Undoubtedly, it is easier and cheaper to create, open, and maintain the business on the Internet than a usual shop. You spend less economic costs but there are many details which you should know in order to save money and increase your chances of success. You can achieve it, especially in the early stages. So, let’s talk about the most significant points which are connected with the review and calculation of the cost you will spend while creating the online store.
What you should know primarily about the cost of the online store
Opening an online store, you can face some unavoidable attachments. To them belong:
Domain and hosting
First of all, it is necessary for all websites to have a domain and hosting. A domain is considered to be the address with the help of which all users on the Internet can access your website. The well-known example of it is www.google.com. Hosting is a certain space on the Internet where all the files and folders which are necessary for the site are located.
There are different types of hosting:
– shared hosting (the most common and economical especially for small online stores)
– VPS Servers (a virtual private server which can be useful for online stores with extensive catalogs)
– dedicated hosting (a kind of hosting when you don’t need to share the space with others but you should pay a higher price for it, it is the best variant for advanced e-commerce sites)
– cloud hosting (the peculiarity of it is the ability to grow when your site expands; it can come in handy e-commerce sites which have extensive catalogs; the price is not fixed depending on usage)
In general, there are a great number of various providers offering domains and hosting. You just need to choose the one which is appropriate for you and your business. However, you should be careful and always control whether hosting meets the minimum requirements which are necessary for the successful operation of the store. Moreover, you should make sure whether it has fast and efficient customer service for the immediate resolution of any questions and problems.
The average cost of domain and hosting
As for domains such as «.com» and «.es», their cost varies from 10 € to 25 € per year. However, if you will search more thoroughly you can find domains which cost only 1 € per year.
If we are speaking about hosting, there are different prices depending on the type of it. For example, shared hosting is very cheap and can cost from 15 € to 40 € per year. Also, you will not spend much money on VPS server, it is available from about 10 € per month. Dedicated hosting is more expensive, it depends on your needs and the price begins from 30 € per month while cloud hosting costs from 15 € per month.
E-commerce site themes
These themes or templates are ready-made design variants which are used to create a simple and practical online store. There are different types of it: more and less customizable, as when working with the content manager (CMS). By the way, the most popular, powerful, and safest are Prestashop, WooCommerce, and Shopify.
Of course, there are free e-commerce site themes but they can bring many problems and often are ineffective. So, it is better to choose something like the PrestaShop template which can cost from 60 € to 130 €.
Payment methods
Now let’s talk about the methods of paying because they can differ greatly from each other. The first well-known and the most commonly used in e-commerce method is PayPal. It is popular among a lot of people because they trust it. Furthermore, it is easy-in-use and being a free system, PayPal takes a commission for each transaction in an amount of 35 cents per sale. However, commission fees can be even cheaper if you sell more monthly.
The next method is transfer and/or payment on delivery. It may be used by people who don’t trust online payments. And the last variant is a payment gateway or another name of it is virtual TPV. It is considered to be a payment system with a secure card. Being directly aligned with financial institutions it allows buyers to buy goods not worrying about the safety. You pay only for the service, the cost of which partially depends on the particular bank (from 0 € to 20-30 € per month).
What can you also save on expenses?
Generally speaking, there are a lot of variants of how you can save your money while conducting the business. Here are some of them:
Savings on design
Naturally, the design of your site is very important because, on the one hand, it guarantees confidence and trust, and, on the other hand, it leads to a higher level of sales. In case you don’t want to be dependent on the designer you can choose crowdsourcing platforms for a design which are really cost-effective. Consequently, it allows you to get the help from highly qualified professionals spending less money.
Savings related to the warehouse
You know that the greatest cost for any physical or online store is spent on the storage of goods in the warehouse. So, you can choose an integrated logistics operator, which allows you to save time and money taking into account all the logistics aspects of your business. A great example of it is BigBuy.
Savings connected with logistics
Dropshipping service can help you to decrease the expenses which are concerned with the process of preparing the order and delivering it to the customer.
Conclusions
To sum it up, if you are aware of some economically advantageous factors you can save much money while creating and maintaining an e-commerce site. Dividing the whole business process into small pieces – fixed price projects gives you an opportunity to calculate and predict more precise. The costs which are spent on the online store are numerous, but there are ways and means to decrease them, as well as alternatives that allow you to save money without losing the quality of services, especially in the initial stages.
However, if you work with Magento and want to know more about Magento hosting, MageDirect team will be glad to give you the information you need.