCommerce website can usher vertical business growth. The growing popularity of online shopping is bringing enormous profits. As a result, numerous budding entrepreneurs look forward to knowing better about eCommerce website design cost for business proliferation. Nowadays, online shopping isn’t simply about new products or services a customer desires but more than that. eCommerce is all about brand new, seamless and pleasant experiences. This ensures convenience and demand satisfaction which is essential and transcends other factors.

With this article, you will get an in-depth look at how much an eCommerce website costs in 2021, including all the essential factors that will help you determine the exact cost evaluation of an eCommerce website.

Here are some helpful eCommerce statistics that may help you realize its importance of how positively it can change your business dynamics.

By 2021, there will be approx 2.14 billion digital buyers all around the world.
About 25% of the world’s population shops online.
eCommerce sales are expected to go up and account for 18% of total retail sales in 2021.

Numerous enterprises are shifting towards eCommerce platforms as they notice the amazing impacts of bringing business online. This allows them to save money on sales teams and create a wider audience reach that would not be possible with an offline store. For customers, eCommerce is bringing the world closer by diminishing geographical boundaries. Now they can choose the best product and purchase it even a thousand miles away from their physical location.

Though there are multiple external factors for ecommerce website cost evaluation, but if you want to determine the reasonable cost range, you need to answer the following questions as well to :

How many products you want to list on the website?
What kind of traffic do you expect on the website?
How soon do you want the website to be ready?
How effective designing do you want?
Do you want to create a custom website or use a SaaS platform?
What would be the scale of the website?

Cost Breakdown of eCommerce website: In Brief

Determining factors for eCommerce website design cost: In detail

As you have got a glimpse of the total cost to build an eCommerce website counting various factors, let’s look at each eCommerce website’s pricing factor in detail.

1. Page Count

Cost: $15,000 – $30,000 / year

One of the primary pricing factors for eCommerce websites is the number of pages, and for any eCommerce website, that count goes beyond 250. Compared to websites, generating leads with a handful of pages will be less than your cost of pages, but each page will help you derive profits with the number of products you sell. It is always a wise move to create unique pages for each product on your eCommerce site. You also require category pages to show off your products and may even add personalized profile pages for customers who make accounts on your website. You can decide which option you want to go with, but for sure your eCommerce website will contain a lot of pages. Thus more upfront investment and higher website designing costs lead to the potential for more revenue in the long run.

2. Ecommerce web design price

Cost: $0 – $100,000

Another primary concern when developing an eCommerce website is the overall designing expenditure. The design of your website provides the first impression to the visitors. A sloppy and outdated website design will give the same poor impression about your company to potential customers. To ensure you don’t lose customers, you need to provide a web design style that compliments your brand.

Web design styling is generally divided into four categories:

Simple– Website looks fine and functions up to your expectation, but misses out on wow or surprise elements.
Moderately styled– Provide few liberties for creative changes in the available space. It includes extra graphics, color schemes, and additional design elements.
High-end – This website design style provides the touch of a professional and distinguished appearance. It has color schemes, high-resolution images that suit website demographics.
World-class – These sites are above par in competition and contain interactive elements, high-resolution images, videos, and a wide range of intuitive features.

In other words, if you aim to become a giant eCommerce player like Amazon, you should choose world-class web design styling that comes at a cost. On the other hand, if you aim to serve your customer base simply, you can choose to go with a simple website design at an affordable price.

3. Ecommerce functionality

Cost- $2000 – $25,000

When creating an eCommerce site, it is natural that you will require complementary functionality, including shopping carts, customer identity protection, and personalization. You could also wish to include various photographs of the same product and videos that illustrate utilizing specific products. Specification documents, MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets), and other material may also be included with some items on the website, which are required by law to be included with the product listing. To determine all of this is a strenuous task, and you should always consult a developer to know the best way to proceed with your website.

4. Ecommerce responsive website design

Cost- $3000 – $25,000

As the customers visit your website from different mediums like phones, tablets, and watches, a responsive design is paramount for an eCommerce website. You will need to accommodate all such customers as they make up for half of the internet traffic. Your website can automatically fit and conform to a person’s device for online shopping by availing of responsive design options. Responsive design has become a must in today’s time and provides a competitive edge to eCommerce firms. Not having it can lead to a significant loss, as without it is much harder to grow your site and business.

5. Ecommerce data integration price

Cost: $20000 to $25,000 / integration

Though database integration is optional for websites, it plays a crucial role in your eCommerce business growth. It allows you to store information about products and customers all in one area. You require database integration for customers to create accounts and set their preferences to create a personalized experience. Data integration also allows storing credit card numbers so that customers do not have to reenter them repeatedly.

Database integration provides many opportunities, from streamlining an organization’s communication to enhancing the customer shopping experience, making it a must considering factor in your eCommerce website design cost.

6. Ecommerce CMS pricing

Cost: $2000 to $25,000

A content management system is a user interface that allows you to make changes to your website without changing website code. While few CMS programs like Drupal or Magento are free, others like Hubspot CMS and Zephyr are paid and range from affordable to downright expensive.

Although the cost plays a significant role, it shouldn’t be the sole deciding factor as you should also consider the kind of functionality you need for your eCommerce site. As you would be adding new categories and product pages, all of them should look consistent. This helps to create brand appeal and a convenient experience for the users.

Considering all of the advantages, availing CMS in your eCommerce site is a crucial decision. You should look into every company’s offers, consider your future business plans, and go with the best available option even if it costs a little more.

