eCommerce Website Pricing

Fact is there are a lot of options to consider when budgeting for the design and development of an eCommerce website, it can be a bit confusing. Ecommerce websites are not unlike cars and prices can range from $5,000 – $500,000+. At the lower end of this price spectrum you can expect your eCommerce website to have the design and performance of a 2002 Honda Civic. A BMW M3 will set you back 60k and a Bentley Continental Super Sport will run you close to 300k. One option or the other may be better suited for your business.

An important question I ask a potential client is “what are your goals?” Think about your sales and traffic goals and then consider what budget would be realist to achieve those goals. The eCommerce website cost will be primarily affected by features needed to support sales and traffic goals. For example, if you want to do $50,000 a year in sales, you can probably find an eCommerce website for around the $5,000 range that will suit your needs. If you’re looking to do a $1,000,000 in sales, and many people are, then the cost of your eCommerce website will increase to accommodate additional features and functionality. Remember, starting an eCommerce website is the same as starting any other business; it takes capital to be successful.

What affects the cost of an eCommerce website?

eCommerce Functionality & Custom Development

The basics of an eCommerce website include: categories, product pages, add to cart, checkout, confirmation emails, and basic sales and customer management. These are standard features and they really don’t drive up the cost unless you desire to customize them somehow, which most customers do. Just keep in mind that the less you spend the less customizations you can make to the commerce system.

Custom eCommerce functionality is usually the greatest cost in a project and the success of your website often hinges on these customizations. For example, we had a client that wanted to integrate their Magento store with Quickbooks, Salesforce and a 3rd party drop shipper which handled all of their orders. These are not off the shelf features of commerce websites and they do add a level of complexity which needs to be accounted for.

Stock levels are very important to some of our clients and we have synced the website database with an in-house inventory management system. These additions seem small but they definitely run up the price of the website, on the other hand they eliminate hours of paying employees to do this work, eliminate a lot of headaches and ultimately reduce the number of unhappy customers. So, Create a list of all eCommerce features you anticipate needing and even add a wish list so that all bases are covered. We can discuss this list when we meet and get a more accurate picture of the budget for you site.

eCommerce Design

Now that we’ve discussed functionality, we have to consider design. As the saying goes; you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression and this impression is everything so it’s important that your branding and identity match your sales expectations. An amateur looking website will convert visitors into customers at a much lower rate than a professionally branded website. Which brings up branding. If you have an established brand, the website should reflect this and If you don’t then perhaps the time has come to consider a budget to create your company identity. On the web you’ll get one shot to impress. Many eCommerce site owners understand this and budget appropriately to build and design a site that sells based on the way it looks.
The low-cost route involves using a pre-designed template. What this means is the design is 95% complete we just add your content and logo. This is not suggest for serious eCommerce websites, but it may fit your needs if you are working on a shoestring budget.

eCommerce Marketing and SEO

Optimizing your store content is a huge benefit and could save you a good amount of money down the road and will also make any future SEO efforts much easier. Proper SEO and marketing features built into your website will not result in immediate page 1 rankings, but it is a step in the right direction.

eCommerce Website Design Companies

Some web design companies are based in the US and some are overseas. Often companies have a U.S. address but all work is performed offshore. Remember, you’ll usually get what you pay for. A higher priced company often provides quality and reliable work, while going overseas to save money may be enticing it often results in a lot of headaches. Be sure whoever you choose is reliable, has an office and is easily accessible when you have questions during the development phase and after the website is completed.

Speeding Up Your Website by Optimizing Images

Typically the number one culprit to a slow website is large un-optimized images. Fortunately, this is a fairly easy fix. Let’s take a minute to talk about the different image formats for web design.

The Most Common Image Formats in Web Design Are:

Jpeg – Jpeg is a commonly used method of lossy (meaning you lose some data every time you resave the image) compression for digital images. Jpeg is typically best for photographic images, large or small.

Png – Png’s are a raster graphics file format that supports lossless (meaning the image retains all data regardless of saves or transfers) data compression. Best for complex design elements that require a transparent background such as a logo.

Gif – Gif’s can come in handy for small elements with a limited number of colors. Gif’s support animation and transparency as well, but typically are not a good choice for photographic images. It is possible to make a high quality gif, but typically the size does not end up web friendly.

