this week I have been building my first ever E-commerce website.

 

I have been doing it between jobs and I would say I have put 10-15 hours into this.

 

Granted I did not build a theme but I did heavily mod one.

 

but anyway its fully functional, so far no headaches, nice and simple.

 

I would go as far to say if you can work facebook and learn how to FTP you could build a store...

 

so why do people charge £750? is it all about the theme and styling? for £750 would my brother get any more out of his shop than he does now for 15 hours work?

 

Only askin'

 

cheers

Seems that pips takes money not for standard theme modding only

Custom design theme should cost more

Just IMHO

I understand this but right now, thats the easiest theme i have ever made.

 

does the extra £500 really 100% because of the theme?

How long would it have taken you to create a custom design and build the theme up from scratch so that it would work within the e-commerce platform?

 

Lets for argument sake say twice as long as did for modding an already functioning template, for £750 that would be £25 an hour for a unique design full coded and functioning.

 

So not really that expensive, considering some design companies charge a lot more that £25 a hour for their time.

Edited February 9, 201115 yr by Dizi

so why do people charge £750? is it all about the theme and styling? for £750 would my brother get any more out of his shop than he does now for 15 hours work?

 

If the ecommerce store does everything he requires "out of the box" then no. From my experience, though, clients always want more, and its pretty difficult to find a cart that is suited to every client out there. I did an opencart one a while back, and very heavily themed it, incorporated an "entrance page" to the site (which ended up turning into around 10 pages) and added many of the clients 150 products myself (at thier request - I also had to take many of the images - of which there were around 600 - into photoshop myself to make the file sizes more web friendly, cut out parts that were unwanted etc). I also had to do some bespoke coding for things that weren't provided by the cart "out of the box", that the client requested later, such as a "how did you find us?" module that appears during checkout.

 

This is also not including the support that is required once the store has launched, as it doesn't matter how well prepared you think you are, problems always arise - whether that be someone having trouble getting through checkout, or your client struggling to edit a product/add a product/change an image or whatever. Sure, you can charge a monthly "support fee" for this, but for the first few weeks after the site launches, I feel you should provide any training/support for free really.

 

You seem to have been pretty lucky with your client in this case, as they seem to be happy with the core cart, and some themeing. But trust me, it isn't always as easy as this - I kinda wish it was though

 

 

Kyle

that makes sense.

 

The client is my brother, thats why i took it on.

 

I knew if i buggered it up he wouldn't sue me or anything

It's a fair question but if you're only grabbing a shopping cart script and uploading a pre-made theme then there often isn't that much work to do in terms of hours.

 

However, not all ecommerce sites are as easy as that, as KCooper said, different clients have different needs so you often end up modifying templates or creating new ones to accomodate various ways of displaying section/category product data, occasionally writing custom scripts to extend the carts functionality, or tweaking existing functions to suit.

 

Then there's things like importing products (after you've spent time teaching the client to enter all the data in a spreadsheet for you and correcting it!), setting up backend functions and so on. Then of course you inevitably have to provide some tuition time for the client as cart admin areas are a mystery for most clients and they need some hand holding for a while after go live.

 

Once you tot it all up you can easily use 40/60/80/100 hours on a "simple" ecom site - start totting that up with your hourly rate and you soon get into the >£2000 price bracket.

Edited February 9, 201115 yr by BlueDreamer

Probably because it's not as simple as uploading and away you go.

 

• Initial meeting with client
• Researching clients needs and ideas
• work out colour scheme/design
• create design
• more meetings to have design signed off by client
• research suitable domain name
• research suitable hosting plan
• begin work on code
• build in all clients bespoke plug-ins and requirements
• testing and more testing
• sign off by client (usually after several revisions)
• Support (if required)

That's not to include the several hundreds of hours spent training and researching outside of initial work hours.

This all adds up to quite a few hours to get the job done properly and as professionals that's what we want to do.

If you don't care and neither does your client, then sure thing to just bung up a crappy little shop or pre-made cart script.

Amen.

 

Reading this area of the forum annoys me sometimes. Some people think ecommerce web dev/design is simply creating their own open cart theme - sooooooo far from the the truth.

 

If you don't ask you don't learn.

 

I know the typical job consists of more than I did this time. I didn't assume "they must just be charging more..." like it may have come across

To be honest with you i was quite surprised at the honest mature answers in this thread, maybe i've become jaded at internet forums but i was expecting far less thoughtful answers haha. Well done WDF you're a cut above the rest

To be honest with you i was quite surprised at the honest mature answers in this thread, maybe i've become jaded at internet forums but i was expecting far less thoughtful answers haha. Well done WDF you're a cut above the rest

 

Thats why we keep coming back to this place

 

 

Kyle

Probably because it's not as simple as uploading and away you go.

 

• Initial meeting with client
• Researching clients needs and ideas
• work out colour scheme/design
• create design
• more meetings to have design signed off by client
• research suitable domain name
• research suitable hosting plan
• begin work on code
• build in all clients bespoke plug-ins and requirements
• testing and more testing
• sign off by client (usually after several revisions)
• Support (if required)

That's not to include the several hundreds of hours spent training and researching outside of initial work hours.

This all adds up to quite a few hours to get the job done properly and as professionals that's what we want to do.

If you don't care and neither does your client, then sure thing to just bung up a crappy little shop or pre-made cart script.

 

+ configure endless shipping permutations

+ research dozens of extensions / modules to do obscure this that or the other

+ battle half working payment gateways

+ create custom import scripts cos inevitably they have some unique need

+ custom email templates

+ oh and attributes are evil

+ etc

 

These all take a lot of time and if the client is new to e-commerce there is often a lot of explanation / tutoring / hand holding involved.

 

Having said that, to setup a Magento store from scratch with a supplied theme, we charge on average £350 for that work. That jumps to £1200 + for custom theme.. that takes a lot of time both for the design work and more importantly figuring out what the client wants.

And as the old saying goes - pay peanuts - get monkeys.

 

Having a custom website built is a professional partnership between the web design house, and the client. The price should reflect the quality and professionalism of the design/development team, and their work on your site. I could go and have my car serviced by my mate, who's a hobbyist car nut, or I can take it to a professional mechanic. It's going to cost me more, but I know that it's going to be serviced correctly, and there is recourse should there be any problems. I wouldn't have that security if I went to my mate. I think the same applies with web design.

I could go and have my car serviced by my mate, who's a hobbyist car nut, or I can take it to a professional mechanic. It's going to cost me more, but I know that it's going to be serviced correctly, and there is recourse should there be any problems.

 

Knowing the motor trade as well as I do, this isn't exactly true, a lot of garages take shortcuts and don't do it properly. I get what you mean though, just thought I'd enlighten everyone :/

Edited February 11, 201115 yr by J90

There's a (probably apocryphal, but very apposite) anecdote about Pablo Picasso:

 

A woman was strolling down a Paris street when she spotted Picasso sketching near a sidewalk cafe.

 

The woman overcame her awe and the woman asked Picasso if he might sketch her, and charge accordingly. He studied her for a long moment, then set pencil to paper. In a scant few minutes he captured the essence of her on a piece of paper.

 

Naturally the woman was thrilled. "And what do I owe you?" she asked. "Five thousand francs," he answered.

 

"But it only took you three minutes," she said.

 

"No, madam." Picasso replied, "It took me my entire life."

 

The value we deliver to our clients is the sum total of all our knowledge, skills and experience. It can be hard sometimes to convince a client of that.