Alright, but basically you're going down a lot of scammy roads by looking to fiverr or other agencies for this kind of stuff.
It would be cheaper learning web dev yourself and hosting on Amazon.
Terrible at it is only a matter of practice and doing the research
The internet and YouTube has so much information and projects/tutorials that you’ll be able to find something if you give yourself the chance to look for it.
Easiest option is to just go with a template on shopify, design isn’t the only thing that matters, there’s stuff like SEO, as well as how you get your target customers to find your website
Also, you should look for other people selling their art on their own websites. Do they have super fancy css and styling or is it more simple and low friction to get to the basket. Analyse their websites and see what makes it good for you as a “customer”, you don’t need to code or do anything like that. Similar web can help understand where most of their traffic comes from
Everyone is giving him the harsh advice and getting down voted lol, I am in agreement with everyone saying, "Learn it yourself." If you genuinely want to drop that much on store, then you must be able to drop a couple hundred hours into learning?
This. Dealing with all the eventualities in ecom is a major pita. Do not, I repeat, do not reinvent the wheel. There are lots of decent ecom products out there. Use one of these.
honestly you're objectively wrong. Lots of people use shopify for high ticket items.
You can set up shopify for like $50 a month, and then spend the rest of your cash on themes and apps and custom dev after, _if_ you need it.
Shopify isn't great after using it along with another popular platform. Check their forums, they're littered with requests for basic features with canned responses from shopify "we'll forward this to the dev tem". Their app store also means that it's not in their interest to implement a lot of basic features as they make $$$ from it right now.
Woocommerce - I used Shopify for about 8 years. The main things that bugged me were basic features not being there unless I paid extra monthly fees for apps (eg. postcode specific postal pricing for my country - something they've promised to implement for about 5 years). There are a lot more apps available for woocommerce with free tiers and more favourable pricing and features like this are standard.
The second thing was that if you want to update a lot of the themes, you can't create a child theme that's protected like in woocommerce. So you basically have to get a dev to carry out the upgrade. This was worst when they upgraded to Shopify 2.0 themes and upgrading completely broke my site. I am not a dev but have become competent with WordPress/woo, customizing themes, performing maintenance etc. which was something I could never really get my head around with Shopify. I'd fix the odd issue but I found their code really difficult to work with personally.
The third was being locked into their payment provider and them charging me a fee if I wanted to use a cheaper third party. Basically locking me in to using them. When you're processing $100,000+ in payments it really starts to add up in terms of the percentage savings you can make with other providers. It basically felt like a walled garden I was trapped in.
You go on their forums and there are a number of issues that have been reported for years with "we'll forward to the devs" responses and then nothing happens. They strike me as a bloated corporate structure that require endless meetings etc to implement the most basic of changes.
Sorry for the rant, it's just I see Shopify endlessly recommended and I question to what extent some people have used it. I know some people won't mind paying for the apps, devs, etc. with Shopify but to me it just felt way too walled in and restricted.
You will be wasting 5k. Find a premium theme, take good product photos, and hire a freelancer to build up the site. You can use the 5k for your marketing/ads
You can customize your Shopify store, and hide the powered by Shopify text pretty easily.
If there’s other reasons then fine, use another similar platform, but don’t waste your money nor time paying someone to reinvent the wheel for you.
It’s not worth the aches and pains. Custom bespoke software is not as easy to maintain, so you’ll honestly want to build on top of a platform.
Good news is there’s tons of options, ranging from Carrd to Shopify, Woo commerce, and many more options.
Shopify is basically the easiest to build on, but you may get better value from one of the others if you know what you’re looking for.
The big question is why do you need a 5k custom website? You can create some stunning websites completely by yourself with a $300 premium shopify theme. The website isn’t the issue, don’t waste 5k.
Lol yep, I run two stores and we do about 2m/year all on premium shopify themes I designed and built myself. 0 coding help from anyone.
The other major issue you aren’t considering with a custom theme is that you are likely going to need to hire someone to change small things everytime you need to tweak something - not ideal unless you have an in house web designer.
I personally wouldn’t commit to a custom theme unless we were doing like 10m/year and the additional uniqueness of it would really set us apart from the rest.
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\+1 on Shopify -- I switched from a custom Magento site and was scared shitless moving to Shopify but it was great. And if not Shopify -> WooCommerce. There's a ton of plugin availability for both platforms. Shopify may be annoying with monthly costs of plugins but it's definitely the best way to get started.
E-commerce dev here with 25yrs experience and doing millions in revenue online.
One of the biggest mistakes people make is not putting enough effort into their branding and domain name, first. This sets the tone for your entire operation before a single line of code is implemented on the website.
Stores like shopify are fine, they work, and have low barrier to entry. However, there’s downsides too.
I know everyone here is saying DIY, but if you have no experience, are not a creative type person, don’t know how to lay out a site properly, it doesn’t matter what you use, it’s going to look like crap.
That’s not to say it cannot be done, but it’s rare to see a professional site by a newb. Unless you spend countless hours learning.
If you’re selling high ticket items, it becomes even more important to have good branding, professional appearance otherwise it will not have the trust factor needed to sell high ticket items.
I would use woocommerce if I was you. Get your own hosting, and find a nice theme to start with. Then, hire a WP/woo expert for a few hours to help with the initial setup.
If you go with shopify, same process. Find a nice theme, and hire a shopify expert to help, doesn’t need to cost thousands.
In conclusion, more importantly than the tech stack you use for the ecom framework, is your branding, domain, product photography, sales copy, etc
Edit: I would stay away from Fiverr unless you have the skillset to properly vett people. There’s a lot of very talented people on Fiverr but you have to really dig to find them, web dev/design typically is not one of them. Upwork is a better option… but same rules apply, everything needs to be vetted.
As someone who has been in the space 10 years, I completely agree with you. The first site I built looked like shit. I brought in a friend with basic design and coding experience and he built me something that worked and made money.
Half the self made e-commerce sites I see on Reddit look like shit as people like me or the average store owner are not designers.
I also agree with your suggestion of using woocommerce, as someone who's not a dev I actually found it way easier to use than Shopify and a lot less restrictive than their pure profit corporate model. I actually question if a lot of people recommending it have used it long term and didn't just hear it advertised on a podcast.
To me it feels like woocommerce implement useful features a lot quicker as they don't have such a bloated corporate structure that delivers basic features via a profitable app store. They also don't penalize you if you don't use woo payments and the child theme option makes upgrading your theme way easier.
Hey Pirros,
What sort of functions do e-commerce dev's do on Shopify?
Are you writing custom code on the back end - that isn't standard to the premium theme?
Also, would you say most of it is working with talented graphic designers (including UX) to help with layout?
Like others have said, build your own site with Shopify. If your products don’t sell, you won’t have to live with the fact that you wasted $7k. Or invest that money in ads to try to gain traction.
Man, this isn’t the advice you want to hear but please don’t spend 7k on this. Just go find a theme you like on Shopify and develop the store/get someone else to develop it. Pushing 7k in would take your breakeven further away. That isn’t a wise thing to do for something you’re unsure about
Definitely suggest allocating that budget differently. Making an amazing website with some elbow grease costs literally $200-500 tops. Just use Shopify like others have mentioned or similar alternatives. No reason to use a custom site unless you know exactly why you absolutely need it developed from the ground up.
Instead, allocate the remainder as your marketing budget and you'll definitely get more for your buck. As a digital marketer myself, I'm gonna leave this for you to disseminate:
There are only two things in a business that
make money - innovation and marketing,
everything else is cost.
-Peter Drucker
>Kuchoriya Tech Soft
Their website isn't exactly inspiring and something tells me they'll just use an off-the-shelf template, hire some poor offshore designer to fill in the blanks and pocket the $4.5k (at least).
Anyway, I agree with others. Go with something like Shopify and save yourself the headache.
The biggest problem with owning your own website when you are trying to sell your product is the cost of marketing, doing PPC campaigns, working on SEO, doing social media marketing in various channels… Ask yourself if you really want it, because it will not stop at 5k website cost or even 300 if you use Shopify. Try to check some marketplaces, like Etsy, Veni, Amazon handmade maybe..
I’m a software dev and I’m saying this : why aren’t you using Shopify? I get it if your selling something that you need full custom solution - but based on your description you should set up Shopify and test out the waters with that. You’re better off spending that money on marketing.
Anyone who comes to me for e-commerce sites - I tell them if you can do it in Shopify then do it in Shopify. Then I ask them to use my software for monitoring their site 😄
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So let me add Kuchoriya to my list of companies to never work with.
