If you’re thinking of moving your traditional store online, taking your first steps into the world of eCommerce, or just checking that you’re not currently overspending, examining the cost of an eCommerce website will help you get to grips with your most important overhead. So let’s take a look at just how much does an eCommerce website cost to build and run in 2024.
What to consider when assessing the cost of an eCommerce website
There are so many different parts to a website, and each piece will impact the overall cost. Knowing how much you want to spend ahead of time can help you decide which platform is the best choice for you and what additions you’ll be able to afford. Without a clear budget, you can easily end up overspending.
We’ll answer the question right away:
The total cost for hosting an eCommerce website in 2024 can be anywhere between $40 and $4000/month, plus $1,500 – $30,000 in website design setup fees.
Why such a big range?
Without knowing the size of your catalog, the customization required, your annual sales, and your overall needs, it’s impossible to create a precise quote.
Small eCommerce stores might be able to get by using free Shopify themes and minimal plugins. Larger eCommerce stores will need customization and additional hosting features like security and redundancy.
But don’t worry. Below we’ll break down the options for each expense you’ll face and show you where you can save a few bucks – and where you’ll probably want to spend more.
Your time is a cost
Time is money so the most significant cost of your eCommerce website can, in some cases, be the time spent setting it up.
Using purpose-built eCommerce software like Shopify will save you time. Instead of spending time connecting different programs, designing checkout carts from scratch, and customizing every product page, you can spend your valuable time filling out a pre-designed theme.
Dedicated eCommerce platforms will also include support and ongoing maintenance to keep your store up and running.
We estimate that a basic eCommerce website can take a minimum of 100 hours to set up from scratch. This doesn’t include adding individual product listings. An enterprise-level website can take upwards of 200 hours.
Webhosting costs for your eCommerce site
You’ll need to invest in some behind the scenes architecture for your website. This includes a domain name (the web address where your store lives), web hosting (where your data is stored), and an SSL certificate (security for your website).
Depending on which eCommerce platform you decide to use, some of this architecture may be included in your cost. For example, SaaS solutions (like Shopify or BigCommerce) include hosting, and you can purchase your domain name through them.
Self-hosted solutions (like WooCommerce self-hosted) will require investing in a separate hosting solution. Self-hosted solutions will also require more technical expertise to deploy as you’ll need to install the eCommerce software on your server.
Small to medium-sized businesses
- Domain name: $10 – $20 per year
- Web hosting (SaaS solution): $29 – $250/month
- Web hosting (Self-hosted): $2.99 – $200/month
Enterprise businesses
For a busy site with thousands of daily visitors, your system requirements increase. You’ll need increased redundancy, the ability to host a lot of traffic without decreasing your page load time, and tighter security.
Hosting costs can vary but expect to pay upwards of $1000/month.
Software costs for your eCommerce website
Every eCommerce website has similar components: product pages, inventory management, carts, and checkout pages. Building this functionality takes time, skill, and effort, so most eCommerce businesses rely on a SaaS solution purpose-built for eCommerce.
Small to medium-sized businesses
At the low end, some eCommerce SaaS offerings start at about $20-$30/month and offer different plans based on your volume of sales and the functionality you need. Here’s a quick comparison of some of the more popular eCommerce software:
- Cost of a Wix eCommerce site: to run an eCommerce site on Wix, you’ll need their Business Basic plan, at a minimum, which runs you $13/month when paid annually. This includes hosting and a free SSL certificate but does not include additional features such as customized reports, support for multiple currencies, automatic sales tax calculation and more.
- Cost of a Shopify eCommerce site: basic Shopify, their lowest pricing tier, is $29/month when paid annually. This includes hosting and a free SSL certificate but does not include additional features such as calculation of duty and import tax and custom pricing by market.
- Cost of a BigCommerce eCommerce site: a standard BigCommerce website is $29.95/month, paid monthly or annually. This includes hosting and a free SSL certificate. For stores with sales over $50k annually, you’ll need their Plus plan at $79.95/month.
Enterprise businesses
The more customizable your eCommerce site, the pricier the set-up cost. However, big businesses with a big, diverse product catalog, or unique shopping journeys such as wholesale orders will need to invest in a more configurable platform.
These platforms (such as Magento) are not designed to be set up by the average business owner, as they require coding and development skills. There will be an additional setup cost associated with the development of your eCommerce site, as well as an ongoing cost for maintaining and updating the site.
- Setup cost = $5000 and up
- Monthly cost = approx $2000/month
Cost of eCommerce Website Design
Now that you have an eCommerce site hosted on a domain, you’ll need to make it look nice. That includes choosing a layout, updating the branding, uploading glamour shots of your products, and designing the overall flow of your website.