So let’s look at an example of how to reduce the file size in Adobe Photoshop:

1. We have an image that we would like to use in a blog post. The high resolution image measures 1624×1080 px and is 72dpi (web screen resolution, if your image is 300dpi it is a print image and is too large for the web), and it weighs 900kb (way too large). If we had 20 of these images around the site that is slightly under 20mb and will drastically slow down the site. You can check this information by control+click and select “Get Info” (On Mac), or right click and select “Properties” (OnWindows):

2. Next, open the document in Photoshop, and go to Image > Image Size… That will bring up the image size settings. We need to first check and make sure the resolution is set to 72 and that all three of the lower boxes are checked (this will prevent distortion):

3. Next, we know that this will be a featured image within the blog post that never reaches the full screen width so we know that the image does not need to be more that 750 pixels in width. Change the width to match your needs. Doing this already cuts the file size in half.

4. Next, go to File > Save For Web And Devices. This will bring us to the web optimization menu:

5. Next, ensure that you are viewing the image at 100% zoom in the left box. Since this is a photograph we will save this image as a jpeg:

6. Next we want to manually adjust the quality of the image. In our case we are working with a high quality image so we have plenty of room for downsizing. Adjust the quality slider to the lowest point before you can personally see pixelation. In our case this number was 50:

7. Next, hit save. Make sure the format is set to “Images Only”, and set the settings to “Default Settings.
In our case we were able to take the image all the way down from 900kb to 60kb. Compound this savings over 20 images and we end up saving 16.8 MB which intern drastically boosts site speed.

To optimize PNG images we recommend simply using http://tinypng.org/

The 80/20 Rule

We’ve all heard of the 80/20 rule, originally created to describe the unequal distribution of wealth. Named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who observed that 80% of the income in Italy was received by 20% of the Italian population, the assumption is that there are a “vital few and trivial many”. In other words, most of the results in any situation are determined by a small number of causes.

In Business the 80/20 rule means that 80% of outcomes can be attributed to 20% of the causes for a given event. In eCommerce this translates to a majority of purchases will be the result of a few actions.

The 80/20 Rule and eCommerce Websites

Applying the 80/20 rule to web design, it is important to recognize that certain aspects of your website will achieve greater results and thus require more attention. For example, if you are running an online store, it’s not difficult to argue to that the steps leading right up to the purchase itself are imperative to get right. Working backwards, those steps are typically comprised of the following:

Purchase Confirmation < Checkout < Cart < Product Page < Call-to-Action

Not many of us make purchases before doing at least a small amount of research into what we are looking to buy. Given the convenience and ease of comparison-shopping through eCommerce stores, online buyers value information and the efficiency of acquiring it. Most people like to gather as many product details as possible through the Product Page – such as additional images, specifications (e.g. dimensions, or labels), price, and customer reviews before actually clicking on that familiar “Add to Cart” button. This is the closest thing that they will get to seeing and touching the actual physical product. And yes, there are definitely ways to increase purchases through the layout, design, and verbiage from this page, but that’s all insignificant if your customers never land there in the first place.

Powerful Call-to-Action

The Call-to-Action features of your website are an often undervalued part of the 20% that can dramatically improve online sales. You’ve seen them before – a scrolling slideshow on the homepage to highlight new products, a sidebar advertisement displaying a promotional code for free shipping, and product images with a SALE icon and the old price crossed out. What do all of these have in common? A Call-to-Action phrase such as “Buy Now” and/or link to the product page.

Think of these as individual salespersons with the sole purpose of selling a single product or promotion. And keep in mind that what works for your brick-and-mortar won’t necessarily work for your eCommerce store. This is where you’ll need to put the thinking cap on and get creative. Online commerce is more competitive than ever, thus the need for creative and effective call-to-action features are more important than ever.

Luckily, we’re here to do that for you. Contact us today to find out how we apply the 80/20 rule to ensure that your website is 100% effective.

A Guy and His Start-up Idea

I recently met with a potential client to discuss his new website project. Now, I meet or take phone calls on a daily basis with potential clients who have a web based business idea. Its a mixed bag of good, bad, and terrible ideas for the next big Internet sensation. In the spirit of anonymity I’ll refer to this client as Guy.

So, Guy and I casually began discussing the general idea of how he wanted his website to work. The idea was to connect high-school athletes with professional coaches. He had around 20 professional athletes (coaches) who had verbally committed to listing on his site. His revenue model charged coaches an annual subscription fee to be listed on the site. In theory the coaches would fill up their schedules via the website and pay a nominal fee to do so.