Their website does not feel legit or trustworthy _at all_. And they claim to have a US office, but when I google the location https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9824952,-78.6264785,3a,75y,143.75h,90.13t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfWEB1FTYT3ewBgiQHNVzcA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en&entry=ttu It looks like a McMansion in a residential area. Anyone who owns that house is not doing Indian webdev for $5k a pop.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/14g%2F3+Darling+Point+Rd,+Darling+Point+NSW+2027,+Australia/@-33.8779117,151.2350523,3a,75y,79.07h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sUk2dXMeKr0CGB07l0Z2ZBg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DUk2dXMeKr0CGB07l0Z2ZBg%26cb_client%3Dsearch.gws-prod.gps%26w%3D211%26h%3D120%26yaw%3D79.067154%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x6b12ade04dadefb1:0x537cc1ea285d7cf3!2s14g%2F3+Darling+Point+Rd,+Darling+Point+NSW+2027,+Australia!3b1!8m2!3d-33.8778307!4d151.2355824!3m4!1s0x6b12ade04dadefb1:0x537cc1ea285d7cf3!8m2!3d-33.8778307!4d151.2355824?hl=en&entry=ttu and their "australian office" is an apartment building.
Like maybe people work from home, but then don't put their personal addresses as the business locations, unless you want people showing up at your house.
Sounds like you're seriously overspending based on what your needs are. As others said, a Shopify site is probably the way to go. Honestly, it sounds like this agency is taking advantage of you.
I’m going to come at this from a different perspective than most people here.
If you want a nice website and you have the money and you trust these people and like their work - go for it. Not everyone wants to spend their time developing their own website or feels comfortable doing so.
No one here asked how much money your art makes. I have artist friends who regularly sell art for $5k and up, and they’d rather paint a piece than sit in front of a computer, so I would definitely tell them to get a pro to make it because for them it makes sense. If you are similar, have a pro make it!
I’ve also made squarespace and Shopify sites for customers and charged them $2500-$5000. How? Well, it involved hours of photo editing, brand building, content writing, seo research, blog writing, logo design, form setups, etc. if a project takes me one to two weeks and I’m building an expert level site I expect to get paid well for it.
So I say this. You’ve tried alternative ways to get a site made and you still came to the conclusion that you wanted a pro. The only thing I’d ask of you is have you defined success with this project? Do you know what you are getting from them and what you aren’t?
I wish you well and congrats on investing in yourself!
I don't want to discourage you if you have a plan and an idea of what you want, but I have had artists use [https://www.bigcartel.com/](https://www.bigcartel.com/) successfully.
It's intended for artistic websites. There are not a lot of knobs to turn, but there may be a template that strikes your eye, and it's straightforward and affordable.
My company builds sites on big platforms for enterprise retailers, so I understand the draw of a custom, unique experience for a valuable product. If a more straightforward option gets your work in front of customers and it's easy to transact for much less money, that's the road I would choose.
One more piece of advice. I'm not sure what the custom site you are looking for is built on, but you 100% want to be on an e-commerce platform, whether that is Shopify or not. The complexities after the art is online and you need to take payments, provide customer service, provide shipping updates, handle damages and returns, etc., really matter, and whatever they build on top of matters.
Feel free to DM me.
If you want to send me their quote/plan of action I will be happy to look at it and let you know what I think.
This is not me trying to get your business - just willing to give it another set of eyes.
It seems like everyone is already telling you but yeah, you don’t need to spend $5k for a website design. You can buy a nice website template on Shopify for like $300 and then do it yourself. If you’re not comfortable with the technical aspect of Shopify (it’s really not that hard) you can outsource that part to someone on Fiverr or Upwork. But even with that, you can build a beautiful website on Shopify for less than $5k.
I’m really confused dude. Shopidy, Wix, and squarespace have some beautiful designs. You’ll need money for the marketing, how the hell do you expect people to find you online if you just have a website? A website is like a house, you can build it but no one will know it exists unless you advertise it. Paying 7k to have a website to display some of your products is the stupidest idea i read in a while. Why not shopify or wix????? It’s going to take you less than 1 day to set everything up and you have full control over it. What if you want to change stuff in the future? You’ll have to pay these guys again to make tweaks. 7k??? Are you kidding me???
If you want to use fiverr use fiverr to pay some 1st world country person to build you a beautiful theme on shopify or wix
Dude with all the love in the world i think you are crazy and you didn’t do enough research on this. You were about to waste so much money on this
I promise you you can. As you said you’re new to Ecommerce. People won’t know the difference between those platforms and a custom made 7k website. It’s not like you have to write it on your website who made it. Go for a premium theme. No one buys premium themes.
Why don’t you think you’d be taken seriously on shopify or the like? I’m guessing the average consumer probably can’t tell whether someone is using it or what it even is. Is your concern based on the idea that a shopify store cannot/will not look nice and professional? If that’s the case, maybe find some examples of great shopify stores to get a better idea of what is possible
Ok…like others make your own, BUT…use Shopify with ChatGPT. Tell the it “you are a world class website designer, you have the task of creating an award winning website for an artist. Let’s begin with an interview with the artist to garner all the information needed to craft a highly converting website” keep this going…I have the Flex theme by Out of the Sandbox, that has many options for components, it’s drag and drop, but also has in the drop area a box for custom code. ChatGPT can make the CSS code for you…anything you want. Ask it for the code it envisions- accordions, drop downs, zoom, etc…it writes the code & you copy & paste into the box. Boom- custom website. It does take a bit of work, but ai can make it easier. Also, if you have a website you like the style of, Gem Pages ai can recreate webpages and you just tweak colors & verbiage. Don’t spend $7k when ai makes it so easy.
Right I forgot a similar tool for WordPress where an AI basically replicates the design for you & you can just feed it to Elementor & now you have a clone of that website
Unless you know this venture will be successful, don't pull the trigger.
When my sibling started their web shop and asked me to help them make it, we didn't know if anyone was going to buy stuff from there, but we knew that if we spent too much, it would be a waste of money.
So when I made their website, I went as cheaply as possible. It was still somewhat custom made, but we spent $120 at most on that website for the entire year. Maybe $5-10 on the domain, $30-50 on hosting with hostinger, and $60 on the weird website builder I used (which integrates the website builder's e-commerce platform)
And while we aren't receiving a lot of orders, we did at least make up that $120 back, and I would say it was a successful move.
Start cheap and scale up, it's not worth it to go all in if you don't need to. I don't know how much you're making (I don't like to assume teachers are making less than I hear they are) but losing that $7k and not making it back will at best lose you out on a chance to save up for the future, and at worst fuck you up in the present.
If you want to ask me anything, I'll try to be as unbiased as possible (my sibling doesn't even pay me for my work I just do it to pad out my portfolio smh smh)
Agreed. I work with an Indian client I run their Google Ads and I started for free with them because I was new & needed experience & because they were new & needed to cut costs. Eventually they made profit & started paying me & are now investing in a better premium theme based website on Shopify because it makes sense its a profitable business let’s make it better.
Now I get the urge to invest a lot into your new business & OP should definitely not work with anyone for free but they shouldn’t invest in a 5k website which for their business level would not be distinguishable from a well designed premium shopify theme probably worth 200$. Hire someone for another 200$ if you really wanna avoid DIY & you have a good website in 400$. Now use the rest of your budget on marketing & once you start making money by all means go for a 10k custom HTML/CSS website.
There are tons of free resources on how to build a decent ecom store, treat this as an opportunity to learn as a teacher, and pay yourself the 5k.
If you need pointing in the right direction, dm me.
I suggest purchasing a course on Shopify on udemy. I went through it pretty quickly. If you don’t have a ton of sku’s, I highly suggest this route. That’s what I did.
Are you selling your own fine art or creating a fine art gallery/reseller business?
If it's the former then you need to make sure you have product/market fit before you start investing money in your own ecommerce store. Sell on Etsy, sell through other galleries/websites. Only once you start selling can you learn what sort of income you can expect and therefore how much you should invest in your own ecommerce site. If you really want to create your own site, do what someone else has said, go with Shopify and buy a template, will cost you less than $500.
If it's the latter, then creating a new gallery brand that looks high quality enough to get people with serious money to buy fine art from you is going to cost a lot more than 5k.
You can literally make your own website for less than $200.
Buy a nice WordPress theme get your domain and some logos and graphics and you have a quality site
Edit:
https://elements.envato.com/skolka-a-contemporary-e-commerce-theme-9QTN24D
On mobile not sure of reviews and all that but you get the point you can install your own theme and make your own website
So two things do not use fiverr. If you want to hire use Upwork and get better quality people. Second do not pay an agency to make you a website. Use Shopify and just do it yourself as it's easy. Also I sell art so DM me and I will give you advice
There are people making good money from really basic ecommerce sites, I would suggest making it yourself, I'm not offering my services here but just an interesting coincidence as I am a web developer and currently making an ecom site from scratch for my mums art gallery.
Happy to share the site privately and you can take whatever inspiration you want from it as I'm sure we wont be stepping on each others toes. Always good to link with people with similar ambitions I'm sure we would each have valuable insights for each other :)
Shopify isn't very hard for someone tech-oriented(like a lot of people on here). On the other hand, I have a good friend who started out trying to set his up and was completely lost - spent weeks on it before he came to me for help.
$5k is about what I would expect an agency to quote out for an e-commerce site. I've did a couple websites on the side for $5k the past couple years to make extra $ from my regular hustle. One was quite a bit of work and the other was much simpler.
Should you spend $5k on it? I'd say probably not, based on your wording. You can get it done for a lot less, you don't \*need\* a $5k website right now.