You can either choose to work from an existing template or theme or custom design a website that is unique to your shop.
Lower cost designs
Most SaaS platforms have theme and template stores that you can easily apply to your site yourself. They offer pre-designed product pages and easy-to-update page layouts.
You might even be able to find a few free themes for more popular software like Shopify and BigCommerce. However, these templates may not be a perfect fit for your business, and using one of the popular templates may not be enough to make your shop stand out. Consider investing in additional customization to ensure you get exactly what you (and your customers) need.
- Website Design = $0 – $250
- Customization Costs = $1,000 — $5,000
Higher cost designs
To give your site a competitive edge, you may opt for a custom design, complete with custom functionality. It certainly comes with a cost, but it can be a game-changer for bigger businesses that have additional requirements and a large enough audience to support them.
- Custom Website Design = $5000 and higher
Payment processing software costs for your eCommerce websites
While not a start-up cost, payment processing is an expense that you should include in your planning. Different platforms offer different processing options, each with its own cost.
Here are a few of the most popular eCommerce sites’ payment processing options:
- PayPal or Stripe for WooCommerce: 2.9% + $0.30 for transaction
- Shopify Payments for Shopify: – between 2.4% – 2.9% + $0.30, for Basic Shopify and 2.4 +$0.30 for Advanced Shopify, plus an additional 2% per transaction for third-party payment gateways.
- PayPal or Stripe for BigCommerce:– between 2.4% – 2.9%, depending on your BigCommerce plan + $0.30 per transaction
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) costs for your eCommerce website
If you build the most beautiful website, but no one can find it, your business will not succeed. That’s why it’s important to build your eCommerce website with SEO in mind. It’s much easier to start with a site that’s optimized and build on it, rather than trying to organize your content after it’s already built. Having SEO features built right into your design can save you money down the road.
Most SEO agencies will charge a monthly retainer fee.
- SEO agency cost: $2,500 – $10,000 per month.
Additional software and plugins
There are many other tools and services you can take advantage of to make your eCommerce site stand out. Here are just a few ideas of additional tools you may want to include in your budget:
- CRM: Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) is a database that organizes and stores all of your customer information. It can help improve your marketing efforts through personalization.
- Search functionality: adding additional search functionality to your store may require a plug-in, but your customers will be able to find products much more easily.
- Abandoned Cart Saver: other extensions, like an abandoned cart saver, can add to your total monthly cost, but they also can increase your conversion rate by pulling potential customers back to complete their order.
Content costs for your eCommerce website
You could write the copy and make images for your website yourself. But as we mentioned at the beginning of the article, time is money. Whether you spend time on it or decide to outsource, your content comes at a cost.
If you’re outsourcing content creation, your costs will include:
- Copywriter for website text including product descriptions and blog posts
- Professionally taken product images
- Creation of multimedia and videos
The cost of hiring creative varies hugely, but you should expect to pay a couple of hundred dollars per day, at least. Make sure your briefs are extensive and detailed to ensure a positive outcome.
So, how much does an eCommerce website cost overall?
Your total cost for a new eCommerce website will be between $50 to $3000/month plus setup fees. But we can break that down a little further.
|
|
Small/Medium Business |
Enterprise |
|
Time |
>100 hours |
>200 hours |
|
Web hosting |
$29 – $250/month |
$1000/month |
|
eCommerce software |
$20 – $100/month |
$2000/month + $5000 setup |
|
Creative |
$0 – $1000 setup |
>$5000 setup |
|
Payment Processing |
2.9% + $0.30/transaction |
2.4% + $0.30/transaction |
|
Total Setup |
$0 – $1000 + your time |
>$10000 + your time |
|
Total Monthly costs |
$50 – $350/month + transaction fees |
$3000/month + transaction fees |
When you first start an eCommerce website, you’re likely only to need the basics. But that changes over time. As your sales grow, invest in better infrastructure and design to make sure your site beats the competition. After all – it takes money to make money.
Protect that investment by looking after your customers and turning them into loyal ambassadors for your brand. Simplify delivering great customer service with eDesk and try it for free now.
Did you know that over 60% of US online retail purchases were made through Amazon last year? Amazon’s hold over eCommerce is well established, with 9.1 million active Amazon sellers worldwide and an average of 66 thousand orders per day. Newer sellers may be wondering how they can get more sales on Amazon in such a competitive environment.
The truth is, they absolutely can because with Amazon’s booming market share come many opportunities. We’ve assembled this digestible list of 14 quick wins and strategic moves, to help you up your game and sell more on Amazon.
