a) Potential Costs
When selling products online, it's important to appreciate what the set-up
and maintenance costs are likely to be. Firstly, a domain needs to be registered
(£5 to £20). Next is hosting of the site, and for your average
ecommerce store of several hundred products, this will be around £100 a
year.
The price of the web design is far more difficult to predict; considerations include the
design style and complexity of the products that you want to sell, plus options such customer accounts.
Some design companies choose to charge a monthly fee (typically £100+ a month)
which includes hosting and the site design. An alternative is to make use of an ecommerce package such as Actinic,
JShop Server, RomanCart, osCommerce, or XCart, with each one trying to simplify the setting up/maintenance
of a shopping site.
Actinic Catalogue is £399 + VAT (with an extra £250 + VAT
for one year's support). JShop Server is £200 + VAT (with an extra
£100 + VAT for installation and one year's support).
RomanCart charges a yearly fee, starting at £50 + VAT. The web designer would
then add on design and set-up costs which will vary depending upon aspects such as number of products to be sold,
complexity of design etc. For a typical shopping site using a reasonably sophisticated ecommerce package, expect
to pay anything from an additional few hundred pounds to several thousand pounds -
but remember this web design component is just a one-off payment.
A stand-alone ecommerce package removes the need for an extra monthly charge, and some packages are offered free; generally the more
expensive the package, the more sophisticated its options. For example some packages restrict the design style
of the site, but then as there is almost a 'standard' three column design for ecommerce sites this is not
necessarily a problem. Some packages also expect the buyer to have an understanding of coding languages and/or
the initial set-up may be rather complex - again this where the web designer earns their fee.
Photographs will form an integral part of the website; they need to be of appropriate quality, quantity and size. And what about
the main or top banner of the website - is this created from your logo (if you have one), or is it simply your company name, or
a mix of product images? The banner design could well form part of the web designer's brief, but a logo is usually left to a graphic
designer, and then there's still the product and section photographs to be arranged. Depending upon which option you choose,
such aspects might cost from almost nothing to several hundred pounds.
b) Credit Card Payments
At this stage you also need to think about how you are going to accept payment for your products. An Internet Merchant
Account is a special bank account through which Internet credit card payments are made. A Payment Gateway is a means
whereby transaction data is transferred (with all the security associated with Internet Banking) from the seller's website to
your particular Internet merchant account. You are likely to be charged a set-up fee, plus additional fees for receiving or
transferring money. WorldPay - part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group - charges both a set-up and an annual fee, plus a
percentage per credit card transaction; Protx's small business service currently charges a fixed fee per month
irrespective of the number of transactions. RomanPay is a Payment Gateway service provided by the makers of RomanCart
and costs £150 per year with 150 free transactions per month. In general, expect to pay
a few hundred pounds per year for this facility.
If that wasn't complicated enough, then the various ecommerce software packages only support certain specific Payment Gateways.
Details are at http://www.actinic.co.uk/services/online-payment.htm
for Actinic, http://www.jshop.co.uk/gateways.php
for JShop, and http://romancart.com/locale/payment_gatewaysuk.htm for RomanCart.
An alternative option is to process credit cards directly yourself. Using a Secure Server, the customer sends their details
directly to you, and you process them as you would a phone sale. Security is the key aspect here, with data encrypted as it
flows from the customer and eventually back to you. First the web browser makes sure that a Valid Site Certificate exists,
which in turn has been issued by a trusted organisation e.g. GeoTrust, Thawte or VeriSign. To set this up is a reasonably
complex process, and the certifying agency make a charge for a certificate - anywhere between £80
and £250 per year. The web hosting company might also charge a small set-up fee. It's a little tricky to get the web designer
to do all of this for you as it's a contract between you and the certifying agency, who may well want to do a business check on your
company before they issue the site certificate.
In total for a site selling, say, 100 or more products, it would be wise to budget an initial £2500 to £3500
for all associated website costs, depending to some extent upon whether or not you are going to accept credit card payments directly,
with another £500 to £1000 per year after this - but obviously it depends on your sales figures and related
bank charges. At the other extreme, for a basic 'three-page' site selling just ten products via links to individual product pages, and using PayPal,
then the website costs might vary between about £200 and £500. In either case, there are a wealth of additional aspects to
consider, such as are you going to advertise online? What about search engine optimisation? What are the legal requirements for an ecommerce site? Who will
change all the price details when it comes to the January sales? It's important not to rush into selling online and to make sure you are fully
aware of all the potential costs; once you've finally got your site up-and-running, then advertising costs could easily make a big dent in your remaining budget.
c) JShop Server
JShop Server (the professional shopping package used by ComeUpSmiling for its larger
ecommerce sites) provides an ever-expanding variety of interactive and dynamic aspects, such as customer
accounts, wishlists, bestsellers, advanced pricing, stock control, gift certificates, newsletters, multiple
currency and language support, shipping and tax zones, customer reviews, affiliates scheme, detailed log
summary and report data, automatic sending of emails etc. If you are struggling with JShop Server and need
help and advice on any
aspect, then please contact us.
All data is updated via a password-protected management interface, and the JShop package can easily be integrated
with a wide variety of merchant accounts, such as WorldPay, Protx, Nochex etc. In addition, the web page
style, structure and content can be adjusted to suit each client's specific needs.
JShop is appropriate for any size of store, whether or not prices and/or details are likely
to change; clients can easily update images, items, and other data themselves via the management interface.
One consequence of the JShop option is that the organisation and administration of the site is very much
in the hands of the client. This is generally felt to be a significant advantage, and it also reduces the
admin and set-up costs. However, the initial set-up will require (unless it forms part of the original web design
quote) significant input from the client, involving the preparation of detailed product descriptions, section headings,
product images and thumbnails etc. Such details can easily be added directly via the management interface, or more
efficiently via a spreadsheet. If hundreds of products are involved, the client
will need to set aside time to do this essential admin task.
To view the management interface for yourself, please log
on to the JShop demonstration
site; both the Username and Password are 'demo'. Although the
interface can look a little daunting to begin with, it provides a wealth of detail
and options that you can choose to use or not. Various actual JShop Server stores can be viewed via
www.jshop.co.uk/livestores.php
ComeUpSmiling will be happy to offer advice on any of the above - simply
email us with any questions you may have.
Ecommerce Packages
One crucial aspect that needs to be considered with a shopping site is advertising costs, as these can easily overtake the amount spent on the initial web design.
Photographs can make or break a site. Visitors won't purchase something when all they can see is a grainy out-of-focus image;
at least one high-quality large-size photo per product is the norm.