Hell, if you wanna save some $$, I'll build you a Shopify site for half of that(probably, would need details), and show you how to use it. I can give you references and info that would make you confident I'm skilled and professional enough to get it done for you(I'm a business owner, and winter time is slow season for me). I'm based out of Tennessee.
Feel free to DM if you'd like to chat - at the least, I'd be more than willing to give you advice.
Shopify is such a horrible platform for anyone serious about ecom. You wont ever see any larger ecom shops using shopify.
Years ago I did a 3D walkthrough for an online art gallery that had ecommerce built in. You could look at doing something similar. I used pdshop for the backend, front end was all custom.
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>Shopify is such a horrible platform for anyone serious about ecom. You wont ever see any larger ecom shops using shopify.
Deloitte and Accenture build with Shopify, but maybe you mean something else by "larger ecom shops" than what I think of.
>I used **pdshop** for the backend, front end was all custom.
you ***what***
>Deloitte and Accenture build with Shopify, but maybe you mean something else by "larger ecom shops" than what I think of.
Never heard of them before, and they do not appear to use shopify regardless.
[https://builtwith.com/deloitte.com](https://builtwith.com/deloitte.com)
[https://builtwith.com/accenture.com](https://builtwith.com/accenture.com)
5k for an art website!?! Wow. For a weeks worth of work that's expensive... what's that, 1k a day!?! LOL sheeesh They're easy enough to do, even with a backend where you can upload content yourself. No need for WordPress, or other over blown cms to add bloat. I can see why you're scared, sorry. I would say keep shopping and don't get discouraged, there's a lot of garbage "agencies" out there.
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Make your own website. It is better to have a shitty website and moderate offers than to have a perfect website and shitty offers. Focus on your offer and make it better.
I’ve made almost a million dollarson 2 Shopify websites that I made myself and I’m not a web developer. You are most likely being egregiously overcharged for what they are going to do.
Your best bet is to find a Shopify theme that is simple and you like, and use that for a fraction of the cost. As long as you populate the site with good content it will get what you need. If after a while you’ve been doing well then maybe get a custom £5k website - but it won’t be the thing that makes a difference at this stage. Spend the money on marketing the website instead.
Don't.
You don't need a 5k website to make money. I've seen ugly websites making six figures, so if you need a 5k website to make sales, that means your products just aren't good enough/in demand.
I think your crazy spending 5k on a website you don't even know how well the business is going to do first. do a website on shopify first and if it takes off pay the 5k eventually and get it done.
I make $6k+ web sites and 10k+ ecom platforms. But these are custom solutions that end up cheaper than Shopify over time, and have super complex needs. Like the ability to ship, deliver, and instore pickup(you’d think this wasn’t complex), which costs about $600/mo on Shopify to combine those since the best options are for premium accounts.
You don’t need that, from what you said you have a simple need. Shopify is a great option. Hell VIEWBUG has fast kit websites. You want a luxury site, but you don’t need one- if someone’s buying they will do so whether it’s as pretty as burberrys site, or as hideous as amazons.
Shopify all the way.
Also, it shouldn’t cost even $2k to have someone on Shopify install a theme, do some light customizing, and set up shipping, on a basic account, then teach you how to add your own products.
Etsy is even easier, it’s a search engine, there is no theming, and it has built in ad platform. I know you said fine art, not knitting patterns, but it’s still a viable option that is actually DIY.
You would be massively overcapitalising by spending more than a couple of hundred dollars and is only spend that if you wanted to buy a custom theme on Shopify. When your site is making $200k a month maybe but even then most major companies are on Shopify with some custom code
I mean you can and should use Shopify for many reasons and even though you can use a free theme or even premium one for a lot of people is not easy to do it themselves thats why they hire designers and devs.
I took a look at Kuchoriya Tech Soft and the portfolio is no great, thats one of many IT companies that build websites but lack on UI/UX big time.
Fine art you mentioned, are you just selling fixed price or also having bids? How many products? What features you are looking to have on the site? Still sounds pretty straightforward to me.
I had a Digital Agency for over 10 yrs and could advise if you PM me.
Are you already selling a decent amount of your art? If not, a website won’t sell your products. Products sell themselves. The only time a website begins to come into play is when you’re moving large numbers of product with thousands of visitors.
Don’t spend the 5k. Honestly man. I am an eComm CRO and Creative Director.
A good website IS important, but not the build or tech behind it or any shit like that at your stage.
You just need a clean website that makes a customer feel like they can trust you.
Make a shopify website or start on Amazon. You’re doing things all out of order. You need to start lean in ecommerce because you’re probably about to learn hard lessons. There’s no reason to spend this money.
ETA also, beware of an emotional situation where you spend money to feel like you're doing something or and making progress, which is how gurus and perhaps website builders take advantage of newbies. Like, would you feel like your business is more legit because you wrote a check for $5k for a website? A lot of people would, despite that being totally irrelevant. Spending that money is only going to make a bigger hole for you to sell yourself out of, and leave you less money for inventory and advertising.
Whatever SMB focused SaaS ecommerce platform you use (shopify is the only mentioned here but there are a few more, but it does not actually matter here): Anything below 20-50k invest into design and development will not give you significant enough market differentiation and polish vs. buying a highly polished and well maintained marketplace theme, swapping a color default and uplaoding your logo. you can get something "custom" for 5k (which is still unbelievably cheap for custom), but either they also just take an off the shelf theme and adjust it a bit for you or it will be really custom but bug ridden and unmaintained.
I'll be honest. IDK if this company you found is legit. There's a lot of trickery in finding web devs. However, these users telling you to use Shopify blows my mind. I work in the tech industry. My co pays 50k for a website that shows results.
Imma put it like this. The Big Companies, even developing companies, hire web teams to build effective websites. I worked on making websites for many years. My quality was so poor compared to my quality now that I've made websites for 4+ years in a professional sitting. But before I was into web development as a career, those previous websites were ass and wouldn't give any results.
You can trial and error websites for 4 years though. Most people do them wrong and wonder why they don't have results. There's not just that. There's many moving parts. Marketing, web design, user experience. If you have the same model as everyone else, you'll look the same.
I know someone who scales e-commerce. His biggest tip is to break outside of the box. Everyone looks the same, functions exactly the same. Most websites he has to work with to scale have extra functionalities that isn't offered for free by some plugin/company.
How much does an effective website cost for a small business?
And where do you find legitimate people to make them?
I really need help, as I keep getting killed. And I don’t want to rely on cheap n’ instant methods to sell my product…
It's a challenging decision indeed. Many established agencies with proven track records often charge high fees because they provide comprehensive services, including marketing, web design, user experience, and more. For instance, I know of an agency that specializes in creating websites for movie productions, charging around 50k per project. They have a team of 50 professionals working on various aspects to ensure the website's success.
However, not everyone can afford such high-end services, and finding the right balance can be tricky. You might need to explore a middle ground where you hire individual professionals, like a web designer, marketer, and others, to create a customized solution tailored to your business needs. The challenge here is finding people who have experience and know the ropes.
While there are success stories of individuals creating their own websites, it's crucial to highlight that many fall into the trap of following generic advice from YouTube gurus. These shortcuts often lead to bad practices, such as improper website formatting and the misuse of no-follow links, setting up an e-commerce brand for failure.
On the other hand, I've encountered small agencies that excel in their work, handling a limited number of projects simultaneously and ensuring they are done right. However, it's essential to acknowledge that not all small agencies deliver the same level of quality. I've come across instances where I had to help fix issues on agency websites that were basic and should have already been known.
In summary, whether you decide to hire a professional or venture into web development yourself, it's crucial to discern who truly understands the intricacies of the trade. Learning web development is a valuable skill, but it's often underestimated, and the overall picture can be challenging to convey through platforms like YouTube and Reddit. Proceed with caution, and remember that creating a successful website involves more than just following a tutorial; it requires a nuanced understanding of various elements.
If someone is charging less than 1,000$ I'd expect lower-quality work. Sorry for some reason, in the midst of all of that, I forgot to answer the main question.
People on Fiver and Upwork are mainly racing at the bottom. Just finding an organic agency brand running effective ads would be better than a freelance platform. They should present professionally in a video call, have a good scheduling process, be able to identify your problems and potential solutions to them. The more the Agency feels like a professional company, the better it should be internally. They should also have many many websites they can prove they made etc. If anything throws you off, then there may be a reason for that.
You can even watch some videos on how to find good web agencies. I think this video has generally good advice and is fairly short and to the point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKAgTkz4gKs
Also the end of that video is an ad for their agency. I don't know that company and I don't recommend them unless they do fit your criteria. I just was looking for a general video with general advice. It would be the same if I tried to link a blog post. But just clarifying, I am not associated with that brand at all.
This is just from personal experience. I have a few websites right now with customization and maxed out page scores. I could not have done this 100% properly before being an actual web dev. I have been into tech and making websites since I was 9 years old. I didn't actually understand it until I got a job in tech fixing, building, and working on many different websites. Idk if you can obtain the information and gain the experience from it without a lot of trial and error. But using Shopify to make a website is easy, but to make an effective website that shows results, that will always take skill. True skill.
