Custom Website -- with shopping cart question

Hello,
I'm new here and have a million questions. We want to have a custom designed website created -- no templates -- with a shopping cart -- so we have been in touch with a few local companies. We are meeting with one of them soon and are overwhelmed by what we don't know! They say they "hand code" everything -- including the shopping cart. Before we even add on some of the things that we really want -- including customer's being able to access past orders, tracking for packages etc, we're looking at a price of $27,000. Is this "normal?" It's frightening going into this without really understanding everything. They've already analyzed our website and our competitors so they'll build our new site based on their findings. Is there a price range for a totally customized website? I'd feel better knowing that this is not unheard of.

Thanks,
Debi

I've seen sites cost this much but you have to ask:

Can this be done on a current ecom platform that can be custom coded?
If yes, then the cost is steep.

What unique/custom options are you looking for?

It seems steep to me but we don't know much about your site. How many products, product options, shipping, etc.

What are your annual sales and can your sales justify that kind of expense. What are the design company's responsibilities as far as support is concerned. Do they offer a period of support that makes you feel comfortable in knowing that the $27000.00 is not going to escalate if changes are made (because they will be made). Who is going to Web Master the site and is that included?

Did they mention any details on some soft of control panel where you will be able to edit store settings such as adding or removing products?

How do you plan to process orders? On separate order fulfillment software or on your new Web site?

I agree with seomagician, you need to figure out if everything you want can be down w/ an existing eCommerce platform (many to choose from). You can have a very custom made web site using a popular eCommerce platform for much less than starting from scratch.

Since it seems they will be hand-coding a new system for you, the price is reasonable. Building a cart from the ground up might be expensive but in the long run, it will be a lot easier to manage.

However, you might be tied to this company for a very long time so I would see how long the company has been in business. If anything were to happen, you would need to then consider going to new programmers which will ultimately find fault in the previous programmers' code and tell you what they think needs to be fixed.

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Originally Posted by Corey Bryant

going to new programmers which will ultimately find fault in the previous programmers' code and tell you what they think needs to be fixed.

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Yes, most definitely would happen w/ different programmers.

I started out in architecture school, and they used to tell us, "don't re-invent the nail". The idea is that it's cheaper and more reliable to use off-the-shelf unless you have a strong reason.

5, 7 years ago or more I could see doing a custom web site and shopping cart. At this point there's so much good, flexible software out there I would never consider it. When you say you don't want templates, are you thinking about FrontPage templates and that sort of thing? Customization for modern software like drupal and zencart, for instance, use CSS for look and feel. That's the same way someone is going to create a custom site for you, except you're going to have to pay to have someone reinvent the structure for you. And debug it, etc. If you use a well-known framework, you don't have to worry so much about bringing in another programmer because chances are you can find someone who already has experience in it. Then you don't have to pay so much for the new programmer to get up to speed.

Bug

Thank you all for your responses. We have a good idea of what we want -- we have been looking around at different websites that we like, and have ordered from and we've picked out what we think are the best practices from each of them. The company has been around for a while and they have several long-term working relationships with familiar companies. We have also looked at their portfolio and we like their work. We like the group -- we'd really like to establish a long term relationship with them -- but I just didn't know if a website completely tailored to what we want should cost $27,000 or not. But, thank you for all your replies.

$27,000 is WAY too much to pay. you could have a programmer full time building the site for you for 6months non stop at that point.

Also...you wont get a "from scratch" site. You will get a core system customized to your needs which is nice, but you can do that with 2-4 weeks of coding work (depending on review rounds and your custom needs) for more like $2,700. If you paid $27,000 for a week or two of real work and about a month or two of them stretching the project out to make it seem worth the cost i am 100% sure THEY will want a long term relationship with YOU!

I have seen many members waste $12,000 or $16,000 or even $20,000 on a "custom" custom built cart from services they thought were great. I kid you not....3 out of the last 4 of these I have seen got an out of the box X-Cart site with a custom template and their logo in the back end admin menu and not the X-cart logo or colors. These were each from different "service" providers...scary. So the person should have paid them a few hundred for the platform and taking the time to set their admin settings and such plus the custom template.

there is no value in a custom platform....you need an out of the box solution with some possible add ons and changes to any specific needs. This is not a 20k+ project at all. For example...you could get an out of box cart with a ton of features and just delete the ones you dont want or need....that is much easier then starting with nothing and trying to add new features.

and a custom designed look to the site without any template can be done for less then $1,000...it can run over for sure...but it doesnt need to.

look at zencart. It its free and easy to use.

