Why is an e-commerce website so expensive ?

As a web developer myself, I noticed that many customers do not realize that creating a website involves a significant investment. Many believe that create a website e-commerce is fast, easy and it does not require a large budget.

Thus we can sometimes see people come to meet me with a big smile and hopeful, saying: "I want an online sales website, I have a big budget ...1000 € And i want my webite to be the next facebook" So in this article I will try to explain why this is unfortunately not so simple...Do you really think facebook has been made with your budget ? :)

An ecommerce website is like a physical store:

Your physical shop has to be beautiful and attractive so that your client is in a good mood to buy and he feels comfortable in your store. For an online store is the same. The design must be well thought out, important information must be clearly visible, the user should not get lost in your website and navigation must be nice.

Your physical store should be well placed in the city. It must be located where there is the passage so that there is the passing world and before entering into it. An online store needs to be well indexed on search engines so that customers can easily find the website and make purchases.

Your physical store, you must take care. You must manage inventory, manage promotions, showcase products, process customer orders, manage returns, manage customer service ... all of these tasks, you also find them in an online store.

For all these reasons (and there are still many others), create an online store is a significant investment in both time and money . In the same way, it is not possible to open a physical store with an investment of € 300, it will not be possible either to open an online store.

You guessed it, an e-commerce site is not a website like the others. When you launch a website, there are two parts, the "technical" part and the "marketing" part.

The technical side:
These are the solutions for the proper functioning of your website.
- The Hosting Site
- Online payment system
- Logistics (supply management, storage, order processing, ..)
- Commercial management (supplier management, ...)
-. The technical maintenance and development of your e-commerce solution

The marketing side:
These are the solutions needed to drive traffic to the site and improve sales.
- Commercial Animation (updated catalog, cross selling, coupon codes, ...)
- E-mailing customers Campaigns (writing, sending newsletters)
- Analysis of the statistics of your website (thanks to web analytics)
. - Possibly set up a blog to enhance brand communication
- Search Engine Optimization
- Adwords Campaign
- Price comparison Management
- Affiliate Campaigns
- Management of brand reputation in social networks

. The site is not a small item next to the company but becomes part of the company itself. We must therefore adapt the entire company to this change both in the organization of work at the level of human and financial resources. This also requires necessarily to go through one or more external providers because this type of site requires many skills that you rarely have in-house in a small pme;)

So ... in summary An e-commerce website application qualified people both for creation and for maintenance and to sustain the site. This is why you will need to spend time and a larger budget.