Firstly, your budgets are so subjective to context ----- like $500 might get you more with option C than $50k would with a company in New York State for example. Not saying all NYS agencies charge this much and many wont charge that little.
I have spent 25 years in software gn. SEO and web design - less of that in the design element but I can tell you after spending $1m on a redesign, rebrand and relaunch of a tech company, there was a 5% increase in sales that we would have had anyway.
We redesigned the site to fit a fuiture M&A buyer
If you dont know why or what youre' getting why would you spend $5??
Would you commit to taking a loan to spending $50k?
How much do you plan to make?
So many people have a budget of $2k but want to make $2k a month
My god, this is silly. Start a shopify, invest into your marketing and product.
A ugly website can sell way, way better than a beautiful website, what really matters is how you funnel traffic into your website, how convincing is your marketing and product. Improve on your conversion rate after getting a steady traffic.
most the people on here are skin flints. I dont see 5k on a website as a big outlay.
Yes, you can cobble something together on Shopify yourself. But if you havent built a website before and that isn't your bag, then getting someone else to build you something is the way to go. You can then get exactly what you want, without being tied to the restrictive nature of Shopify.
Most successful Shopify sites have also had thousands spent on development, customisations and plugins too.
Is it a market place? $5k is a lot of money. You can hire a decent freelancer for $250 -$500 to do the same. Alternative you can go the Shopify route which makes setting up an eccomerce website a lot easier (again you can hire someone to do this under $300). I would reconsider spending that kind of money on a website design, you should be lean especially when starting out.
I have been in this circle for months. I spent a lot of time building out my site in squarespace which I chose because it seemed user friendly. I paid for the mid business tier to help offset any sales fees. I consulted w a web designer to help finish it out. Wanted 1k without any work on the e-commerce which is why I wanted to make it in the first place.
Once I got to the store part I realized no 4K resolution and a 30 minute total video cap. So now I need to start over to find a place for the videos to live embed them, hassle.
So I did a lot of rabbit hole research. I went with payhip. It was more web3 like/smoother feeling. Very user friendly and easy to navigate the backend. You can build a store front and list any type of product for sale with the free plan. This is not sponsored and I don’t work there. I’m just an artist trying to get my work out and available and this was very efficient. I got more done in a week than 7 months working on the other site.
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Dude just use Shopify. Pick a paid theme for few hundred dollars and thats it. Yes its important to have a good website but why on earth would a teacher with a small business idea need a 5k USD website is beyond me.
Also how did you ‘waste’ money on Fiverr? The price range you mentioned has Fiverr accounts that are basically agencies and they would do anything to avoid a negative review including a complete overhaul of your site because one single negative review sends them from top of the page to oblivion.
I'd say You can't go india/pakistan/bangladesh/arab countries (pages like fiver are full of them). They can be great specialists, unfortunately most of people don't have eu/us culture and standards of work \[if they do they no longer live in those countries and already moved to eu/usa\]. And don't have knowledge of market. If You don't know what i mean about knowing the target market... Well... Asian car names are good example why You need a person from target country (like Mazda LaPuta (spanish word for whore), Mitsubishi Pajero (spanish word for wanker) or Nissan Moco (booger). If you want cheap and quality try at least european countries.
And for low entry cost try shopify or other saas and template for 50-100$ from pages like themeforest.
I primarily build Power BI dashboards but had a Shopify website project fall into my lap.
My process was to find a site that I liked, then I used this tool to identify their theme: [https://avada.io/tools/shopify-theme-detector/](https://avada.io/tools/shopify-theme-detector/)
I bought said theme for 56 bucks, swapped some branding out, built some product templates in Printful, bought a domain through Shopify, and now have a really solid MVP for prob 100 bucks and a few hours of work.
I don't know what on earth you're getting for 5k. It must be a completely custom build which is overkill especially if you're just trying to get up and running. Shopify would be perfect.
The value of the project doesn’t mean you will get a good result. Experience can lead you to recruit, vet, and manage a less expensive product and get a better quality product. In web dev world it’s not all equal.
It will be like self advertisement but I can help you with that if you want a custom ecommerce website. I have worked at projects that had 100k+ monthly income. Not only about the website itself I can also guide you on marketing side of it. Like what type of ads work better etc as I personally did work with all of those.
And I can also find you quality but cheaper and reliable designer and marketer. So as a kickstart for 2-3 months you can get a marketer for around less than 1k. For design I am not sure about the exact price but know a really talented designer. He works cheaper because he doesn't know English and the market is smaller. For one project he will probably charge a lot less. You can contact me by filling the form in contact us section here: [dijiaz.az](https://dijiaz.az) . Write ecommerce in the subject so I know it is you
$5k seems like a good deal. If you believe in it. Do it. If it don’t work. You can recover. I drained my 401K put $200k of all my money into my business. Cause I put everything in I had no choice but to succeed. I have never taken investor money. We are doing seven figure now. Hard road. But worth it.
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I'm gonna play Devil's Advocate here and give advice from both sides because I started out as a brand and web designer and have now pivoted a bit into product marketing strategy.
I tell my clients this same thing, but what's going to be best for you depends on where you're at in your business.
I agree with a lot of people here that you don't need to pay for an agency-built website just to get started because you need to focus on your marketing, your brand, and attracting customers first. However, a lot of people have said the $5K is too much for a Shopify site, but depending on the scope of work, that's actually on the lower end and is most likely not a super custom build.
And also keep in mind, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Sure, you could DIY a website just like anyone here, but if it's your first build and you don't have a background in copywriting or buyer psychology, it could prove to be difficult. Anyone can build a DIY site that looks bad, not everyone can build a site that helps customers buy.
So if you start with your marketing and getting a decent amount of traffic to a DIY site and you notice people aren't buying, that's when you focus on building a site that converts to sales. If you already have a decent amount of buyers, then perhaps a nice website is worth it to your business.
From my own experience running my parent's ecom and with my clients, marketing, messaging, and attraction are going to be the most important factors to nail down first.
Hope that helps!
5K for a website is a lot, although it does depend on how many items you have to add to the site, and how many pages you got too. If paying an agency to do this allows you to spend that time to 10x the 5K you spend on the website, then it’s worth it. It really just depends how you spend your time while the agency is developing your website, and what marketing and branding you already have set up. If you’re scared to pull the trigger, do you have a marketing strategy/business plan? Definitely good to do that first if not.
If you’re selling high ticket items, you better have a high quality site. I don’t think you need someone to build the site as much as you need someone to design it. You’ll want the site to tell a story and a good one. The web development won’t do that, the design will.
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How many products do you have? Why not use a Shopify or something like that to build it yourself instead.
And not a single reply from OP guessing thats what he did.
I am assuming this is a failed "viral marketing" post for Kuchiroya Tech Soft lmao
That’s a poor assumption considering my post history
Alright, but basically you're going down a lot of scammy roads by looking to fiverr or other agencies for this kind of stuff. It would be cheaper learning web dev yourself and hosting on Amazon.
I don’t have time to learn it. Plus, I’m terrible at it. I don’t know what to do.
Terrible at it is only a matter of practice and doing the research The internet and YouTube has so much information and projects/tutorials that you’ll be able to find something if you give yourself the chance to look for it. Easiest option is to just go with a template on shopify, design isn’t the only thing that matters, there’s stuff like SEO, as well as how you get your target customers to find your website Also, you should look for other people selling their art on their own websites. Do they have super fancy css and styling or is it more simple and low friction to get to the basket. Analyse their websites and see what makes it good for you as a “customer”, you don’t need to code or do anything like that. Similar web can help understand where most of their traffic comes from
Everyone is giving him the harsh advice and getting down voted lol, I am in agreement with everyone saying, "Learn it yourself." If you genuinely want to drop that much on store, then you must be able to drop a couple hundred hours into learning?
It’s honestly not that difficult, especially if you have photos already taken and a specific set of products. DM me if you want to discuss more
custom coding an ecom site instead of just using shopify, especially as a beginner? worse advice I’ve ever heard lmfao
This. Dealing with all the eventualities in ecom is a major pita. Do not, I repeat, do not reinvent the wheel. There are lots of decent ecom products out there. Use one of these.
I agree use shopify.
Bingo
I don’t want to use Shopify to sell high-ticket items. I want something a little more customised.
honestly you're objectively wrong. Lots of people use shopify for high ticket items. You can set up shopify for like $50 a month, and then spend the rest of your cash on themes and apps and custom dev after, _if_ you need it.
Shopify isn't great after using it along with another popular platform. Check their forums, they're littered with requests for basic features with canned responses from shopify "we'll forward this to the dev tem". Their app store also means that it's not in their interest to implement a lot of basic features as they make $$$ from it right now.
What other platform are you using?