Business Consulting Web Design San Francisco

In the span of about 20 minutes a lot of flaws were immediately apparent to me. First and foremost Guy had an unrealistic expectation of the costs associated with building his website. In addition, he was not very keen on making adjustments to the scope to bring the project within his budget. I’ve been in this business long enough to know immediately that he needed about 20-25k to execute the project he had in mind. He wanted to spend less than 10k. I could see a clearer path for the project that could be achieved with a smaller budget, but he wouldn’t have any of it. So, he was already on the path that leads many small businesses to failure, undercapitalization, or simply underestimating the costs with starting a venture.

Frustrated that Guy had walked into a Lexus dealership with the budget for a Carolla I fired off some very simple questions.

“How many paying customers do you have at this moment?”

He responded, “None, but 20 have say they are interested and want to be listed on the site.”

“How much is each customer willing to pay?”

“I”m going to charge each coach $200 a year for a subscription.” He said.

Here lies another obvious flaw. He didn’t know how much a customer was willing to pay. He only know how much he wanted to charge.

I didn’t need a calculator to figure out that even if he had 100 paying coaches he would generate 20k in the first year and this does not account for the cost of acquiring those 100 coaches and the cost of building and maintaining his website, his time, etc. The math didn’t add up.

He was so focused on minute details of the website that he hadn’t considered costs other than the initial design and build of his new site. When I inquired about PR, Marketing, Sales, and basic economics of his business idea he said he hadn’t figured that out yet.

Your idea may be the best one you have ever thought of, but there needs to be a market for your idea. Guy didn’t seem to understand that he had an idea not a business. The first 6-12 months would prove or disprove his concept.

Why Hire a Business Consultant?

The dictionary defines a consultant as “an expert in a particular field who works as an advisor either to a company or to another individual.”

Many people who initially approach me about a start-up fail to understand that they are starting a business not a website. The website is only one piece of a larger picture. Starting a business takes a lot of resources, both time and money. The Internet does not circumvent this process. In other words, a web based business is exactly the same as starting any traditional business, it’s a lot of work and a website is a component of the start-up equation not the entire equation.

One must still consider marketing, PR, payroll, manufacturing, rent, revenues, accounting, billing, financing, and most importantly customers.

Often founders are too close to the problems to identify them. That’s when a the benefits of a consultant can save the day and your hard earned money. Hiring a consultant could save a lot of wasted time and money on a poorly planned or managed project. In fact, the best advice might be don’t start the business at all.

So, if you are considering a new venture it is in your best interest to bring in a consultant in some capacity. A good consultant provides an objective, fresh, and knowledgeable viewpoint, which provides your venture a greater chance of succeeding.

Why We Love WooCommerce

We’re not ones to throw this four-letter word around, but WooCommerce 2.0 launched this week and we are more than excited to get our nerd on with the newest update. Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s review some of the reasons for why we loved WooCommerce even before the latest version of the eCommerce system launched.

WordPress Integration -
We all know that WordPress can be a powerful content management system (CMS) for businesses when developed intelligently. WooCommerce integrates seamlessly into newly developed as well as already customized WordPress sites through handy shortcodes and widgets. We’ve listed some of our favorite widgets that come already packaged with the installation:

Layered Navigation -
We’ve all seen price filters, but your eCommerce store is as unique as your business. This lets customers to filter through products based on custom attributes that you define.

Recent Products – Who doesn’t like shiny new things? Display any number of your most recently added products with this widget.

Top Rated Products – Word-of-mouth is still the most powerful form of marketing so let your loyal customers do the selling for you by displaying your top rated products.

Recently Viewed Products -
We all suffer from short-term memory loss every now and then. Help a customer out by listing the products their most recently viewed products and remind them what they’re missing out on.

Product Search - Who doesn’t appreciate a customer who knows what they want? Reduce clicks and drop-off rates by giving these well-informed buyers more control over their shopping experience.

Shop Manager Role -
Just like a brick-and-mortar business, there are clearly defined roles for eCommerce store management. As an eCommerce site owner, you might want to allocate some of the tasks of updating inventory to someone else. WooCommerce has created the Shop Manager Role for this very reason. Any number of user accounts can be assigned this role for just the management of products, orders, coupons, and store reports.

Payment Gateway API -
Your trusted and fully functional payment gateway system has been helping you run your business for years. We get it. And apparently WooCommerce does too, with its 90 fully integrated payment gateway options including Authorize.net, Mijireh Checkout, and multiple PayPal alternatives.

