osCommerce templates,Zen Cart templates,CRE Loaded templates
Click to go back to the site, to the collection of free e-commerce templates and premium oscommerce,cre loaded and zen cart templates.How Much An Ecommerce Site Really Costs?
I was reading this morning an article about ecommerce websites and about building a business out of it. The author is a professional consultant for online websites. What he pointed out is the fact that you can not build a website with just $500 or $1000 because it would require way more than this to have a professional ecommerce website.
You can start from Zen Cart and from a free Zen Cart template, OK, and work your store around one, but that’s not enough. See, on the internet you see all kind of 1 man ecommerce sites that work pretty well, but if you want to start a store that has real merchandise, stocks, employees, etc, it is way more than this.
The fact is that at that level you need an experience that goes way beyond your web skills, it comes to business skills and to organizing teams, because any store that has stocks requires more than 1 person running it. Think of the fact that you need
- somebody to handle orders
- somebody to handle customer support
- somebody to handle the actual products being packed and delivered
- you need hard contracts with delivery companies, etc.
- accountant
- hard contracts with suppliers
All these require money and skills. Business skills, that is. You need to know how to run a real store before starting a large scale ecommerce website. The fact is that such a site needs to be started right, once you invest money in it, needs predictions of profitability, a business plan, a marketing plan, etc. You need to know how much to invest in int when you start it, how to promote it and when it will become profitable.
Of course, virtual products such as Zen Cart templates, free or premium, or e-books, or online services don’t require the same number of people that a shop with physical products would require, but still you need people and money for it.
Have you ever tried to imagine how such an e-commerce site would be built? How much money would you need for it? I guess most of us run small stores, like this one here, small shops that don’t require many people behind it, 1 or 2 usually make the store run pretty good.
Have you thought about it?