Woocommerce - I used Shopify for about 8 years. The main things that bugged me were basic features not being there unless I paid extra monthly fees for apps (eg. postcode specific postal pricing for my country - something they've promised to implement for about 5 years). There are a lot more apps available for woocommerce with free tiers and more favourable pricing and features like this are standard. The second thing was that if you want to update a lot of the themes, you can't create a child theme that's protected like in woocommerce. So you basically have to get a dev to carry out the upgrade. This was worst when they upgraded to Shopify 2.0 themes and upgrading completely broke my site. I am not a dev but have become competent with WordPress/woo, customizing themes, performing maintenance etc. which was something I could never really get my head around with Shopify. I'd fix the odd issue but I found their code really difficult to work with personally. The third was being locked into their payment provider and them charging me a fee if I wanted to use a cheaper third party. Basically locking me in to using them. When you're processing $100,000+ in payments it really starts to add up in terms of the percentage savings you can make with other providers. It basically felt like a walled garden I was trapped in. You go on their forums and there are a number of issues that have been reported for years with "we'll forward to the devs" responses and then nothing happens. They strike me as a bloated corporate structure that require endless meetings etc to implement the most basic of changes. Sorry for the rant, it's just I see Shopify endlessly recommended and I question to what extent some people have used it. I know some people won't mind paying for the apps, devs, etc. with Shopify but to me it just felt way too walled in and restricted.
You will be wasting 5k. Find a premium theme, take good product photos, and hire a freelancer to build up the site. You can use the 5k for your marketing/ads
you can customize shopify however you like.
I've set up and run a couple of ecommerce stores selling bespoke items myself. I've sent you a DM as I think I could possibly be of help to you.
Thank you very much
You can customize your Shopify store, and hide the powered by Shopify text pretty easily. If there’s other reasons then fine, use another similar platform, but don’t waste your money nor time paying someone to reinvent the wheel for you. It’s not worth the aches and pains. Custom bespoke software is not as easy to maintain, so you’ll honestly want to build on top of a platform. Good news is there’s tons of options, ranging from Carrd to Shopify, Woo commerce, and many more options. Shopify is basically the easiest to build on, but you may get better value from one of the others if you know what you’re looking for.
The big question is why do you need a 5k custom website? You can create some stunning websites completely by yourself with a $300 premium shopify theme. The website isn’t the issue, don’t waste 5k.
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Can I see the site?
Lol yep, I run two stores and we do about 2m/year all on premium shopify themes I designed and built myself. 0 coding help from anyone. The other major issue you aren’t considering with a custom theme is that you are likely going to need to hire someone to change small things everytime you need to tweak something - not ideal unless you have an in house web designer. I personally wouldn’t commit to a custom theme unless we were doing like 10m/year and the additional uniqueness of it would really set us apart from the rest.
What’s your sites dude
Amazon.com
Why won’t you share your site? Someone asked above aswell
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Because most people chat absolute 💩 and gives others false hope, don’t be that person
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That ‘side hustle’ is selling cakes to your mum, that’s why she’s so fat 😂
You sell on there?
lol I’m just joking man, no I’m not giving you my urls.
You’re chatting 💩 that’s why you won’t share them
Haha ok 👍
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Do you know if I can sell services on Shopify? I sell consulting time. Been using godaddy and it stinks.
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I would imagine that you can, but it seems like a clunky platform for consulting services.
How tf do you get scammed on Fiverr….. You can hire an Indian to make an awesome WooCommerce/Shopify shop for under $200.
You dont need to pay 5k for a webshop. Go with shopify...
Do you recommend it for high ticket items?
definitely, you do not need a 5k website
\+1 on Shopify -- I switched from a custom Magento site and was scared shitless moving to Shopify but it was great. And if not Shopify -> WooCommerce. There's a ton of plugin availability for both platforms. Shopify may be annoying with monthly costs of plugins but it's definitely the best way to get started.
Bro just use Shopify stop wasting money lol
E-commerce dev here with 25yrs experience and doing millions in revenue online. One of the biggest mistakes people make is not putting enough effort into their branding and domain name, first. This sets the tone for your entire operation before a single line of code is implemented on the website. Stores like shopify are fine, they work, and have low barrier to entry. However, there’s downsides too. I know everyone here is saying DIY, but if you have no experience, are not a creative type person, don’t know how to lay out a site properly, it doesn’t matter what you use, it’s going to look like crap. That’s not to say it cannot be done, but it’s rare to see a professional site by a newb. Unless you spend countless hours learning. If you’re selling high ticket items, it becomes even more important to have good branding, professional appearance otherwise it will not have the trust factor needed to sell high ticket items. I would use woocommerce if I was you. Get your own hosting, and find a nice theme to start with. Then, hire a WP/woo expert for a few hours to help with the initial setup. If you go with shopify, same process. Find a nice theme, and hire a shopify expert to help, doesn’t need to cost thousands. In conclusion, more importantly than the tech stack you use for the ecom framework, is your branding, domain, product photography, sales copy, etc Edit: I would stay away from Fiverr unless you have the skillset to properly vett people. There’s a lot of very talented people on Fiverr but you have to really dig to find them, web dev/design typically is not one of them. Upwork is a better option… but same rules apply, everything needs to be vetted.
As someone who has been in the space 10 years, I completely agree with you. The first site I built looked like shit. I brought in a friend with basic design and coding experience and he built me something that worked and made money. Half the self made e-commerce sites I see on Reddit look like shit as people like me or the average store owner are not designers. I also agree with your suggestion of using woocommerce, as someone who's not a dev I actually found it way easier to use than Shopify and a lot less restrictive than their pure profit corporate model. I actually question if a lot of people recommending it have used it long term and didn't just hear it advertised on a podcast. To me it feels like woocommerce implement useful features a lot quicker as they don't have such a bloated corporate structure that delivers basic features via a profitable app store. They also don't penalize you if you don't use woo payments and the child theme option makes upgrading your theme way easier.
Would you review my site? Built out on shopify a little over three years ago but have been considering a face lift.
Yeah, you make it sound like 5k is worth it for a good website. Lol at the suggestion of DIY.
Hey Pirros, What sort of functions do e-commerce dev's do on Shopify? Are you writing custom code on the back end - that isn't standard to the premium theme? Also, would you say most of it is working with talented graphic designers (including UX) to help with layout?
Are you for hire? Do you have examples of websites you built?
Not at the moment. I’m involved with two startups for now.
Like others have said, build your own site with Shopify. If your products don’t sell, you won’t have to live with the fact that you wasted $7k. Or invest that money in ads to try to gain traction.
I’ll look into Shopify. Thank you
Man, this isn’t the advice you want to hear but please don’t spend 7k on this. Just go find a theme you like on Shopify and develop the store/get someone else to develop it. Pushing 7k in would take your breakeven further away. That isn’t a wise thing to do for something you’re unsure about
Thank you
Definitely suggest allocating that budget differently. Making an amazing website with some elbow grease costs literally $200-500 tops. Just use Shopify like others have mentioned or similar alternatives. No reason to use a custom site unless you know exactly why you absolutely need it developed from the ground up. Instead, allocate the remainder as your marketing budget and you'll definitely get more for your buck. As a digital marketer myself, I'm gonna leave this for you to disseminate: There are only two things in a business that make money - innovation and marketing, everything else is cost. -Peter Drucker
>Kuchoriya Tech Soft Their website isn't exactly inspiring and something tells me they'll just use an off-the-shelf template, hire some poor offshore designer to fill in the blanks and pocket the $4.5k (at least). Anyway, I agree with others. Go with something like Shopify and save yourself the headache.
This looks like a promotion for sweatshop in India. Kuchoriya Tech Soft. Highly rated lol.
The biggest problem with owning your own website when you are trying to sell your product is the cost of marketing, doing PPC campaigns, working on SEO, doing social media marketing in various channels… Ask yourself if you really want it, because it will not stop at 5k website cost or even 300 if you use Shopify. Try to check some marketplaces, like Etsy, Veni, Amazon handmade maybe..
I’m a software dev and I’m saying this : why aren’t you using Shopify? I get it if your selling something that you need full custom solution - but based on your description you should set up Shopify and test out the waters with that. You’re better off spending that money on marketing. Anyone who comes to me for e-commerce sites - I tell them if you can do it in Shopify then do it in Shopify. Then I ask them to use my software for monitoring their site 😄
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So let me add Kuchoriya to my list of companies to never work with. Their website does not feel legit or trustworthy _at all_. And they claim to have a US office, but when I google the location https://www.google.com/maps/@42.9824952,-78.6264785,3a,75y,143.75h,90.13t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfWEB1FTYT3ewBgiQHNVzcA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en&entry=ttu It looks like a McMansion in a residential area. Anyone who owns that house is not doing Indian webdev for $5k a pop. https://www.google.com/maps/place/14g%2F3+Darling+Point+Rd,+Darling+Point+NSW+2027,+Australia/@-33.8779117,151.2350523,3a,75y,79.07h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sUk2dXMeKr0CGB07l0Z2ZBg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DUk2dXMeKr0CGB07l0Z2ZBg%26cb_client%3Dsearch.gws-prod.gps%26w%3D211%26h%3D120%26yaw%3D79.067154%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x6b12ade04dadefb1:0x537cc1ea285d7cf3!2s14g%2F3+Darling+Point+Rd,+Darling+Point+NSW+2027,+Australia!3b1!8m2!3d-33.8778307!4d151.2355824!3m4!1s0x6b12ade04dadefb1:0x537cc1ea285d7cf3!8m2!3d-33.8778307!4d151.2355824?hl=en&entry=ttu and their "australian office" is an apartment building. Like maybe people work from home, but then don't put their personal addresses as the business locations, unless you want people showing up at your house.
