What's the true cost of owning an ecommerce website?

The other day I was speaking to a website owner about their disillusionment with their current ecommerce website and supplier. Don’t get me wrong it was doing the job and selling products over the internet, but now that business was growing they were uncovering the true cost of going with a sizeable agency. As a small business they had recognised the need for an ecommerce website but on reflection they hadn’t asked the right questions.

As a small business you know you need an ecommerce website to keep and attract customers and grow revenue. The problem is with no previous experience of owning a website what questions do you ask. It would seem fair that with no experience going to a large agency would solve these issues. However the sales people at an agency are focused on the sale and may not cover the implications of some of their costs. As a client you may well be focused on their current client list and the lure of emulating some of those existing clients.

Here are a few questions that you may want to consider asking. The following provides more eCommerce supplier questions.

1. What is the cost per hour of future work? Ok you may have paid £15k for the market leading website, but what happens when your business grows and you need to add a best seller list to the category page. What if the cost of this addition is £1000 or it may stretch to £2000 depending on your requested functionality and the hourly rate of the agency. The big one, and it will hit all businesses that grow, is the integration with other back office systems this could be anywhere from £3000 upwards and can cost nearly as much as the original site. Consider how much this will eat into your profits for the year. The link above will show some typical pieces of functionality and services that you may want to enquire about.
2. Is the cost of hosting fixed or does it rise with an increase in usage? If it does rise with usage what is the cost per Gb. Sadly with many hosting solutions there is a quantity included in a base price but once you go over that there is a charge per Gb. Now consider that as sales go up, so will the number of users browsing the site. This variable cost based on sales can feel like the agency is taking a percentage of your sales. It therefore pays to work out what it will cost you per month as sales rise or worse what happens if sales don’t rise in proportion to the numbers browsing the site.
3. How many clients will my account manager be dealing with? The main reason for going to a large agency is that you feel you will be reaping the benefits of their experience and you would hope to get some advice for free. What happens if you account manager has 20 clients that they need to deal with? That’s less than a day a month, take into account holidays, admin, sickness and you are probably down to half a day and if that is spent selling you a £2000 best seller list then you aren’t maybe getting the value you had hoped for.
4. Can I access my customer data? Ok you may get orders sent to you, but what other questions might you have about your customers. What have customers added to their basket but not purchased? Where do my registered customers live? How many people have registered but not ordered? What products have customers viewed but not purchased? What do people search for on the site? All of these are very valid questions and can provide valuable information that will become critical if you want to grow your business, but can you get it? Or will it cost you?

I hope this has given you some insight into the sorts of questions that you need to ask. What you need is an agency that can understand you marketing issues and provide solutions, not one that sells you an website. After all you can buy an ecommerce site for £99 a month over the internet.