How much I need to spend to build an ecommerce website? – This is a frequently asked question by the newcomers in online retailing. Well, let me answer this question in the context of India. What I mean is – I will explain the expense considering that the ecommerce website is being developed by an Indian web development company.

An online store / ecommerce website (like www.BuyTimexWatches.in or www.MenakaBooks.com) with all standard features can be built on open source ecommerce platforms. Design and development of such website should not take more than Rs. 1.2 Lakhs (or around $2500).

This estimate may not include… 1. cost for product photography, product data compilation 2. cost / efforts required for product data upload 3. cost incurred for domain name registration and website hosting. 4. cost of payment gateway acquisition

If you are looking for a high end online store with lot of unique features and rich user experience, your expense will increase accordingly.

Another common question is – Should we get our ecommerce website built on opensource platforms or should we opt for custom coding? – I would suggest to start with opensource becasue its less expensive and time-to-go-live with opensource is much shorter than custom development. Go live with opensource, observe the response to your online store for around 6-8 months. If you feel that your are doing as expected, you can take a call to enhance the website with custom development. Custom development lets you implement any out-of-the-box feature; further, you can decide the overall user experience & flow of the website. However, you need to be very careful while choosing web development company for your custom ecommerce website development project. If the development company is not good enough, you may lose on time and money. Many retailers have done the mistake of hiring inexperienced web development company and ended up in mess.

You may think ‘how to decide which web development company is good enough for my needs?’ – answer is very simple – 1. float the tender or search the companies on net 2. ask them to share their past work on ecommerce 3. talk to the client directly for reference check.