Should You Launch An E-Commerce Website For Your Business?
The answer is a resounding ‘yes’, but with some caveats…
Many businesses with products to sell will consider having an e-Commerce website built by a web agency. Or, they may have a go at creating one by using one of the cheap DIY platforms available, such as Shopify or WIX.
Here’s the rub – without a solid marketing campaign, including SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and/or PPC (Pay-per-Click), they will be wasting their money. That’s whether they spend £50k on a website or just £30 per month and all of their available time. Your new eCommerce website will likely turn into a huge white elephant; we have seen this many times…
Any website will not earn relevant traffic from potential customers simply by being published. Why should it, with millions of other established websites out there competing for attention via high-quality, relevant content?
How much do eCommerce sites cost to build?
The cost of building an eCommerce site will depend on many factors, including the number of products and required functionality.
The cost of an eCommerce website from a web agency
In the UK, you can expect to pay a proven agency with a decent portfolio anything from £2,500 upwards for a functional eCommerce website. You should have the control to add and edit products via a custom listing function including the ability to add the product name, images, videos, description, materials, weight, and of course, price.
Some may offer cheaper solutions – they will likely be the ones without a proven track record and are trying to build up a portfolio. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad, but experience in web design is largely gained through many mistakes and trial and error – so it’s probably best that your business doesn’t become a valuable lesson for somebody else. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Any competent Web Agency will build your website with an SEO infrastructure, as standard, to help you rank on Google. Unfortunately, most do not. Most of the eCommerce sites we take on for SEO campaigns need some serious structural work before we can even begin. In many cases, we have to rebuild from scratch or at least migrate over to a more content-friendly CMSc such as WordPress. In doing so, we make required SEO campaign actions (such as regular content uploading and amends to existing content or articles) immediately possible and available with no downtime or ticketing requests to raise.
If your website seems almost impossible to update or is built upon a custom CMS from an almost now invisible web agency – then you know what to do.
The e-commerce DIY Option
There are many DIY options, including Shopify and WIX, and established selling platforms such as Amazon and eBay. Look to budget from £30 per month and be prepared to spend many hours adding products and content yourself.
With WIX and Shopify, you do have SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) capabilities, but they are fairly limited and are not renowned for it. When presented with either for an SEO campaign, we look to rebuild to maximise your return on investment.
The top-selling platforms of Amazon and eBay will charge around 15%+ for every sale you make, plus a monthly fee. You’ll find them to be a bit of a Dutch Auction where the cheapest price wins out, especially if you are selling the same product as other sellers. This drives down your margins and makes forecasting a consistent cashflow rather difficult.
If you have unique products, then Amazon and eBay will be great for a while until someone lists the same or similar item at a lower price point. It’s worth keeping an eye on copy-cat listing images and descriptions as, more often than not, you may begin to see your content and assets being replicated.
What are the ongoing costs of an eCommerce website?
Website Hosting Costs
You need a hosting company to provide an online space for your website. Usually, your web design agency will offer such at anything between £15 and £150+ per month. This cost will depend on your volume of traffic, the functionality, and how fast you need the website to be for your users and visitors.
If you’re paying an agency to host your website, insist on the following minimum requirements…
- Daily Automated Backups
- Daily Malware Scans
- Full Admin Access (not ‘Editor’ as this will limit you)
- CPanel Access (this is imperative)
- A dedicated (or virtual dedicated) server with a unique IP address – so that your website is the only domain on that server
Cost of Sales for an eCommerce website
Amazon and eBay have their own payment processing facilities, included in the sales commission they charge you (15%+)
Stripe is one of the most popular payment processors for your own eCommerce website, with no monthly fees, a great user interface and low per-transaction commissions fees.
An excellent complementary payment option is Vendreo, which uses open banking functionality with no commission charges. The cost is just £10 per month and payments from your customers go directly and instantly into your bank account. Using Open Banking is a great option for both cost-saving and for security. It protects both your business and the customer. Due to the requirement of secure access to the users’ native online banking app via biometrics, face ID, or password, Vendreo Pay practically eliminates fraud and chargebacks. It’s quite a ridiculously good offering the more we think about it.
PayPal is also popular, but again, the fees tend to be higher – and they have a habit of withholding your payments or refunding a customer with even the slightest complaint. This can drastically impact cash flow, which is particularly an issue if you have staff and or suppliers to pay. We always suggest having PayPal as an additional option as there are many users who choose to checkout via PayPal for the security alone. It’s a trusted option that works well for the consumer.
