How much does an e-commerce website cost?

The following is some general information on the things we will need in order to be able to start production on a standard e-commerce application:

• Products – categories/subcategories, names, prices, SKUs, images, descriptions and weights
• Attributes - sizes, colors, gender, etc.
• Payment gateway  - information or setup specifications for standard providers (PayPal, Google, authorize.net, First Data)
• Shipping – specification of shipping methods (any two of FedEx, USPS, DHL, and other commonly used carriers) and existing account information
• Terms and Privacy Policy
• Notification – messaging and copy for order confirmation pages and emails, as well as notification emails to site/store admin.

These are in addition to the non-ecommerce site pages, which require their own set of additional and separate specifications.  We assume design is developed for the non-ecommerce web pages and applied to the ecommerce component or enhancement.

We generally try to estimate development, configuration and testing of a standard e-commerce component assuming out-of-the-box functionality of a commonly available open-source e-commerce website component including:

• Website design applied to the ecommerce functionality
• 8 to 10 products with standard attributes and ordering
• Product catalogue displayed by category
• Product detail pages with add to cart button
• Shopping Cart functionality  (review cart, continue shopping)
• Checkout for customer information, payment information and shipping method selection
• Online and email invoices using default layout and formatting
• Order notifications to site admins
• Instructions on retrieving and processing order information via site admin control panel

The major things that affect the estimated scope of work and proposed pricing include:

• Changes to default e-commerce functionality that require code revisions and customization.
• 3rd party payment gateway, banking  and shipping solutions account setup and testing and integration to the ecommerce functionality.
• # of products and attribute configuration beyond basic size, color and gender
• changes to the website CSS template layout and design that apply only to the ecommerce functionality