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The process of creating and building an online store consists of several processes. An analytical approach and building a dedicated group of recipients, including persona and userflow design, is often a key process influencing its success. When creating a website, you can use ready-made solutions, e-commerce platforms or create a dedicated solution in the Wordpress Woocommerce model. In this article, we will present the differences in individual platforms and show how to best use the budget for an online store so that it is a source of many conversions, but also provides the necessary data needed for user analysis and allows you to target ads to specific groups of recipients.
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The price of a store is influenced primarily by its complexity and functionality.
If you order a dedicated online store with an individual graphic design, it will be more expensive than the ready-made version (subscription solutions or website builders available on the market). Before choosing an e-commerce platform, it is worth consulting your choice with an interactive agency because they will be best able to advise whether the functionalities you are planning can be implemented on ready-made Saas platforms and models or whether a dedicated solution or an open source model will be needed, e.g. Wordpress with the Woocommerce addition. See what WordPress is
Additional and significant costs in the process of setting up an online store
An often overlooked aspect in creating online stores is the selection of an appropriate quality server, SSL certificate and store security. The issue of SEO optimization and paying attention to building the store's visibility for main phrases as well as those related to specific products is also omitted. It is rare to implement full web analytics with integration of Google Analitycs 4 tracking codes or Google Ads conversions from advertising campaigns via Google Tag Manager.
Purchasing a server for an online store, how to choose an e-commerce server?
The server is an extremely important technical issue - choosing a suitably fast server that will ensure the stability of the store and a quick response time. If the online store has a large number of products, an e-commerce configurator, extensive filtering and language versions, it is worth choosing a dedicated server that will provide the best access to the hosting service.
In the case of hosting companies' services, it is best to look for those that have been dealing with the topic for years rather than larger and leading companies on the market that use various marketing tricks and tricks regarding transfer or parameter limits. Our digital agency recommends the services of the following companies: cyberfolks.pl or atthost.pl.
Which domain should I choose for my online store?
From the marketing and usability point of view, it is best to adapt the domain ending to the country in which the store will operate, e.g. for the Polish market it will be .pl, in the case of a global reach, it is worth equipping the store with a .com domain. Before purchasing a domain, it is usually worth checking the costs of its renewal, as they are usually 2-3 times higher. A proven domain registrar is ovh.com.
See also:
The server mentioned above is a guarantee of successful shopping and no failures or interruptions in the operation of the store. In the case of e-commerce solutions, it is worth equipping yourself with a dedicated SSL certificate that specifically secures your domain with our certificate. Thanks to this, after clicking on the padlock, the user will receive additional confirmation of the authorization and credibility of your online store.
Open source online store security
In the case of a dedicated online store or an open source solution, the contractor should appropriately secure our store by minimizing the possibilities that most often cause hacking:
The online store should have licenses for all modules and integrations or plug-ins used. It is worth remembering that an e-commerce solution based on open source should always be up to date, so it is recommended to check system and plug-in updates at least once a month.
In the case of ready-made online stores, there is no need to additionally secure the store because the supplier is responsible for all technical and security aspects.
See the offer:
If you are creating a simple online store, it is worth considering subscription versions or ready-made solutions. Running an online store on these platforms is intuitive and simple, but you should check the demo versions first whether a given interface suits you and whether all the functionalities you need are actually available.
You can implement a simple online store in the subscription version on the Shoper, Sky-Shop, Shoplo, Shopify, WIX platforms.
According to ranking https://www.similartech.com/categories/ecommerce-platforms Wordpress dominates as an e-commerce platform in the world, closely followed by solutions from Shopify and Squarespace.
The costs responsible for maintaining the online store include:
Customers often ask how much it costs to maintain an online store in the Saas model and a self-made one, or whether this is a factor that can be taken into account when creating your own online store.
When implementing a dedicated online store, there are no fixed or monthly fees. In the case of Wordpress maintenance or store administration, such a service will generate costs, but it is worth keeping the system and plugins up to date. It is also worth using Wordpress support once if you decide to create a store in this system.
Creating an online store using ready-made modules and an engine will be relatively cheaper at the start, especially if you do not have high requirements or want to test your idea.
A ready-made store, e.g. Shoper, will have limitations in terms of onsite SEO optimization, subscription stores will be more expensive in the long run if you decide on the premium version or any version above the basic one. Usually, the offer is prepared in such a way that you can spend a few zlotys more on the online store.
If you are creating a ready-made online store, its price is equal to the price of a monthly subscription plus a developer who will help you refine the online store in technical terms, e.g. integrate shipping, payments or perform comprehensive technical optimization. In the case of a ready-made online store, it is worth checking the differences in capacity, limits and availability of functionalities of each e-commerce platform offer; price should not always be the main determinant here.
If you have high expectations regarding responsiveness and optimization, you know that you need a non-standard view of the product card or you want to surprise your customers with the quality of the store, choose an online store fully adapted to your needs based on a dedicated UX/UI design and implementation and integration with an OpenSource solution, e.g. CMS Wordpress, which, in addition to the possibility of personalization and implementation of any project, also gives flexible integration possibilities with external platforms and allows any configuration of the store for SEO.
These are the basic functionalities that every online store should have:
It is common to use basic SEO provided by a given e-commerce platform. This is a mistake because in order for an online store to be clearly visible in Google (to build visibility for specific phrases, not only product-related but also general ones), it must be properly optimized. Simply completing the content and default headings, i.e. title, meta descriptions, product descriptions, is not enough.
If you want to compete for general phrases that generate a lot of traffic, e.g. running shoes or adidas running shoes, you will need to properly prepare the category structure, menu, check the competition and analyze the content to be placed on the appropriate subpages. Internal linking between main subpages, which should be optimized for their own keywords and products belonging to them, is also important.