Contact us to find out what we can do to improve your online shop with WooCommerce.

Business school taught me the fundamentals of business which I use in my everyday management of Zen Den Web Design. However, my MBA did not prepare me for the challenges I would eventually face as an entrepreneur. I filled that huge gap with books that have not only taught me valuable lessons, but also inspired me and continue to inspire me when things get rough and I want to throw in the towel.

Being an entrepreneur is the hardest, most grueling, challenging, tiring, rewarding, exciting, and stimulating experience I’ve ever enjoyed and hated all at the same time. So, if you find yourself on this same roller coaster or are contemplating getting on this ride here are my personal top 6 business books to read for entrepreneurs. I’m sure this list will grow and evolve over time. Next on my to read list is Made to Stick, which has been sitting on my shelf for years waiting to be read.

1. Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur – This is one of the first biz books I read. I felt a certain connection to Stuart because at the time I had two friends who worked at Elephant Pharmacy in Berkeley, CA and I visited the store frequently. They both loved working at Elephant and my friend who worked in the corporate office would often tell me random stories about her interactions with Stuart and the respect she had for him. I remember thinking to myself,  ”I want to run a company in a manner that my employees hold me in such esteem.”

2. The Monk and the Riddle – This book was recommended to me by a successful entrepreneur. At the time I had recently quit a very good job in order to pursue my entrepreneurial calling. I was consumed with self doubt and often thought I had made a terrible mistake. The following quote from the book provided the inspiration to continue on the path I was on in spite of my doubts.

“And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”

The journey I was setting out on was risky, but not as risky as not taking the journey at all.

3. The Art of War – I read this book just before I hired my first employee. It helped shape the attitudes I have towards the people who work not for me, but rather with me. This was reinforced when a contractor who was working with me at the time commented on the fact that I always paid on time. I still always pay everyone else before I pay myself knowing that I can not head into battle with troops that are hungary or worse, disgruntled.

4. Reality Check – I had a professor that frequently dropped Guy’s name in our class discussions so I went out and bought this book. I still incorporate lessons from his pages titled ‘The Art of Bootstrapping.’

5. The 4-Hour Work Week – I’m not the only skeptic who approached this book under the assumption that it was a get rich quick kind of read. However, by the time I was half way through the book every other page was dog eared. One of my favorite chapters is ‘The End of Time Management.’ I used to be a big multi-tasker, but Timothy impressed on me just how inefficient and unproductive this habit is. Now I always start my day with a task list and tackle one task at a time rather than 12 tasks at a time. I get a lot more done in a day. Although I’m still seduced by the illusion that if I do more I’ll get more done I start and stop tasks throughout the day much less.

6. Pour Your Heart Into It – I’m sure there are plenty of Starbuck’s haters out there, but no one can deny the success of the company. I have a friend who worked there when he was in graduate school. He took the job because he needed health insurance and could work part-time to receive benefits. He actually liked working there. At the time I was perplexed that a company could create an atmosphere where people felt valued and also liked to work. Now after reading Howard’s book I have a better understanding of how some companies do so.

By this time next year I’ll probably have a top 10 or 15 business books which have influenced me. I actually have left off at least 5 others books so perhaps in the near future I’ll at least get a top 10 list. One thing is certain, I draw on the experience contained in these books not some days, but rather everyday because if I’m not working I’m at the very least thinking about how to be a better entrepreneur almost every waking moment.

Keep it clean – Simplified Web Design and Conversion

Regardless of your website’s overall purpose or message, everyone has the same end goal… Conversion. When it comes to websites, conversion means turning clicks into customers. Whether that means sales, memberships, or calls, the higher your conversion rate, the more successful your eCommerce website becomes.

Too Many Choices

If you currently have an active website, take a moment to count the number of choices on your home page. Is it clear where you want your audience to go? The last thing you want to do is paralyze your audience with too many choices. Countless studies have shown that too many choices leads to no choice at all. The rule of three states, things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things. Retailers apply this concept to move their most profitable products faster. For example, if you are selling memberships limit the choice to three, Not enough features, Too expensive, and Just right. Remember to ensure that you have tailored your Just right option to be your most profitable.

Simplified Web Design in eCommerce

Clear Calls to Action

A call to action is what drives your conversion. Buy Now, Sign up, Book Now, are all clear, urgent messages that guide your audience to convert.
You want this message to be not only as visible as possible, but urgent as well. You should never assume that your visitor will come back, so converting that visit is essential. Just like any other sale, once a customer leaves the chances of them coming back decreases by the minute.

