20 Nov, 2005
Costs of E-commerce
Posted by bknapik 23:05 |
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E-Commerce
Small business owners fear of startup costs of an e-commerce website however, the truth is by investing one months advertising fund a company can may start an e-commerce site. For less than $500.00 a functional e-commerce site can be setup. The basic technical elements of an e-commerce site are domain name, web hosting, SSL certificate, and shopping software.
Web hosting is a service that provides online systems for storing information, images or any content accessible via the web. Costs can range from $5.00 to $300.00 a month depending on the needs of the business. Most companies just starting e-commerce should look for web hosts pricing $9.00 to $24.00. Only large, busy e-commerce sites will need to look at web hosting that are more than $24.00.
A domain name is the unique name that distinguishes your website from others (similar idea to your mailing address but, for the Internet.) Costs range from $4.95 to $49.95 per year. Since this is a long term commitment take advantage of the multiple year discounts for the domain name.
Any site accepting credit cards online must have a SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate for security concerns. If a credit card company discovers a site accepting credit cards online without using a SSL certificate they will pull the companies credit card processing privileges. A SSL certificate secures and protects critical customer information from being exposed to identity thieves thus adding trust to your business. Costs can range from $150.00 to $1800.00. Starting e-commerce sites should look for SSL certificates in the $200.00 - $500.00 range. Higher priced SSL certificates do not offer enough benefits to justify the costs.
There are hundreds of shopping software packages available for purchase. Prices range from free to several thousand dollars. However, there is one good shopping software package available for free that is worth considering. OSCommerce is a free full featured shopping system that many hosts are willing to install for little or no cost. There will be customization costs which may be done by reputable web development companies. These customization charges are not included in the startup costs since it is an ongoing process.
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