It is one of the most frequently asked questions that how much it costs to build an e-commerce websites. Most people get really surprised when they hear about the actual budget that they need to allocate in order to build an e-commerce website. However, it is important to know about all different factors which contribute towards the overall expense of making a functional e-commerce website. The overall budget is not always obvious due to miscellaneous expenses, therefore we need to make sure that we map out all possible expense domains. Following are the four main domains which can increase the budget of an on-going project.
Web-hosting
Web-hosting is the first and foremost concern when it comes to budgeting. Price for web-hosting differs from company to company and depends entirely on the nature of the business along with the size of storage you require to run that business. Cost for web-hosting starts from $2000 per year and it increases with the size of storage. It also depends on a number of other things such as the number of products, traffic on the website and to some extent the number of orders. It is not a wise move to choose hosting plans which are the cheapest because such services often lack in quality. Merchants who go with cheap plans feels the urgency to switch as soon as traffic on the websites increases or they increase the number of products. It is better to choose a plan which is upgradable and flexible so that it do not pose an inconvenience in budgeting.
Photography
In the industry of e-commerce it is very important to have high-quality images displayed at your website as it attracts customers. It is crucial to have clear and visible images for your products so that customer do not have to struggle to look for a product. It is possible that you have to hire a professional photographer in order to make your product catchy or if you are building a marketplace, you can get pictures from the vendor but it helps a lot if you have an allocation for photography too.
Content Creation
Description of products and product listings are already present in the website but you need to have more content for your website which includes the blogs, content for landing pages and home page. Most of the times, this type of work is outsourced unless you have an onsite content writer. This is also an expense as you have to pay for content creation services.
Marketing
E-commerce websites draw revenue by good marketing, it is important to have a good website and good quality products but it is also important to carry out effective marketing. Once you are done with the launch of your website, you need to have a good marketing plan to make sure that you receive the right traffic. However, it is your own choice that how much you want to spend on social media or marketing campaigns but still it is an expense which you need to take care of.