E-Commerce the right way to think about it

We have clients who approach us daily, and a large proportion of them have a false belief that by getting a website they will instantly gain interest in their product or service, which is not the case.

Getting your website professionaly built is a key part of suceeding on the internet, however the real magic is in the marketing of the website, because there are likely to be lots of companies providing a similar product / service.

The Marketing

Lets think of it like a traditional retail shop....when you create a website for the first time, its like opening on the street thats at the back of all the major retailers, you get the odd customer, but theres not a huge amount of passing trade. In order to let people know you are there, you are going to need to do newspaper ads, hand out some leaflets, or maybe spend out on some local radio / tv advertising.

On the internet, you still need to do marketing, you will get the odd person if you do nothing, but there will be a minimal amount of orders, you need to look at Google AdWords, Banners, MSN AdCentre, newsletters, blogging, social networking and much more to achieve any real results.

The Cost

When you consider getting a website, be sure to think of the costs in comparison to a normal route to market like a retail shop, website hosting (ours is £20 per month) is like a shop lease (£600+ per month). The design & development cost (£2,000 + ) could be compared to a good shopfitting (£3,000), and a salesperson (£15,000 +), cause thats what websites are there for, to do sales.

That old saying "You get what you pay for" is even more true in this situation, as you need a web design / development company with experience of increasing sales, easy navigation and guiding you on what to do, or not to do.

So in breif expect to pay £2,000+ setup fee + £20 per month hosting (and make sure you budget for some healthy advertising) for a good website, in comparison to around £25,000 to setup a retail shop of which about 60% will be re-spent each year.