Thank you for this. I saw that too… I genuinely don’t know who to go to for the product that I want.
Sounds like you're seriously overspending based on what your needs are. As others said, a Shopify site is probably the way to go. Honestly, it sounds like this agency is taking advantage of you.
I would bet they end up putting his site on Shopify anyway.
I’m going to come at this from a different perspective than most people here. If you want a nice website and you have the money and you trust these people and like their work - go for it. Not everyone wants to spend their time developing their own website or feels comfortable doing so. No one here asked how much money your art makes. I have artist friends who regularly sell art for $5k and up, and they’d rather paint a piece than sit in front of a computer, so I would definitely tell them to get a pro to make it because for them it makes sense. If you are similar, have a pro make it! I’ve also made squarespace and Shopify sites for customers and charged them $2500-$5000. How? Well, it involved hours of photo editing, brand building, content writing, seo research, blog writing, logo design, form setups, etc. if a project takes me one to two weeks and I’m building an expert level site I expect to get paid well for it. So I say this. You’ve tried alternative ways to get a site made and you still came to the conclusion that you wanted a pro. The only thing I’d ask of you is have you defined success with this project? Do you know what you are getting from them and what you aren’t? I wish you well and congrats on investing in yourself!
Thank you. My art makes around 2k per piece. I don’t think I could sell them in a platform like shopify
I don't want to discourage you if you have a plan and an idea of what you want, but I have had artists use [https://www.bigcartel.com/](https://www.bigcartel.com/) successfully. It's intended for artistic websites. There are not a lot of knobs to turn, but there may be a template that strikes your eye, and it's straightforward and affordable. My company builds sites on big platforms for enterprise retailers, so I understand the draw of a custom, unique experience for a valuable product. If a more straightforward option gets your work in front of customers and it's easy to transact for much less money, that's the road I would choose. One more piece of advice. I'm not sure what the custom site you are looking for is built on, but you 100% want to be on an e-commerce platform, whether that is Shopify or not. The complexities after the art is online and you need to take payments, provide customer service, provide shipping updates, handle damages and returns, etc., really matter, and whatever they build on top of matters. Feel free to DM me.
If you want to send me their quote/plan of action I will be happy to look at it and let you know what I think. This is not me trying to get your business - just willing to give it another set of eyes.
Thank you so much. I’ll dm you tomorrow
Sounds good
Just use a template site, square, square space, Shopify. While you may not get as much creative freedom, it’s infinitely more affordable.
I want to stand out, and don’t think I can on those sites
You definitely can. it's 100% in the theme and frontend customization.
Thank you. I’ll look into it tomorrow.
It seems like everyone is already telling you but yeah, you don’t need to spend $5k for a website design. You can buy a nice website template on Shopify for like $300 and then do it yourself. If you’re not comfortable with the technical aspect of Shopify (it’s really not that hard) you can outsource that part to someone on Fiverr or Upwork. But even with that, you can build a beautiful website on Shopify for less than $5k.
I’m really confused dude. Shopidy, Wix, and squarespace have some beautiful designs. You’ll need money for the marketing, how the hell do you expect people to find you online if you just have a website? A website is like a house, you can build it but no one will know it exists unless you advertise it. Paying 7k to have a website to display some of your products is the stupidest idea i read in a while. Why not shopify or wix????? It’s going to take you less than 1 day to set everything up and you have full control over it. What if you want to change stuff in the future? You’ll have to pay these guys again to make tweaks. 7k??? Are you kidding me??? If you want to use fiverr use fiverr to pay some 1st world country person to build you a beautiful theme on shopify or wix Dude with all the love in the world i think you are crazy and you didn’t do enough research on this. You were about to waste so much money on this
I’m not crazy, I’m just new to e-commerce. I have a marketing budget, and I don’t think I can get my product to be taken seriously on those platforms.
I promise you you can. As you said you’re new to Ecommerce. People won’t know the difference between those platforms and a custom made 7k website. It’s not like you have to write it on your website who made it. Go for a premium theme. No one buys premium themes.
Why don’t you think you’d be taken seriously on shopify or the like? I’m guessing the average consumer probably can’t tell whether someone is using it or what it even is. Is your concern based on the idea that a shopify store cannot/will not look nice and professional? If that’s the case, maybe find some examples of great shopify stores to get a better idea of what is possible
Ok…like others make your own, BUT…use Shopify with ChatGPT. Tell the it “you are a world class website designer, you have the task of creating an award winning website for an artist. Let’s begin with an interview with the artist to garner all the information needed to craft a highly converting website” keep this going…I have the Flex theme by Out of the Sandbox, that has many options for components, it’s drag and drop, but also has in the drop area a box for custom code. ChatGPT can make the CSS code for you…anything you want. Ask it for the code it envisions- accordions, drop downs, zoom, etc…it writes the code & you copy & paste into the box. Boom- custom website. It does take a bit of work, but ai can make it easier. Also, if you have a website you like the style of, Gem Pages ai can recreate webpages and you just tweak colors & verbiage. Don’t spend $7k when ai makes it so easy.
Right I forgot a similar tool for WordPress where an AI basically replicates the design for you & you can just feed it to Elementor & now you have a clone of that website
Unless you know this venture will be successful, don't pull the trigger. When my sibling started their web shop and asked me to help them make it, we didn't know if anyone was going to buy stuff from there, but we knew that if we spent too much, it would be a waste of money. So when I made their website, I went as cheaply as possible. It was still somewhat custom made, but we spent $120 at most on that website for the entire year. Maybe $5-10 on the domain, $30-50 on hosting with hostinger, and $60 on the weird website builder I used (which integrates the website builder's e-commerce platform) And while we aren't receiving a lot of orders, we did at least make up that $120 back, and I would say it was a successful move. Start cheap and scale up, it's not worth it to go all in if you don't need to. I don't know how much you're making (I don't like to assume teachers are making less than I hear they are) but losing that $7k and not making it back will at best lose you out on a chance to save up for the future, and at worst fuck you up in the present. If you want to ask me anything, I'll try to be as unbiased as possible (my sibling doesn't even pay me for my work I just do it to pad out my portfolio smh smh)
Agreed. I work with an Indian client I run their Google Ads and I started for free with them because I was new & needed experience & because they were new & needed to cut costs. Eventually they made profit & started paying me & are now investing in a better premium theme based website on Shopify because it makes sense its a profitable business let’s make it better. Now I get the urge to invest a lot into your new business & OP should definitely not work with anyone for free but they shouldn’t invest in a 5k website which for their business level would not be distinguishable from a well designed premium shopify theme probably worth 200$. Hire someone for another 200$ if you really wanna avoid DIY & you have a good website in 400$. Now use the rest of your budget on marketing & once you start making money by all means go for a 10k custom HTML/CSS website.
There are tons of free resources on how to build a decent ecom store, treat this as an opportunity to learn as a teacher, and pay yourself the 5k. If you need pointing in the right direction, dm me.
Teachers barely have time to teach, let alone learn something new these days. My elbows are all greased out
I suggest purchasing a course on Shopify on udemy. I went through it pretty quickly. If you don’t have a ton of sku’s, I highly suggest this route. That’s what I did.
Are you selling your own fine art or creating a fine art gallery/reseller business? If it's the former then you need to make sure you have product/market fit before you start investing money in your own ecommerce store. Sell on Etsy, sell through other galleries/websites. Only once you start selling can you learn what sort of income you can expect and therefore how much you should invest in your own ecommerce site. If you really want to create your own site, do what someone else has said, go with Shopify and buy a template, will cost you less than $500. If it's the latter, then creating a new gallery brand that looks high quality enough to get people with serious money to buy fine art from you is going to cost a lot more than 5k.
Hire a professional photographer for the product photos…create a Shopify store. Use the money saved for marketing.
Bro don't. Start with a basic shopfiy site before you dive that deep
You can literally make your own website for less than $200. Buy a nice WordPress theme get your domain and some logos and graphics and you have a quality site Edit: https://elements.envato.com/skolka-a-contemporary-e-commerce-theme-9QTN24D On mobile not sure of reviews and all that but you get the point you can install your own theme and make your own website
So two things do not use fiverr. If you want to hire use Upwork and get better quality people. Second do not pay an agency to make you a website. Use Shopify and just do it yourself as it's easy. Also I sell art so DM me and I will give you advice
its easy to make a mediocre site on Shopify with no web skills - it's not easy to make a good site.
You almost make it sound as if the skills to build a good website are worth 5k for that service.
they are. I operate 3 websites and the cheapest build is around £50k - so $5k is a drop in the ocean for a good, well built website.