1. Do keyword research
Having the right keywords can be one of the most important tactics in reaching your target audiences. Using the keywords that are common to searches for your products is the objective, but search engine optimisation (SEO) is a constantly evolving game. That means that keywords used successfully in the past may not be as effective with updated search engine algorithms today.
The terms used by customers to find products change daily and are affected by seasonal, cultural, and economic factors. Hence, it’s important to stay on top of the latest SEO trends and make sure you cast a wide net when implementing keywords for each product listing.
Each product should be optimized with as many relevant keywords as possible – into the hundreds! This gives you the best possible chance of getting your products found by customers, helping you sell more on Amazon.
Amazon keyword research tools like Helium 10, SellerApp, Jungle Scout, and AMZ One can help by generating a list of related keywords with search volume, competition level, and other useful metrics, making it easier for you to choose the best keywords for your product listing
2. Use a repricing tool to get more sales on Amazon
When it comes to sealing the deal and making a sale, price is a main deciding factor for many customers. As an Amazon seller, you always want to make sure you’re pricing your products competitively, but equally, you don’t want to lose your margin!
This is something that using repricing software can help with. Repricing software automates the pricing process in real-time, ensuring your prices stay in line with those of competitors, and with market fluctuations, while you get more sales on Amazon.
Repricing software also has many customisable features that allow you to set prices at optimal levels to help drive sales, without compromising profit. It’s worth taking a trial to see how it can help lift your sales.
3. Get more Amazon reviews
Online reviews are important to spread confidence through word of month and for building credibility for your brand. It’s also a fact that 72% of shoppers won’t buy until they’ve read reviews of a product from people like themselves – people they trust.
Even a strong product with great marketing behind it still has to overcome the fear of the unknown if there’s no social proof. Plus, positive reviews are a significant factor in deciding which products win the Amazon Buy Box.
Get more Amazon reviews by encouraging feedback from your customers. The best way to do this is by utilizing feedback software to automate the process.
4. Provide great customer service
Customer service is absolutely essential in eCommerce. Offering top-quality customer service not only adds value, but helps retain customers. A big part of making a sale is assuring the customer that they can trust you to deliver, and that trust is hard earned but easily lost. Providing good eCommerce customer service is critical, and committing to providing great customer service is all the more so!
As an Amazon seller, you need to be on top of your customer service. Responsiveness, a friendly manner and quick and easy resolution processes are all ingredients that make for a winning approach to great customer service.
But it can be confusing trying to streamline it all. Thankfully, there are all sorts of tools available to make this job easier, like helpdesk software to keep all your customer interactions in one place. This helps you to respond quickly and accurately to customer inquiries when they come in, so that your customers always know you’ve got their back.
5. Leverage Amazon seller tools
The best part about being an Amazon seller is that you don’t have to go it alone. There are numerous tools available to help you maximize your business and get the most out of selling on Amazon, whether third-party or FBA.
From repricing tools, to help desk software, to review software and even shipping assistance, many tools exist on the market today that specifically help Amazon sellers optimize their listings, prices, feedback, shipping, customer service and even their taxes.
There are many different seller tools available, so it’s worth reading about options and making an informed decision about the right ones to choose for your business. With the right tools, you can grow your business more than you ever thought possible.
6. Get more sales on Amazon with ads
Running ads is almost guaranteed to help you get more sales on Amazon, but it’s easy to just throw money at them and hope for the best. You can do better! Pay attention to your advertising cost of sales (ACOS) metric, the figure for how much ad spend you need in order to make a sale.
By advertising more efficiently, you lower your ACOS and ensure you get more bang for your buck. Over time, you’ll learn what works and you can employ a strategy with regards to how you run your ads. Taking an insight-driven approach to Amazon ads results in a more profitable Amazon business!
7. Optimise your product pages
The old saying goes that 80% of readers never make it past the headline of any piece of content. That means once you’ve written your product title, you’ve effectively spent 80 cents of your dollar.
When writing product titles, stick to the formula of:
- Brand name
- Product name
- Features (size, colour, gender etc).
This lets you include the right keywords in the right order to immediately tell shoppers that this is the product for them.
Moreover, making sure to visually design your product pages so that they’re clean, simple and easy to read will also help win over shoppers. No one wants to read through a cluttered page. The more straightforward (yet informative) and the cleaner you make your design, the more likely you’ll be to win over those elusive eyeballs!
