eCommerce site development

Deleted User 234324

Deleted User 234324

Deleted User 234324

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25 Oct 2004
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Hiya folks

Looking to get an idea on rough costs to develop a basic ecommerce site, nothing fancy just classified adverts with minimal information for each listing. Title, description, orice and contact details, along with several images for each one.

Registration is kept basic with just a username, email address and users contact information (optional)

Listings would require a time limit (selectable from 7,14,28 days etc) and a simple system in place for marking items as sold.

All pretty basic, reason im asking is because one of the companies contracted in to develop such a system for a sister website has a budget of nearly 4k and are now refusing to do any additional development work because the funds have run dry.

As a web developer myself im shocked at what they have created for the money so far and baffled by how they can think its even worth the money.

What would you say a site like the above would cost, bare in mind design and graphical work is pretty much non existant as the whole system is based on Drupal so most of that is built in anyway.
 
Can't help i'm afraid but having just spent some spare time learning some basic HTML/CSS and some other bits and pieces i am shocked at the sort of prices people charge for basic websites.

A friend of mine setup a cafe and paid a couple of hundred quid for a website which looks terrible - i could have made a better one in ten minutes and i'm a total noob. They lifted the top image results from google images for 'cup of tea' etc and stretched them to look terrible.

Shocking how lazy some of these people are.

Sorry that doesn't really answer your question :)
 
First of all £4/5K doesn't sound unreasonable for what you're asking.

Development takes time and that's what you'll be charged for.

What you want is just a better company. Do more research into past developments. You'll likely find links to websites they've done before on their own website. There's nothing stopping you calling up any of the contact numbers you find on there and asking them about their relationship with the web developer.

It's your money after all.

Also any good developer is going to sit down with you and develop your requirements with you, to your budget. What you want to see is requirements that list essential and desirable aspects of the system. The essentials should be completed at an agreed cost. You'll likely find near the end of the development or some time in the future that you'll want to revisit and negotiate the desirable aspects to be added on.

Also, don't pay up front. Stop developing because they ran out of money?! It's not as if your money is buying them food so they can come into the office. No work should be started until a contract is signed that agrees on requirements for the system to a specified cost.

Also, without trying to get personal - it's knowledge, experience, skill, resources and commitment that you're paying for in a good web design company. Not "I spent some spare time learning some basic HTML/CSS and some other bits and pieces - SO HIRE ME! I'LL DO IT CHEAP!" The fact that anyone gets stung says a quite a bit about them as well. Just going with the first or cheapest you can find isn't always good for business.
 
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As a php/mysql developer myself I know the sort of programming required to get a site like the above mentioned up and running from scratch, having done it myself in the past, but in this situation the funding was given to someone else rather than myself (because I couldnt be bothered with it to be honest) but the fact they have used an off the shelf package with minimal setup required and made a few slight alterations and then expect to use the whole budget for it just baffles me, I've looked at previous work they have done before and it all seems fairly good but looking at the portfolio of work they have limited knowledge of anything to do with ecommerce.

What they have essentially created would take me the best part of a day to do from scratch, but as they funding is not mine all I can do is critisize the work they have done and tell the funders its a rip off!
 
If you're talking a completely bespoke system, then £8-10k. If you're amending an existing eCommerce system, something like Magento, then £2-4k.
 
They are basically just using Drupal as a backbone and then using a few addons for it, I wouldnt really call it an ecommerce site as no money will be handled by the site it is basically just a site for classified ads, a bit like gumtree but a crap load simpler.
 
Depends on their rates I guess and whether they have experience with that kind of solution.

They wouldn't be the first developer who bit off more than they could chew.....
 
RoyMi6 said:
Also, without trying to get personal - it's knowledge, experience, skill, resources and commitment that you're paying for in a good web design company. Not "I spent some spare time learning some basic HTML/CSS and some other bits and pieces - SO HIRE ME! I'LL DO IT CHEAP!" The fact that anyone gets stung says a quite a bit about them as well. Just going with the first or cheapest you can find isn't always good for business.
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I'm not trying to get work in this industry - I chose a different path and am now too deep in to move over, but i'm interested so i started learning some in my spare time.

And going by what the OP says it seems overpriced given he recons he could knock it up in a day himself...

Many customers don't have a clue how long these things take or how much knowledge is required - sure they should shop around and they only have themselves to blame but I was just surprised that the industry had so many cowboys - not sure why but i expected there to be more honesty, pretty naive in retrospect! its business afterall.
 
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feedtheram said:
I was just surprised that the industry had so many cowboys - not sure why but i expected there to be more honesty, pretty naive in retrospect! its business afterall.
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I don't think it's intentional. It's just that your average one-man band would take any job, regardless if he knows what he's doing or not, then try and figure out the best way to do it as he goes, which obviously leads to all manner of screw ups and a crap system which is over budget.
 
Spunkey said:
I don't think it's intentional. It's just that your average one-man band would take any job, regardless if he knows what he's doing or not, then try and figure out the best way to do it as he goes, which obviously leads to all manner of screw ups and a crap system which is over budget.
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I can see how that happens. I have very little knowledge of the industry and little skill of my own so i shouldn't really judge a whole profession based on my limited knowledge and the bad experience of a couple of friends.

I would have thought these sorts of things are done on a fixed fee basis - is this not the case?

Sorry OP for derailing the thread a bit
 
I used wordpress for my site and considering I havnt done websites for a lot of years and everything has changed now with css and jquery ect, I've bairly had to touch the background side of things and I've got a site that looks alright considering its only cost me £30 so far. can have subscription and accounts too. and also email both partys with billing and orders.

Unsure about how much a site like this would cost but id gather people probably charge quite abit for it.. its astounding now how easy web building can be to the average joe. obviously a good web developer can intrigate a lot of his own stuff and modify existing the fit in with whatever theme/title your website is about.

http://www.print-shed.co.uk
 
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are there no cpanel sites from hosting companies that do this already?

I imagine there are plenty of free versions out there already?
 
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