7. Website Copywriting for Ecommerce Sites

Copywriting is essential for every website, including eCommerce. As eCommerce sites do not require many text-only pages, you only need to worry about terms and conditions, privacy conditions, and other such technicalities.

Copywriting costs for the website includes two things:

What do you want to add in your website pages?
How much of it do you want to add?

Short pages containing fewer words and no photos will not set you back a fortune. However, a 3000-4000 word page with interactive elements, subsections, JavaScript inserts, and special programming will cost more to create. Strategically mixing both pages can help you earn a lot of new traffic and customers affordably.

8. Ecommerce SEO

Cost: $750 – $5000 / month

SEO plays a prominent role in the success of your eCommerce website in the long run. By being able to attract customers to search engines, SEO helps to generate more revenue. In eCommerce, SEO requires monthly investment. To rank better in search engine results is a constant struggle that needs a lot of work and with the right SEO approach you can ensure better ranking to attain competitive advantage. SEO is the vital element of eCommerce, and you have to consistently work on it to earn new customers making it an inevitable part to contemplate while determining an eCommerce website design cost.

The current cost of owning an eCommerce website

In the above section, we have explored several cost factors that help you evaluate the cost of building an eCommerce website. Other than this, you also need to consider current prices of owning a website.

1. Domain Name

Cost: $0.95 – $12 / year

One of the important keys to develop a successful eCommerce website is to have a memorable and attractive domain name. To purchase a domain name, you can get it for even $5 per year. Also, to keep it under your control you can buy a domain for ten consecutive years. You can also get a short domain name with “.com” at the end by paying a little more (around $15 per year).

2. Web hosting

As you have the domain, you will also require someone to host it. It is through a hosting service that an internet user can access your website. In hosting services, you are provided with the space on the server for your website development. Many prominent companies like WordPress and Squarespace sell domain names and hosting in one package deal. Most of such companies also use template websites that give your website a similar appearance to all others.

The best host is the one that lets you create your customized website from scratch. This will give your eCommerce brand a unique presence. For hosting services, the price range varies a lot. While some companies offer support and other additional points for your eCommerce site, others may only provide hosting space.

3. Interactive media

Cost: $250 – $10,000

Flash and other interactive multimedia elements create an incredible visual impact on your website. This element is known all over the internet as it provides an astonishing level of customization. However, there is a drawback with Flash- Search engines cannot read the code inside it. Taking this into account, if you are using Flash, avoid using it for the majority of the site. Multimedia, too, proves to be beneficial for your site. You can provide customers with a better idea of your product functioning by using multimedia that complement product listings, photos, and video descriptions. Including videos creates the possibility of using youtube and other social media platforms for website promotion. When you want to appeal to the customer, this kind of eye-catching content works wonders.

4. Website Maintenance

Cost: $15,000 – $30,000 / year

Every infrastructure, apart from construction, requires maintenance as well for its longevity. In the same way, your website also needs maintenance for its optimum functioning. Your eCommerce website maintenance includes fixing bugs, introducing new elements, and keeping each section of your website function all the time. Though it might seem like additional expenditures to you, your website maintenance is essential. Without it, your website will start having several functioning issues sooner or later in the form of checkout bugs, graphical errors, and even non-responsive pages.

Questions for you to determine your eCommerce website cost

Though there is no way to evaluate the exact eCommerce website price as every business is different. However, you can still determine a general range by looking into the aspects like your business model and company goals. Answer the questions below and then have another look at the various pricing factors mentioned above. This will help you provide a better picture of the eCommerce website cost to achieve your business objectives. And help you find the best ecommerce website development company.

Q: Do I need support for web hosting?

A: If yes, then choose a convenient price host. If not, free options are always available.

Q: How much-customized experience do I want to provide to my users?

A: If you want to provide enhanced personalization, opt for maximum functionality and database integration. If not, use only username and password storing features.

Q: What type of web design do I require?

A: Going with world-class design will help you distinguish yourself from the competition. If you aim to sell products simply, go with other affordable options.

Q: Should my site have data integration?

A: If you want to access and store information of your customers to provide personalized experience then data integration is the absolute necessity. There is not much space for “no” as your eCommerce website always requires integration to some extent.

Q: How many text-only pages would my website require?

A: Having numerous text-only pages will help you target several different niches in your customer base but if you want to simply focus and target your current customer base, you won’t require many text-only pages.

Q: How long should text-only pages be on my website?

A: If you want your pages ranking in search engines, you should include thousands of words on your website pages. If you want your page to simply provide answers to the questions, you will require significantly fewer words comparatively.

Q: What kind of SEO work do I want to use?

A: If you want to leave behind all your market competitors, you require a lot of SEO support for various parameters. If you want to compete, basic SEO is the option to choose.

Q: Would my website require Flash?

A: To use unique and interactive elements on your eCommerce website, you will need Flash. If you want to create an eCommerce site fully readable by search engines, you should avoid using Flash.

Conclusion

Given the opportunities that an effective website provides in eCommerce, you can’t afford to lose out on the essential part of your business. With this article, we have provided you with details on every crucial element of concern, how it benefits your eCommerce site, and, more importantly, its cost. Having an intelligent approach and a clear idea of your eCommerce business requirements can help you avoid spending a fortune on an effective eCommerce website for your business. Evaluate thoroughly to understand your business needs and how prone they are to changes in the future. Only with all such information can you make sure that you pay the correct cost for your eCommerce website up and running.