Maximizing Conversion

eCommerce Website Design

Again, a clear-guided message on your home page is essential, but all of your other pages need to have the same impact and urgency as well. You cannot assume that your visitors will return to your home page. From a design standpoint, your call to action should be one of the biggest, brightest, easiest elements to find on the page. Another tactic would be to put an expiration date on offers to create urgency. For example, Apply by March 1st and get 10% off, this naturally creates a sense of loss if the user is interested in your product or service to begin with.

Have any questions regarding your website conversion rates? Contact Zen Den Web Design today to find out how we can help.

A major challenge in business is managing your client’s expectations. We’ve all experienced the project that went south resulting in major stress and a frustrated or angry client. However, most of these problems can be resolved before hand if you set reasonable expectations up front. Easier said than done in my experience. So, here is what I’ve learned from many sleepless nights.

Client Expectations

Communication

Ask clients before a project what they expect from you. If they are expecting something that can’t be delivered it’s best to work this out before hand. For example, perhaps a client wants an immediate response to his/her emails. This is unrealistic because it disrupts the workflow in your office and consumes resources especially if you have an email happy client. Have language in your contract or project proposal that states response times, for example, all non-urgent emails and phone calls will be responded to within 24 hours. Don’t forget to define urgent because in the mind of a client everything is urgent.

On the other hand it is necessary to communicate your expectations of your client. We often need a decision or clarification from a client in order to proceed with their project. We send an email and after a day or two we get no response or the “We’ll get back to you shortly on this.”  Then what happens? The client responds on a Friday evening and expects us to continue as if no time was lost, same deadline, same deliverables. In order to protect yourself from such a scenario be sure to have language in your proposal to mitigate this issue.

Project Scope

Scope creep is a reality of any project-based business. Despite your best efforts to define the specs and requirement of a project additional requests start to come in from the client. As soon as you agree to accommodate any additional specs you’ve opened the floodgates. Now your client expects that all requests will be met with the same response and you are now a yes man or woman. It is much easier to put your client on a short leash at the beginning than try to shorten the leash at a later point in the project.

First, it’s important to define all the specs and moving parts of a project with as much clarity as possible and to include these details in a project proposal document. We explicitly state that any additional work to the project scope is billable at an hourly rate. Clearly defining boundaries at this early stage will help limit potential scope creep.

So, you don’t have to say no to your client. Instead explain how the changes will affect the existing project. Then if they still want to proceed explain how the change will require documentation, adjustment to delivery date, and most importantly additional billing. It’s interesting how changes become less important to a client when they have to pay for these changes.

Although it is impossible to anticipate all challenges that will or could arise with your clients; you can ask yourself where the most stress is emanating from. From this point you can begin to set clearer expectations for yourself, employees, and/or clients.

The Value of the Site Map Diagram in Web Design

So you are doing your due diligence of investigating the top creative web design agencies in the area to build the best website money can buy. There are likely to be a plethora of players and qualifications on your checklist, making this a challenging and often tangent-filled task. Along the way, it’s easy to lose sight of the most important player – your target audience.

Oftentimes, the first step to building a website involves defining and analyzing the corporate culture, website goals, and competitive environment of your business. But, arguably, the most important step of the conception phase is to map out the user-navigation and purchasing process of your website. This is where the often under-valued site map comes in.

The main purpose of a site map diagram is to understand the structural organization of, and parent-child relationships between, various pages of the website. Not to be confused with a text-based site map (often displayed as a link in the footer for search engine optimization), site map diagrams are best designed in the form of a flowchart. Flowchart content can vary greatly from site to site. But most site map diagrams follow one of the two layouts described below:

A. Process-Oriented: to depict the customer purchasing process

The example diagram above illustrates the product purchasing steps from the highly customizable product stages all the way to checkout and account detail pages.

B. Organization-Oriented: to highlight the product/service features

This example focuses on the multiple levels (categories, subcategories, tours, tour options) of service offerings.
Site maps should be designed to enhance the ease of user navigation based on the goals of your website. A great tool for this is Gliffy.com, which offers free accounts to create, store, and export diagrams online. And if you’re feeling creatively-challenged, don’t be afraid to look at other websites for inspiration.

Contact Zen Den Web Design Creative Agency to let us guide you through this critical step towards building a successful online business.