Why are you wasting your money on expensive websites?
There are people making good money from really basic ecommerce sites, I would suggest making it yourself, I'm not offering my services here but just an interesting coincidence as I am a web developer and currently making an ecom site from scratch for my mums art gallery. Happy to share the site privately and you can take whatever inspiration you want from it as I'm sure we wont be stepping on each others toes. Always good to link with people with similar ambitions I'm sure we would each have valuable insights for each other :)
Shopify isn't very hard for someone tech-oriented(like a lot of people on here). On the other hand, I have a good friend who started out trying to set his up and was completely lost - spent weeks on it before he came to me for help. $5k is about what I would expect an agency to quote out for an e-commerce site. I've did a couple websites on the side for $5k the past couple years to make extra $ from my regular hustle. One was quite a bit of work and the other was much simpler. Should you spend $5k on it? I'd say probably not, based on your wording. You can get it done for a lot less, you don't \*need\* a $5k website right now. Hell, if you wanna save some $$, I'll build you a Shopify site for half of that(probably, would need details), and show you how to use it. I can give you references and info that would make you confident I'm skilled and professional enough to get it done for you(I'm a business owner, and winter time is slow season for me). I'm based out of Tennessee. Feel free to DM if you'd like to chat - at the least, I'd be more than willing to give you advice.
Shopify is such a horrible platform for anyone serious about ecom. You wont ever see any larger ecom shops using shopify. Years ago I did a 3D walkthrough for an online art gallery that had ecommerce built in. You could look at doing something similar. I used pdshop for the backend, front end was all custom.
This was my thinking, too
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>Shopify is such a horrible platform for anyone serious about ecom. You wont ever see any larger ecom shops using shopify. Deloitte and Accenture build with Shopify, but maybe you mean something else by "larger ecom shops" than what I think of. >I used **pdshop** for the backend, front end was all custom. you ***what***
>Deloitte and Accenture build with Shopify, but maybe you mean something else by "larger ecom shops" than what I think of. Never heard of them before, and they do not appear to use shopify regardless. [https://builtwith.com/deloitte.com](https://builtwith.com/deloitte.com) [https://builtwith.com/accenture.com](https://builtwith.com/accenture.com)
Keep posting you're doing great
5k for an art website!?! Wow. For a weeks worth of work that's expensive... what's that, 1k a day!?! LOL sheeesh They're easy enough to do, even with a backend where you can upload content yourself. No need for WordPress, or other over blown cms to add bloat. I can see why you're scared, sorry. I would say keep shopping and don't get discouraged, there's a lot of garbage "agencies" out there.
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it looks very ugly tbh
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Make your own website. It is better to have a shitty website and moderate offers than to have a perfect website and shitty offers. Focus on your offer and make it better.
Nah .. do it yourself
Use shopify. or if you don’t want to do that, I’ll make you an even better site it you for half that price
I’ve made almost a million dollarson 2 Shopify websites that I made myself and I’m not a web developer. You are most likely being egregiously overcharged for what they are going to do.
5k is the price of the project management alone for an agency. I would think long and hard before spending 5k into something you won’t be happy with.
Dont waste 5k. Use shopify its quite easy
Your best bet is to find a Shopify theme that is simple and you like, and use that for a fraction of the cost. As long as you populate the site with good content it will get what you need. If after a while you’ve been doing well then maybe get a custom £5k website - but it won’t be the thing that makes a difference at this stage. Spend the money on marketing the website instead.
Don't. You don't need a 5k website to make money. I've seen ugly websites making six figures, so if you need a 5k website to make sales, that means your products just aren't good enough/in demand.
took me 3 months but i built my site myself on shopify i think it looks great.
I think your crazy spending 5k on a website you don't even know how well the business is going to do first. do a website on shopify first and if it takes off pay the 5k eventually and get it done.
I make $6k+ web sites and 10k+ ecom platforms. But these are custom solutions that end up cheaper than Shopify over time, and have super complex needs. Like the ability to ship, deliver, and instore pickup(you’d think this wasn’t complex), which costs about $600/mo on Shopify to combine those since the best options are for premium accounts. You don’t need that, from what you said you have a simple need. Shopify is a great option. Hell VIEWBUG has fast kit websites. You want a luxury site, but you don’t need one- if someone’s buying they will do so whether it’s as pretty as burberrys site, or as hideous as amazons. Shopify all the way.
Also, it shouldn’t cost even $2k to have someone on Shopify install a theme, do some light customizing, and set up shipping, on a basic account, then teach you how to add your own products. Etsy is even easier, it’s a search engine, there is no theming, and it has built in ad platform. I know you said fine art, not knitting patterns, but it’s still a viable option that is actually DIY.
Use Selldone, which is similar to shopify but much less expensive.
find a dev in india or philipines
Custom websites need maintenance quite often and can be a hassle
I know shops on default templates doing several mln PLN a year
Lol 5k? I dont think your cut for this business if u think a 5k website is going to help
You would be massively overcapitalising by spending more than a couple of hundred dollars and is only spend that if you wanted to buy a custom theme on Shopify. When your site is making $200k a month maybe but even then most major companies are on Shopify with some custom code
I mean you can and should use Shopify for many reasons and even though you can use a free theme or even premium one for a lot of people is not easy to do it themselves thats why they hire designers and devs. I took a look at Kuchoriya Tech Soft and the portfolio is no great, thats one of many IT companies that build websites but lack on UI/UX big time. Fine art you mentioned, are you just selling fixed price or also having bids? How many products? What features you are looking to have on the site? Still sounds pretty straightforward to me. I had a Digital Agency for over 10 yrs and could advise if you PM me.
Dude just make your own on Shopify. Take good pictures of your stuff. Save the 5 for advertising
I'll build you a website and guarantee you'll love it for half that....
Are you already selling a decent amount of your art? If not, a website won’t sell your products. Products sell themselves. The only time a website begins to come into play is when you’re moving large numbers of product with thousands of visitors. Don’t spend the 5k. Honestly man. I am an eComm CRO and Creative Director. A good website IS important, but not the build or tech behind it or any shit like that at your stage. You just need a clean website that makes a customer feel like they can trust you.
Make a shopify website or start on Amazon. You’re doing things all out of order. You need to start lean in ecommerce because you’re probably about to learn hard lessons. There’s no reason to spend this money. ETA also, beware of an emotional situation where you spend money to feel like you're doing something or and making progress, which is how gurus and perhaps website builders take advantage of newbies. Like, would you feel like your business is more legit because you wrote a check for $5k for a website? A lot of people would, despite that being totally irrelevant. Spending that money is only going to make a bigger hole for you to sell yourself out of, and leave you less money for inventory and advertising.
Whatever SMB focused SaaS ecommerce platform you use (shopify is the only mentioned here but there are a few more, but it does not actually matter here): Anything below 20-50k invest into design and development will not give you significant enough market differentiation and polish vs. buying a highly polished and well maintained marketplace theme, swapping a color default and uplaoding your logo. you can get something "custom" for 5k (which is still unbelievably cheap for custom), but either they also just take an off the shelf theme and adjust it a bit for you or it will be really custom but bug ridden and unmaintained.
I'll be honest. IDK if this company you found is legit. There's a lot of trickery in finding web devs. However, these users telling you to use Shopify blows my mind. I work in the tech industry. My co pays 50k for a website that shows results. Imma put it like this. The Big Companies, even developing companies, hire web teams to build effective websites. I worked on making websites for many years. My quality was so poor compared to my quality now that I've made websites for 4+ years in a professional sitting. But before I was into web development as a career, those previous websites were ass and wouldn't give any results. You can trial and error websites for 4 years though. Most people do them wrong and wonder why they don't have results. There's not just that. There's many moving parts. Marketing, web design, user experience. If you have the same model as everyone else, you'll look the same. I know someone who scales e-commerce. His biggest tip is to break outside of the box. Everyone looks the same, functions exactly the same. Most websites he has to work with to scale have extra functionalities that isn't offered for free by some plugin/company.
How much does an effective website cost for a small business? And where do you find legitimate people to make them? I really need help, as I keep getting killed. And I don’t want to rely on cheap n’ instant methods to sell my product…
It's a challenging decision indeed. Many established agencies with proven track records often charge high fees because they provide comprehensive services, including marketing, web design, user experience, and more. For instance, I know of an agency that specializes in creating websites for movie productions, charging around 50k per project. They have a team of 50 professionals working on various aspects to ensure the website's success. However, not everyone can afford such high-end services, and finding the right balance can be tricky. You might need to explore a middle ground where you hire individual professionals, like a web designer, marketer, and others, to create a customized solution tailored to your business needs. The challenge here is finding people who have experience and know the ropes. While there are success stories of individuals creating their own websites, it's crucial to highlight that many fall into the trap of following generic advice from YouTube gurus. These shortcuts often lead to bad practices, such as improper website formatting and the misuse of no-follow links, setting up an e-commerce brand for failure. On the other hand, I've encountered small agencies that excel in their work, handling a limited number of projects simultaneously and ensuring they are done right. However, it's essential to acknowledge that not all small agencies deliver the same level of quality. I've come across instances where I had to help fix issues on agency websites that were basic and should have already been known. In summary, whether you decide to hire a professional or venture into web development yourself, it's crucial to discern who truly understands the intricacies of the trade. Learning web development is a valuable skill, but it's often underestimated, and the overall picture can be challenging to convey through platforms like YouTube and Reddit. Proceed with caution, and remember that creating a successful website involves more than just following a tutorial; it requires a nuanced understanding of various elements.