Get someone to desigh the graphics and basic layout for you, but I really doubt you need a specially designed application.

If you want something else then buy it. Paying $27,000 is just insane. The very fact that these people are telling you you have to spend this kind of money should start raising flags that maybe they are not your best business partners.

It always amazes me how people can pass judgement on what it takes to build a e-commerce solution.

You do not mention how many products, items you have, do you want sales tracking, auto calculation of shipping, tracking inventory etc.


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opensourceforce, you dont know the requirements, your calculations based on nothing. It's can be 3 tier custom application which deals with branches, affiliates and who know what.
mikey0531 - send your requiremnts to more than one company and compare the prices, if it's roughly the same you are ok

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Originally Posted by cometmall

opensourceforce, you dont know the requirements, your calculations based on nothing. It's can be 3 tier custom application which deals with branches, affiliates and who know what.

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Well...i wouldn’t say it was based on nothing. It was based on an eCommerce platform project with specs provided in the first quote...plus my own experience with what is needed in B2C and B2B carts and custom applications...the specs provided at a high level were:
1- shopping cart.
2- including customer's being able to access past orders
3- tracking for packages etc
4- custom template with some graphic design

Given the few requirements provided in the first post...yes...$27,000 is way too much. All of these can be done out of the box starting with an open source template. Its a shopping cart...its not some complicated SAP like system.....(oh ya...and there are open source options for that too :-) )

#3- it would take about 2hrs to design and program a custom tracking module for packages based on the existing functions. it could take a little more if an XML or EDI was needed with some other tracking portal to make it automated... But, if they export their tracking in a file they could upload it to the cart based on the existing bulk import tools. To make it very expensive it would need the automation aspect or some flash graphics where you can see the planes and trucks locations based on some GPS system or linking to a yahoo or google maps type of display. Again...even on the most expensive side of things with graphic design for some flashy display is well under the posted budget.

Affiliates- already a default offering in most cart OS applications (Zen, CRE, VM, etc).

Cost of integrating the shopping cart with a CMS? FREE! Virtue Mart has this and i think there is a Joomla Store based on CRE Loaded.

Custom Integration with a standard OS based cart...cost would be a couple hours of programming. If the CMS needed major changes you could have something amazing in the 1k to 3k range if you had some very specific CMS needs and needed new modules or features installed.

If I was to really put some effort into it...you could force an expensive project by linking say CRE to a CMS (joomla/mambo), design custom templates for all aspects, some graphic work for some ad banners and images, create the custom tracking module and display (not needed and prob some free options out there...but this would be a way to add to the cost), a few more hours for linking to some custom POS, customize the checkout process with say 2 to 4hrs of programming if needed, then link it to Sugar so the system is integrated with a sales lead and project posting application, last link it to a support portal like cerebus. That is about as expensive as I can image the project needing to be for a custom cart and with all of that you are still talking 1/3 of the cost of $27,000.

If you want to list all of the specs I can base it on more details naturally, but I know ecommerce and development. I know the needs of B2B and B2C and given that the name of this forum is Small Business Computing I can make some guesses about their basic sales and system needs. I dont see any number of tiers in the system getting a need for $27k.

Can they get what they need under $3k? Yes. Can then get it under $300? Yes, depending on their custom design need where they could pick an off the rack template for the site. I would recomend the person look in the $2,700 to $6,000 range for what they need and then add more functions if needed later. (i still think $6k is high for a cart application)

I will say this....I am sure it will be a great cart and system. I am sure the firm is not trying to cheat you.....but.....the only way to code is by hand...so "hand code" doesnt mean anything ;-) Also, if making a cart from scratch is a waste. I wouldn’t buy a car from someone who said they would start by inventing the wheel and charging me for the time.

opensourceforce - as you mentioned you can guess what they need, i belive you are professional in your field, but still first you should see the requirements.
I personally know a company, they took e-commerce project for 20,000$ and tried to find another company to do that project for 15,000$ and later for 20,000$ but failed to find such.