The process of getting your business online can be daunting and needs proper planning and budgeting. One of the best ways to increase your online presence and start selling online is to launch an e-commerce website. But as mentioned, the cost to develop an e-commerce website depends on several factors. Here is a list of factors and the range of prices associated with it. This will help you in budgeting to successfully start your online venture.
Factors that affect the cost to developing an e-commerce website:
E-commerce platform or custom development:
When you decide to start an e-commerce website you get a vast number of choices of readymade e-commerce platforms to start with. This option is cheap and can be a great place to start your business. Though it can serve as an ideal means to get your business running in the initial phase, this option is not very scalable. Many open-source platforms are just not as flexible, customizable, and secure; neither are they made to handle huge amounts of traffic.
This is where premium plans and more sophisticated approaches come into play. You either can subscribe to an e-commerce management platform’s premium plans or hire developers to build your custom website.
Building a custom website is particularly beneficial as it is more secure, customizable, and scalable, and you can decide the theme of your website based on your products and services.
Cost estimation: Basic plans start at AED 1000 but a custom-built website or premium plans from e-commerce platforms can cost you AED7000 or more.
Cost of Demain:
A Domain is the address of your website on this vast internet just like your physical address is used to mark your position on this earth. There are several platforms from where you can purchase your custom domain name for one year or more. You need to renew your plan every year. The cost may also depend on the extension you are using for your web address.
Cost Estimation: AED 20-200 per year. It varies with the extensions of your choice such as .com, .net, .co etc.
Cost of Hosting:
Hosting prices differ greatly with the plans you are choosing. Your website will be hosted on a server, which is an actual machine somewhere in the world that will serve the entire data to the user of your website.
In the initial phases, you can choose a shared server or free plans offered by many companies but these options do not play well when large traffic is coming regularly to your website. Then A dedicated server is recommended to host your website to avoid crashing.
Cost Estimation: Starts from AED 400.
Hiring developers:
The cost of hiring a developer can vary greatly depending on experience, exposure, and past projects they have done. You can either make a team of full-time employees consisting of developers or you can hire freelancers from various platforms.
Cost Estimation: AED 7000 or more, varies greatly with the developer’s knowledge and experience.
Web Design:
Yes, everyone with an e-commerce business can choose a template from different platforms and start to sell their product. But if you want to stand out from the crowd you should implement a theme for your website. Make custom designs to provide your users with a unique experience different from the majority of your competitors. Depending on your budget you should also seek help from ane-commerce website company. Better if the company is local and understands the targeted audience’s culture. Web design in Dubai, Abu dhabi, and related provinces in the UAE dictates the retention of the traffic if your desired audience is based in the UAE.
Cost Estimation: UI/UX website can cost from AED 35,000 to AED 55,000.
SSL certification :
SSL certification or “Secure Sockets Layer” encrypts the request made by your website or to your website. For example, if you don’t have an SSL certification your customer when sending a request for payment from your website is vulnerable as the data sent is not encrypted and can easily be hacked. This can hurt the trust in your brand significantly. So always make sure to add SSL certification.
Cost estimation: SSL certification from reputed brands costs AED 914 or more per year.
Different features:
The cost to develop an e-commerce website also varies greatly with the number of features you want in your website and how complex you want your website to be. If you are starting you should opt for the most essential features to provide a clean and simple user interface. Once you start to grow, make your website more enhanced.
Cost Estimation: AED 18,000 to AED 185,000.
Content creation:
To entice people to buy from your website, the quality of content present on your website plays a significant role. Good and clear product images and flamboyant and catchy descriptions will help in improving your sales manifolds. Good quality blogs and adverts can help in driving organic traffic to your e-commerce website.
Cost estimation: In general the cost to hire a copywriter directly correlates to the number of copies they are writing. Hence the visuals of your product page may vary between AED 1800 to 7500 whereas the copywriting can be between AED 200 to 1800 per article or page.
SEO to Rank in Google results:
E-commerce websites are designed to drive traffic, this will only be possible if your website uses search keywords that are favored by the algorithm. To ensure these SEO techniques are used. SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is a powerful tool that helps to drive more traffic to your website.
Hiring an SEO expert will allow your website to occur more frequently in the search tabs of google and this will automatically translate to higher traffic and better sales.
Cost Estimation: A basic SEO expert will cost you around AED 1100-5,500 per month.
Website Maintenance:
Your website is an electronic representation of your company. Hence it requires regular care to maintain its functionality and improve on its features. Gathering proper feedback and making changes based on them is an important part of growing any website. Along with it, one needs to consider the various bug fixes required along the way to building a safe and secure e-commerce website. Also, new functionalities can be added to assist the customers visiting your website.
Cost Estimation: The cost of website maintenance can vary depending on the amount of time a developer puts into the maintenance. The range can vary between AED 3,000-30,000. It can also depend on the number of bug fixes and improvements you want to incorporate into your website.
Price Estimation depending on your need:
To decide the overall cost to develop an e-commerce websitedepending on your investing capacity and business’s age we have categorized three types of situations.
- For startups, wanting to build 5-10 pages of an e-commerce platform, the price can vary from AED 5000- 10000.
- A mid-sized website with a moderately feature-rich website with 10-30 pages costs AED 15,000 to AED 25,000.
- A complex website with heavy traffic costs more than AED 25000.
There are multiple options to start your e-commerce website and expand your business worldwide. This is true even if your business is at the initial stage and you are on tight budgeting. There are multiple companies and freelancers who provide these specific services. So the bar to start is low.
