Make a financial plan.
The next stage is to consider how much money you’re willing to put into your ecommerce platform. When planning your budget, don’t forget to factor in the “hidden costs” of installing a new solution. Consider expenditures such as maintenance, advice, and set-up in addition to the obvious costs such as licences and development. Here are some things to consider when making your budget.
The cost of an ecommerce platform varies based on the size of the company, the number of sales, and, of course, the solution itself. Some systems, such as Magento, have annual licencing fees, while others, such as Shopify, have monthly subscription prices. The provider may take a percentage of the retailer’s sales in some situations (such as Demandware).
These are only a few of the considerations for your budget. SMBs can expect to spend hundreds of dollars each year on ecommerce platforms, while corporations should budget at least $20,000 per year.
Costs of design and development
Creating your online store is an additional expenditure. Themes for SMB solutions can range from free to hundreds of dollars.
What about businesses? You can design and create your site in-house, outsource it to an agency, or do a combination of the two, depending on your company.
Upkeep expenses – Many businesses pay more than they planned since they forgot to budget for maintenance when choosing a solution. Make sure you don’t make the same mistake. You must consider ongoing development as well as additional maintenance costs, such as marketing, integrations, SEO, security management, analytics, and so on.
Fees for transactions
Fees for transactions vary by ecommerce system. By using the vendor’s preferred payment provider, you may be able to save money. Examine each platform’s integrated payments to check whether it supports your preferred payment gateway or if you can utilise one of their payment partners.
Hosting fees
How much should you budget for hosting expenses? This, once again, is dependent on your solution.
You might choose a hosted solution and delegate server maintenance and updates to your ecommerce provider.
You might also go with a self-hosted ecommerce platform, in which case you’ll have to set up and operate your own servers or find a hosting partner. The retailer pays for server costs individually in this scenario.
Fees for consultations (where applicable) – If you’re going to hire a consultant, don’t forget to budget for their expenses.
Look into ecommerce options.
Once you’ve determined what you need and how much you’re prepared to spend, you can begin researching several options to find the greatest fit. To make this step a little easier, we’ve put together a list of the most popular ecommerce solutions for businesses, along with information on their benefits, drawbacks, and costs.
When it comes to choosing an ecommerce platform, what factors should you consider?
So far, we’ve covered a lot of territory and reviewed the benefits of several ecommerce platforms. You’ll now need to consider a variety of elements to aid your decision-making.
In this section, we’ll discuss the most important factors to consider while choosing an ecommerce solution. Hosting, your product/industry, and your level of experience are among them. Let’s get started.
Hosted/cloud-based vs. self-hosted
One of the first things to think about is whether you want to use a self-hosted ecommerce system or one that is hosted for you (typically cloud-based). Each choice has its own set of benefits and drawbacks.
You’ll be hosting your site on your own server with self-hosted, giving you complete control over management and maintenance. This means that if you wish to make changes to your site’s primary code, you can do it without relying on another company or web host to handle your request. If you operate your site on your own system, you can do pretty about anything with it, which makes self-hosting appealing to many people.
Running a self-hosted site does, however, necessitate some technical know-how, so if you don’t know your way around coding and hosting, you’ll need to employ professionals to help you. You are responsible for your own upgrades and maintenance, and you will be responsible for those charges.
At a glance, the benefits and drawbacks of self-hosting are as follows:
Pros
You have complete control over the appearance, feel, and functioning of your website.
You host your site on your own server or machine, giving you complete control over how you develop and maintain your website.
When it comes to aspects of your site, you have complete control.
Cons
To set up, administer, and maintain a server, you’ll need technical skills. Server costs, as well as design, development, and upkeep, can add up quickly.
Source: ecommerce platforms , online selling platform
