Are You Ready to Sell Online?
We will help you choose the best platform for you, and build an Online Storefront
Running an online store can be a big undertaking. From setting up and managing the online catalog, to processing the orders we will build your online store in the eCommerce platform that is best for your product structure, while providing an easy to learn administration backend for your store management.
Our eCommerce Platform of Choice is WooCommerce on WordPress
In almost all cases WooCommerce ends up being the best shopping cart platform.
Why We Love It
- It has a massive amount of functionality available through a large network of plugin developers.
- WordPress and WooCommerce account for a large portion of websites around the world. Because of this it is widely supported by major 3rd party services & systems.
- Intuitive & Easy to Learn
- No high monthly costs to use or commissions/fees.
- We work with WordPress sites all day everyday for over 10 years, so we’re pretty familiar with it.
- Excellent platform maintenance & updates. They are always releasing improvements.
- Reliable and Secure as long as everything is kept up to date and only reputable plugins are used.
- There are many wordpress developers, so finding someone to support it is easy. Finding someone highly experienced and good is a little harder, but you’re in luck. You found us!
WooCommerce has our vote for the best overall shopping cart platform. Apparently many others feel the same as it the eCommerce platform of choice for around 30% of all online stores. Running on the WordPress platform, it provides essential eCommerce features and functionality with easy integration with 3rd party services, payment methods, shipping carriers and much more.
Do your own research and explore what WooCommerce has to offer and explore some demos.
Visit https://woocommerce.com/
Magento is a very popular Free open-source eCommerce platform that we like to use for sites requiring more advanced features and complexity. It is a powerful platform right out of the box with a large library of extensions to extend the functionality. Development, maintenance, and hosting are more involved and at a higher cost, but it is a powerful shopping cart platform capable of more complex configurations, product types, and order processing needs.
We generally don’t develop Magento site anymore, but we do handle migrations from Magento to WooCommerce. Magento version 1.x reached it’s end of life in June 2020 and is no longer support. If you are running a site on this version it’s time you build a new site. We can migrate all the data into a WooCommerce site and build a new online storefront.
Shopping Cart Features
Establishing all the specific features needed and product configurations happens early in the planning stages and plays a key role in selecting a platform and building the site. This may include product attributes and configurable products, downloadable products, special shipping conditions, payment options, pricing methods, multi-level user pricing (wholesaler/retail customer), 3rd party service integrations, among many other possible elements.
Credit Card Gateways & Processing
There are many reputable options for payment services for your eCommerce site. You will certainly need a credit card gateway such as Authorize.net or Paypal.
Product Photography
Professional looking product photography can make the difference of a sale or no sale. We feel strongly about images and photography that will represent your brand and products. If you already have beautiful product images, excellent. If not we can work with you on planning product photography with your photographer or we can manage the photography and work with our photographers.
How Much Will an eCommerce Site Cost to Build & Maintain?
There is no easy answer to this question without some details on your specific project, but this may help for budgeting or to determine if an online store even make financial sense for you. Development costs for ecommerce sites can vary greatly and are largely dependent on the overall size of the catalog, the type of products, the available materials & photography, amount of project management needed, and the cost for plugins and configuration/customization of the various functionality needed. There is also the cost for site maintenance, annual licenses, hosting, SSL certificates, payment processing fees, product photography and online marketing.
Ballpark costs to build an eCommerce website.
These very rough estimates account for an average amount of project management, around 250 skus, credit card processing, using existing product photography, and based on our past experiences developing in each of the platforms. We find that the WooCommerce projects tend to go the smoothest, have excellent performance and usability on the both the front end and backend, and are the lowest in maintenance costs & skills compared to other shopping cart platforms.
WooCommerce: $6,500-$10k development +$1,500/year in support & maintenance
Magento CE: $10k-$15k, +$1,500 and up for annual support
Drupal Commerce: $20k-$25k, +$5k and up for annual support.
Give us a call or send a message and we can discuss cost in more details after learning more about your needs.