An important but also overlooked issue in the process of setting up an online store is a general look at optimization and SEO issues. Product descriptions are missing or the description is copied from one product to another, meta title and description descriptions or linking between similar products is done incorrectly and there is no single structure for arranging descriptions in meta tags. Importantly, in the case of competitive products, short descriptions may not be enough and it should be determined based on the analysis of key phrases whether the descriptions will need to be longer.
Create dedicated product descriptions, expand the product card with additional sections showing advantages, enlargements of selected parts of the product with an appropriate description. In terms of SEO, more content means stronger SEO and better results in Google.
If you are thinking about SEO, it is worth creating a blog for your online store, although setting up an online store will be more expensive, but it will quickly pay off in the form of more traffic to the store from niche phrases, you will strengthen the store in terms of SEO by expanding the content and linking from posts to blog to the appropriate categories and products. It is important that the entry is thematically related to products that may also potentially be of interest to your customers. Apart from SEO, you should also look at user convenience and experience.
Without an in-depth analysis of key phrases, appropriate SEO research and competition analysis, it may turn out that the store will be positioned worse than the competition. Before commissioning a graphic design, and at the stage of designing mockups, it is worth taking into account the number of phrases and creating an online store structure that is logical for SEO.
The price of an online store will depend mainly on the complexity and advancement of the graphic design, UX design (shopping paths and store architecture), designing a dedicated responsive version in the case of more complex solutions, and implementing the store in the form of dedicated code and integration with CMS. In the case of Woocommerce solution.
The cost of creating a simple Woocommerce online store is approximately PLN 5,000 - PLN 8,000 net.
The price for a dedicated store design and the implementation of advanced functionality is over PLN 10,000 net.
In the case of original online stores, it is worth paying attention to responsiveness and its correct implementation, and prices start from PLN 12,000 net and up.
Dedicated UX and UI graphic design involves building the structure of an online store and architecture combined with SEO analysis. By designing the store taking into account key phrases, we implement the assumptions of the SXO concept, i.e. a combination of SEO and UX, which have a common goal at their core, i.e. ensuring comfort and positive user experience.
The impact of correctly executed architecture and logic of navigating through the store, selecting a category, product, and guiding the user will have an impact on SEO. In turn, excellent SEO means ensuring the online store's visibility in the Google search engine and ensuring the store's accessibility and usability for a wide range of recipients, including mobile users.
The cost of the UI online store project is approximately PLN 3,000 - PLN 5,000 net.
The cost of UX design and prototyping is approximately PLN 3,000 - PLN 5,000 net
Depending on whether you are building a ready-made online store or a dedicated version, the costs will vary significantly.
In the case of a dedicated store, the cost of implementing an original project starts from PLN 6,000 net and up. The boxed or subscription version will cost several dozen zlotys per month, which in the next few years may be more expensive than the original version. It is difficult to answer the question how much a store costs because a whole range of factors must be taken into account as input data for its creation.
The cost of setting up an online store is purchasing a domain, a server, ordering an SSL certificate, all legal issues and organizing content for the store, i.e. content, SEO research and analysis, photos, visual identification, marketing strategy. If you simply want to launch an online store, you can simply purchase a ready-made store in a Saas solution, e.g.:
The cost of a Shopify website ranges from $30 to $300 per month.
The cost of an online store on WIX ranges from PLN 80 to PLN 200 per month.
The question of how much an online store costs should also include how much it costs for an online store that has visibility in the search engine and has properly managed social media. When it comes to how much an online store costs, it is worth looking at all expenses, including promotion and advertising in Google Ads and on social media.
Advertising requires the implementation of web analytics so that you can determine which campaigns are working and which should be turned off, which traffic source generates profit and what should be improved, and which products sell the best. It is also worth investing in influencer marketing.
Thanks to effective promotion and data collection, you will be able to accurately assess the budget you spend on online marketing of your online store. The costs of running social media are also an important factor in the cost of promoting an online store. It is also worth taking into account the preparation of materials for the campaign and social content, the marketing strategy and the person who will prepare and run them. The store itself, regardless of whether it is a Saas or dedicated model, will require the same promotional activities.
Creating and building an online store is usually a one-time cost. Without knowing the brief and specifications, it's hard to say how much it costs to set up an online store, you can only assume approximate price ranges.
In the case of an e-commerce platform, e.g. Prestashop or Magento, and the type of graphic design, functionality, integration, implementation costs will vary.
In the case of Prestashop, implementation may be more expensive due to significant difficulties in integrating more advanced projects in this platform.
The cost of a simple online store is approximately PLN 5,000 - PLN 7,000 net
The cost of an extensive online store with extended functionalities starts from PLN 10,000 net
The cost of a professional store including SEO optimization, implementation of web analytics, a dedicated project and implementation of proprietary coding ranges from PLN 16,000 net to PLN 25,000 net.
The cost of a website with a blog depends on the complexity of the store itself and the type of website we want to create. The technical solution for creating a store with a website is to build a website on the main domain and implement an e-commerce platform in the directory, e.g. /shop/.
Incorporating a blog module solution in an online store comes down to appropriate preparation of the visual layer of the design of the list of entries, categories and the entry itself. From the technical side, it is necessary to prepare possibilities for the administrator to operate the blog, tag entries and administer content.
Creating a dedicated online store consists of several stages.
UX design and prototyping stage approximately: 15-20 days
Implementation and coding stage of HTML, CSS (frontend and backend layers) approx: 30-40 days
The stage of optimization, supplementation with content, implementation of web analytics: approx. 7-10 days
In the case of a ready-made online store, the time from purchase to launch is usually a few minutes, but it remains a matter of completing it, optimizing it and styling it.
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