8. Win the Amazon Buy Box
The quickest way to get more sales on Amazon is by ensuring that your products show up consistently in the Amazon Buy Box (the area in the top right of a product page, where shoppers can ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘Buy Now’). This is because over 82% of sales happen through this highly sought after space.
Although the exact formula to win the Buy Box is unknown, there are a few things that we know are essential. These are mainly metrics that prove the seller is providing a good customer experience. Customer reviews play a big role here. The more positive reviews a seller can amass, the likelihood of winning the Buy Box increases.
In addition to reviews, something else that’s obviously very important to Amazon shoppers is price! By using repricing software, you can automatically set your prices at the optimal level to win the Buy Box and maximize profit, even if you’ve got an enormous inventory.
9. Amazon account health rating
The Amazon account health rating (AHR) is a new feature that helps you monitor your account health based on its adherence to Amazon seller policies.
It considers both negative factors (such as the number of unresolved policy violations on your account) as well as positive factors (how your account positively impacts the customer experience through its selling activities).
Each account will be given a rating, which is regularly reviewed as Amazon monitors the performance of its sellers. If your account is off-target, you will be notified so that you can improve your performance. Conversely, a good AHR rating will work in your favor, helping assure customers that they’re doing business with a compliant seller.
10. Maintain your Amazon SLA
A big part of being a seller is cultivating trust with your customers. That means showing them that you operate in an above-board manner and that you’ll make good on your promise of fulfillment to them. One way of doing that is by making sure your Amazon store has a Service Level Agreement (SLA). This is a promise to your customers that they’ll receive their orders on time. When it comes to fulfillment, the SLA is based on the capacity to fulfill open orders and on-time shipping and delivery.
SLAs help manage customer expectations by defining standards and outlining circumstances under which you as the seller won’t be liable for unfulfilled promises (e.g., natural disasters preventing shipping, etc).
eDesk’s customer service solution is designed to alert you when your SLA is expiring, so your business is never caught without one. Having a current SLA helps you maintain transparency with customers, thereby building trust which helps ensure customer loyalty.
11. Focus on products that already sell
Most ambitious business owners want to try new streams of revenue, but it’s important not to lose sight of the things that are making you money now.
By doubling down on the products that already provide your Amazon store with a reliable revenue stream, you not only deliver to market demand but ensure that you have the financial runway required to take risks on innovative new products, if need be.
Review your financial statements every quarter and look at the items that are performing best in your store. Think about how you can continue to market these with ads, SEO keywords and upgraded images to maximize their selling potential in your online store.
12. Sync your inventory
Inventory can be a delicate balancing act. Hold too much inventory for too long and you need to pay over the odds to store it. But hold too little inventory and you lose out on vital sales, or even customers, due to an inability to fulfill. Amazon can also penalize you if your inventory performance isn’t up to standard.
Stock control is something every seller needs to understand and have the capability to manage for optimal results. Smart inventory management is an under-appreciated way to increase your Amazon sales and profit margin. Fortunately, there are tools that can help. Investing in the right tools and software can help sellers take the stress out of balancing supply and demand.
13. Expand into new Amazon marketplaces
Amazon currently has 20 marketplaces around the world, which include the US, Canada, Mexico, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, Australia and more.
You can scale your brand by moving into some of these marketplaces. This can involve doing market research to find out which products are popular in each market and then uplevelling your shipping operations in order to be able to ship globally.
But expanding into new markets also means you’ll need to take language into consideration and localize your listings so that they feature each marketplace’s local language and SEO keywords in the appropriate language. Multilingual customer service is also needed in order to be able to service customers across various marketplaces in their local language.
Sounds complicated? It doesn’t have to be. eDesk’s help desk solution is designed to support customer service and workflow in multiple languages, so you can expand your business without investing in the overhead of hiring a global team.
14. Spy on your competitors
Ok, maybe “spy” is a bit of an exaggeration, but profitable sellers are always on the lookout for what their competitors are doing. You want to make sure you’re offering the right inventory for your market at the right prices. Repricing software will monitor this for you, taking the guesswork out of pricing at the right levels.
Using data gleaned from helpdesk reporting can also help you gather valuable insights and feedback from your customers, which will help you to better understand what customers want and need. Acting on analytics-driven insights from easy-to-read reports means you’re always one step ahead of the competition.
Final thoughts
The quest to increase your store’s Amazon sales doesn’t need to be an uphill struggle. There are many resources available to Amazon sellers today to help them optimize their store and develop a healthy sales pipeline.
By staying in touch with how the Amazon platform grows and using the right tech tools to drive your business, you can continue to do what you do best: building a great brand, winning customers, retaining existing customers and improving your bottom line.