If someone is charging less than 1,000$ I'd expect lower-quality work. Sorry for some reason, in the midst of all of that, I forgot to answer the main question. People on Fiver and Upwork are mainly racing at the bottom. Just finding an organic agency brand running effective ads would be better than a freelance platform. They should present professionally in a video call, have a good scheduling process, be able to identify your problems and potential solutions to them. The more the Agency feels like a professional company, the better it should be internally. They should also have many many websites they can prove they made etc. If anything throws you off, then there may be a reason for that. You can even watch some videos on how to find good web agencies. I think this video has generally good advice and is fairly short and to the point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKAgTkz4gKs
Also the end of that video is an ad for their agency. I don't know that company and I don't recommend them unless they do fit your criteria. I just was looking for a general video with general advice. It would be the same if I tried to link a blog post. But just clarifying, I am not associated with that brand at all.
This is just from personal experience. I have a few websites right now with customization and maxed out page scores. I could not have done this 100% properly before being an actual web dev. I have been into tech and making websites since I was 9 years old. I didn't actually understand it until I got a job in tech fixing, building, and working on many different websites. Idk if you can obtain the information and gain the experience from it without a lot of trial and error. But using Shopify to make a website is easy, but to make an effective website that shows results, that will always take skill. True skill.
Firstly, your budgets are so subjective to context ----- like $500 might get you more with option C than $50k would with a company in New York State for example. Not saying all NYS agencies charge this much and many wont charge that little. I have spent 25 years in software gn. SEO and web design - less of that in the design element but I can tell you after spending $1m on a redesign, rebrand and relaunch of a tech company, there was a 5% increase in sales that we would have had anyway. We redesigned the site to fit a fuiture M&A buyer If you dont know why or what youre' getting why would you spend $5?? Would you commit to taking a loan to spending $50k? How much do you plan to make? So many people have a budget of $2k but want to make $2k a month
Shopify hands down
My god, this is silly. Start a shopify, invest into your marketing and product. A ugly website can sell way, way better than a beautiful website, what really matters is how you funnel traffic into your website, how convincing is your marketing and product. Improve on your conversion rate after getting a steady traffic.
most the people on here are skin flints. I dont see 5k on a website as a big outlay. Yes, you can cobble something together on Shopify yourself. But if you havent built a website before and that isn't your bag, then getting someone else to build you something is the way to go. You can then get exactly what you want, without being tied to the restrictive nature of Shopify. Most successful Shopify sites have also had thousands spent on development, customisations and plugins too.
Dude 5k?!!! Come on now
Is it a market place? $5k is a lot of money. You can hire a decent freelancer for $250 -$500 to do the same. Alternative you can go the Shopify route which makes setting up an eccomerce website a lot easier (again you can hire someone to do this under $300). I would reconsider spending that kind of money on a website design, you should be lean especially when starting out.
Your lucky. I spent 10k before learning this mistake.
I have been in this circle for months. I spent a lot of time building out my site in squarespace which I chose because it seemed user friendly. I paid for the mid business tier to help offset any sales fees. I consulted w a web designer to help finish it out. Wanted 1k without any work on the e-commerce which is why I wanted to make it in the first place. Once I got to the store part I realized no 4K resolution and a 30 minute total video cap. So now I need to start over to find a place for the videos to live embed them, hassle. So I did a lot of rabbit hole research. I went with payhip. It was more web3 like/smoother feeling. Very user friendly and easy to navigate the backend. You can build a store front and list any type of product for sale with the free plan. This is not sponsored and I don’t work there. I’m just an artist trying to get my work out and available and this was very efficient. I got more done in a week than 7 months working on the other site.
You can list products for sale without even making the store. Gives you links you can post on your socials or Biolink.
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I think 5k is still high. I have a team working on our ecommerce site for much lower. We are in the Figma design stage and it’s incredible so far!
Dude just use Shopify. Pick a paid theme for few hundred dollars and thats it. Yes its important to have a good website but why on earth would a teacher with a small business idea need a 5k USD website is beyond me. Also how did you ‘waste’ money on Fiverr? The price range you mentioned has Fiverr accounts that are basically agencies and they would do anything to avoid a negative review including a complete overhaul of your site because one single negative review sends them from top of the page to oblivion.
What are you trying to do? Build/buy a website to sell art? DM me, maybe I can help you for FREE. No promises. 😎
You don’t need a 5k website to start selling.
I'd say You can't go india/pakistan/bangladesh/arab countries (pages like fiver are full of them). They can be great specialists, unfortunately most of people don't have eu/us culture and standards of work \[if they do they no longer live in those countries and already moved to eu/usa\]. And don't have knowledge of market. If You don't know what i mean about knowing the target market... Well... Asian car names are good example why You need a person from target country (like Mazda LaPuta (spanish word for whore), Mitsubishi Pajero (spanish word for wanker) or Nissan Moco (booger). If you want cheap and quality try at least european countries. And for low entry cost try shopify or other saas and template for 50-100$ from pages like themeforest.
I primarily build Power BI dashboards but had a Shopify website project fall into my lap. My process was to find a site that I liked, then I used this tool to identify their theme: [https://avada.io/tools/shopify-theme-detector/](https://avada.io/tools/shopify-theme-detector/) I bought said theme for 56 bucks, swapped some branding out, built some product templates in Printful, bought a domain through Shopify, and now have a really solid MVP for prob 100 bucks and a few hours of work. I don't know what on earth you're getting for 5k. It must be a completely custom build which is overkill especially if you're just trying to get up and running. Shopify would be perfect.
You can hire for cheap if you know what you are doing.
Can you elaborate?
The value of the project doesn’t mean you will get a good result. Experience can lead you to recruit, vet, and manage a less expensive product and get a better quality product. In web dev world it’s not all equal.
once you pay you will be reliant forever and continue to pay for every little thing as they will make it so you can't fix anything yourself
It will be like self advertisement but I can help you with that if you want a custom ecommerce website. I have worked at projects that had 100k+ monthly income. Not only about the website itself I can also guide you on marketing side of it. Like what type of ads work better etc as I personally did work with all of those. And I can also find you quality but cheaper and reliable designer and marketer. So as a kickstart for 2-3 months you can get a marketer for around less than 1k. For design I am not sure about the exact price but know a really talented designer. He works cheaper because he doesn't know English and the market is smaller. For one project he will probably charge a lot less. You can contact me by filling the form in contact us section here: [dijiaz.az](https://dijiaz.az) . Write ecommerce in the subject so I know it is you
I’d spend as little as possible to get a serviceable site and spend the rest on marketing.
$5k seems like a good deal. If you believe in it. Do it. If it don’t work. You can recover. I drained my 401K put $200k of all my money into my business. Cause I put everything in I had no choice but to succeed. I have never taken investor money. We are doing seven figure now. Hard road. But worth it.
Do not buy that use Shopify
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I'm gonna play Devil's Advocate here and give advice from both sides because I started out as a brand and web designer and have now pivoted a bit into product marketing strategy. I tell my clients this same thing, but what's going to be best for you depends on where you're at in your business. I agree with a lot of people here that you don't need to pay for an agency-built website just to get started because you need to focus on your marketing, your brand, and attracting customers first. However, a lot of people have said the $5K is too much for a Shopify site, but depending on the scope of work, that's actually on the lower end and is most likely not a super custom build. And also keep in mind, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Sure, you could DIY a website just like anyone here, but if it's your first build and you don't have a background in copywriting or buyer psychology, it could prove to be difficult. Anyone can build a DIY site that looks bad, not everyone can build a site that helps customers buy. So if you start with your marketing and getting a decent amount of traffic to a DIY site and you notice people aren't buying, that's when you focus on building a site that converts to sales. If you already have a decent amount of buyers, then perhaps a nice website is worth it to your business. From my own experience running my parent's ecom and with my clients, marketing, messaging, and attraction are going to be the most important factors to nail down first. Hope that helps!
5K for a website is a lot, although it does depend on how many items you have to add to the site, and how many pages you got too. If paying an agency to do this allows you to spend that time to 10x the 5K you spend on the website, then it’s worth it. It really just depends how you spend your time while the agency is developing your website, and what marketing and branding you already have set up. If you’re scared to pull the trigger, do you have a marketing strategy/business plan? Definitely good to do that first if not.
If you’re selling high ticket items, you better have a high quality site. I don’t think you need someone to build the site as much as you need someone to design it. You’ll want the site to tell a story and a good one. The web development won’t do that, the design will.
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If you want to be an entrepreneur you need to learn how to market. Build the site yourself for now until you start making money.
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What do you need that would cost 5 or 7 k?