Klarna is a superb credit offering, helping customers to spread their payments over monthly instalments or defer them by 30 days. You get paid in full right away but pay more in sales commissions (5%). A number of our clients have had great success with Klarna as their flexible payment options have disrupted the typical and predictable payday sales spikes. Customers are now able to safely and securely purchase the item of their choice, regardless of the amount in their bank. Larger purchases can be subject to soft credit searches to protect you as the seller. Whilst using Klarna, you would be wise to view your merchant portal to get clued up on how and where you can advertise or promote the Klarna payment option with your brand or product. They provide assets in a variety of f0rmats to assist in your marketing activities.
How to get traffic (and sales) for your eCommerce website
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
A professional SEO Campaign will bring much more traffic to your eCommerce website if managed, implemented, and executed correctly. SEO agencies have an increasingly bad reputation due to the thousands of firms out there pretending to be ‘experts’. They claim to know a lot but do very little. Many of our clients have experienced this in the past from agencies promising the earth but, thankfully, they found their way to us (due to our own SEO campaigns) and we have been able to help them in correcting their legacy content and overall site health/performance, whilst drastically increasing their revenue.
A Professional SEO Agency such as Augmun Solutions will always:
- Tell you exactly where you are now with your online visibility, compared to your competition
- Perform extensive research on your current Google ranking positions
- Agree on realistic targets of where you want to be (with a timeframe)
- Advise on realistic costs
- Provide a clear plan
- Provide monthly reports with statistics
- Provide advice to help you to exploit gaps in the market
Reach Out to Existing Customers
You can use your existing customer database (within legal restrictions and GDPR compliance) to reach out and inform people about your website via channels such as Email Marketing or App Pushes. This can easily drive traffic to your website, but only to people that you have already sold to or that have subscribed to your respective mailing list. So, no new customers…
Go Big on Social Media
Many website owners drive a ton of traffic to their eCommerce website by promoting on Social Media platforms such as FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok and others. This can be time-consuming and you will most likely need to spend some budget to promote posts and deals via ad campaigns. Organic-only reach rarely cuts it – particularly with ad revenue-driven platforms such as Facebook and Instagram intentionally crushing organic reach to less than 10% of your actual following. This almost criminal behaviour is to continually push you into spending on Ads for increased performance. There are no two ways about it, Facebook and its entities are pay-to-play platforms.
Unless you employ a specialist agency to do this for you, you’ll need to be skilled on your chosen platforms at producing regular content. We don’t offer social media management but we can point you towards some of our trusted partners who specialise and excel in those fields.
Offline Advertising
Offline advertising involves paying for articles and promotions in your client-relevant print publications or even paying for ads on buses and billboards, radio or TV exposure. Simpler techniques include sponsoring events or organising leaflet drops. They all cost, probably more than you will get back in sales revenue. Some of the worst examples of wasted advertising spend include paying for ads on screens in sports centres, doctors’ surgeries, or at sports venues. It’s industry-specific whether your target audience will frequent the location showcasing your advertisement, and if so, they will still need to engage with your ad in some way. If you choose this route, ensure you’re fully aware of how and where the advertisement will be displayed.
Online Advertising
Many popular websites that attract your type of customer will take your money happily for an article or flashy advert. Some will work, but most will not. Be sure to check the vital website statistics of each website offering you such a service such as their overall website health and traffic. Our free tool situated on our home page may be of some use.
Pay-per-Click
A PPC (Pay-per-Click) campaign will charge every time someone clicks on your Ad and lands on your website (or 3rd party landing page). Costs can vary and are broken down into both your actual budget spend, and the costs of time and management by the PPC agency. The average budget spend in the UK is around £1,500 per month. The rates of agency for spending your budget wisely will of course vary from agency to agency. Your ROI (Return On Investment) will depend on your profit margins and level of competition. We don’t offer PPC services but can point you towards some partners who excel at it.
In Conclusion
Our advice is to think very carefully before launching your new eCommerce website. Your budget considerations need to include a plan of how to realistically get targeted traffic to the site as, unfortunately but understandably, that will not happen by itself and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Your website is your shop-front, website traffic is your footfall. You wouldn’t place a shop in the middle of nowhere without providing directions.
If you would like to speak with one of our SEO specialists for an in-depth conversation on how to get your project off the ground, feel free to contact us by phone on 01617060441
Or reach out with your project requirements here
Director & Head of Marketing Operations at Augmun Solutions. Christopher is a graduate of UCLAN, having studied Film and Media. His career has included projects for Apple, Samsung and many other leading tech companies.
