How hard can it be to get a website made

A question about : How hard can it be to get a website made

I have contacted lots and lots of webpage designers for prices and they have either promised to email me some examples with prices and haven't or given me a price of thousands of pounds for a basic website.

I have tried making one myself but because its ecommerce it really doesn't have all of the functions I need and its way to complicated and time consuming to be doing this when I don't know much about it.

This is the only thing stopping me from starting my business now I have the money waiting for the website and all of my stock ready to sell.

Its so frustrating!

Best answers:

• Its not that hard to get a website.
  But if you really do want one with all the bells & whistles, and you can't do it yourslf, then you'll have to pay the going rate.
  Presumably you've had more than one independent quote, and if so, and the prices of the independent quotes are in the same region, that's probably the going rate.
  In the meantime, you could always stick your stuff on ebay and/or amazon to try and shift it. At least both already have a shedload of (virtual) footfall.
• I used www.weebly.com. You can use your own domian name and they have a dedicated e commerce option. Have a look at their website and see if it is what you are looking for.
• What sort of features do you need/want? Which bank are you using (merchant account)? Are your product images and product copy ready? Is your content already edited and SEO optimised? How many products and categories?
  A fully featured ecommerce website IMHO would cost around Ј1000 and should take 3 to 4 days max (using a template). You can obviously spend more and have more features, but IMHO for a startup shop it is imperative to generate traffic and sales ASAP, and then add further functionality when/if needed.
  For a start you obviously need a website designed, built, full of products (and categories) with quality images and good SEO descriptions, ready to sell with a good payment gateway in place. The most cost effective solution would be to start from a template (Wordpress, Opencart, etc.), adding branding and customization and using PayPal Standard. So you need a domain name, web hosting and payment gateway, plus the template and pay for customisation.
  Take a look at this website - it's just a $60 Wordpress template that needs to be setup and customised. Or this.
  Then you can start thinking about custom product pages, a custom checkout, and additional design details - you can add those once your website is generating cash-flow.
  From my own experience the 3 most difficult things when creating a ecommerce website are:
  - deciding on functionality: not too much, and not too little
  - attractive and original product images and good advertising copy: first impressions count, you need images that are twitter and facebook-worthy, text must be SEO optimised.
  - getting the necessary website traffic and converting it into sales: you can buy almost anything from Ebay or Amazon these days, so it is quite a challenge to stand out from the crowd.
  Also when you have the shop setup, you need to learn how to add new products and update the existing (prices, descriptions, etc.) - you need to be able to run the shop yourself to minimise costs.
• Have you seen www.1and1.co.uk ?
  They allow you to buy a website "off the shelf" but you can then customise it as much as you want to/time allows. They offer different packages depending on what you need e.g. e-commerce, databases etc
  I use them and would use them again.
  HTH
  Mo
• I was hoping the website would cost in the region of Ј1000 to Ј2000 however I have sent the webpage designers a link to the basic website I have made on webeden and asked them how much it would be to recreate this but with better functions such as customer log in, payment options etc and some have quoted around Ј3000 and one said Ј7000!!!
  I am unable to sell via ebay, amazon and facebook due to a clause with my supplier. If I wanted to sell via these websites I would need to sign a contract and pay a large fee so the website is my only option. Until then I am pretty much stuck and its so frustrating when I have the money waiting! I just don't want to be ripped off x
• I created my simple yet highly effective single page website with Telnames.com. For just Ј14.95 for the year I got top level domain, easy to use template that works on all devices and is smartphone friendly and full hosting. It has everything I need for customers to understand what I do and how to contact me: full contact info. inc. click-to-call/email, social media links, images, Youtube link, voucher creation and I can even take payment from it via PayPal. If you're a small biz or professional that needs something basic that works and is easy and quick to set up and maintain via PC or Telnames iPhone/Android app, it's a winner. They even submit to local search sites automatically. Their service is excellent (UK based people and live chat/email). They're supporting Small Business Saturday on Dec. 7th and new customers can get a third off using code 'SBS' I think until until year end. I've told loads of biz contacts about it and they've all been really pleased.
• I would head over to https://www.freelancers.net/ I used them a few years ago for my now defunct website, and a few others on here have as well.
  Prices are very good, expertise is high, and if you don't get what you want, you don't pay.
  To get the best from it though, you have to be VERY clear on what you expect as the end product, and be able to communicate it to the freelancer.
  Don't be afraid to take on a new freelancer with little or no feedback, they are often a lot cheaper than established guys, but they need to raise their feedback to up their prices. George, the guy who did mine used to charge $5 an hour, now charges $50 but he was brand new when I used him first, but as he has been there a while, with plenty of great feedback, his prices have justifiably gone up.
• The website I have now on webeden is fine in terms of how it looks its pretty simple however if I decided to go down this route instead of paying a webdesigner where do I go from here? I have set up a business paypal account and connected it to my webpage. How do I now add Sagepay or credit card payments?
  How do I make sure people are seeing my webpage when they search for certain words?
  I am restricted to 10 products to my website, when I try to add more it takes me through to the upgrade options and I have to pay up to Ј25 per month to add more products etc. Is this what I should do?
  How can I be safe in the knowledge that my webpage is going to do its job and enable customers to buy with no problems? I have heard alot of complaints and bad reviews against webeden for rubbish functionality.
  How do I access a part of my website where I can see how many sales I have ahd and my customers details?
  Its so confusing
• I am getting so frustrated with shopify. I am trying to edit my theme and all it has is a list of things like background, text etc with a colour chart to choose from. And that seems to be it! How do I move things around my website? How do I write text in? In the dashboard it won't even let me click on edit my theme now I'm clicking but its not taking me to a different page rrrr.
  At least with webeden it was easy to use and figure out but webeden seems to take you so far like letting you add 10 products then you have to pay for everything.