Ecommerce app - what are the rough costs ?

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martyyn

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#194980 1-Apr-2016 12:23

Before I get too involved in looking at how to build something, does anyone have a rough idea on what it costs to have an app built for on-line sales ?

It's a small catalogue, less than a dozen items but maybe more in the future. It will need to handle returning customers and CC payments, send email/text confirmations of order receipt and completion details and be as simple to step through as possible. For both Android and Apple. I'm looking for simple rather than jazzy.

Just a rough estimate would be great. Very few websites I've found give any indication at all, although one started at $5k for a basic app.

My gut feeling is to just do a website and keep it as minimal as possible, but I've not built a mobile app before ;)

Jeeves

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#1523952 1-Apr-2016 13:36

One has to ask for a simple shopping cart - why you would want an app? I'd just setup a shopify store or something.

If the app does nothing but provide the user a shopping cart - it would be more incentive for a customer to simply go to a website rather than have to go into an app store, find your app, download your app, open your app etc...

Seriously, for $60 a month or whatever it is - just use shopify.

DravidDavid

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#1523978 1-Apr-2016 14:28

What you described is pretty much Wordpress with WooCommerce. It's not an app that a customer installs, but it's pretty much just as good.
You can buy a nice template and pay a dev 500 bucks to enter the content and set up PayMark and hosting for you.

Shopify is also a good option, but you've got the monthly charge. Although, so does PayMark I think.

martyyn

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#1524027 1-Apr-2016 15:39

DravidDavid: What you described is pretty much Wordpress with WooCommerce.

This would be my choice, but they are keen to explore other options.

mattwnz

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#1524052 1-Apr-2016 16:01

DravidDavid:

What you described is pretty much Wordpress with WooCommerce. It's not an app that a customer installs, but it's pretty much just as good.
You can buy a nice template and pay a dev 500 bucks to enter the content and set up PayMark and hosting for you.

Shopify is also a good option, but you've got the monthly charge. Although, so does PayMark I think.

With wordpress, you have to manage any updates, as well as any techinical problems. Plus you have to pay for additioal plugins and possibly do some programming to configure it to work how you want it to work. It is fine if you have the web design skills to do it yourself. But my experience with even the best wordpress templates, is that they have bugs.But if you are paying a web designer to do it all for you, then it can be quite expensive over a long period of time, compared to something like a software as a service ecommerce system, so you would still want some form of service contract with developer to help you do updates and manage things when it goes wrong. Plus you have to have good hosting for it to load fast, as wordpress is now quite demanding on a shared server. Cloudflare and caching plugins can help, but requires even more configuration. These systems like shopify are the easy solution, and you benefit from them doing all the backend stuff. But they can be quite basic, and they seem to charge a commission per sale.

martyyn

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#1524209 1-Apr-2016 18:57

I am the web dev, been doing software development for 20 years which is why I'd be happy to try building an app if the opportunity comes my way.

I already look after plenty of Wordpress sites, so I know the deal.

I'm just curious to know how much it would cost to get one built that's all.

raytaylor

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#1525398 3-Apr-2016 21:20

oscommerce is my favorite

Free, has heaps of plugins - especially for nz and easy to use.

Ray Taylor

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darylblake

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#1525446 3-Apr-2016 22:47

martyyn:

I am the web dev, been doing software development for 20 years which is why I'd be happy to try building an app if the opportunity comes my way.

I already look after plenty of Wordpress sites, so I know the deal.

I'm just curious to know how much it would cost to get one built that's all.

Sweet, you should be able to make it responsive then. Seriously unless you NEED a feature of a device that you cant get with HTML5 & JS then perhaps you could make an app. However I would give them a range of products they can already purchase before running off and opening a can of worms like a software project. Unless you can make it extremely awesome it will probably eventually be money down the toilet.

The other thing is, if its an awesome responsive site then no one needs to install the app, and your advertising can just be hyperlinks.

mattwnz

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#1525452 3-Apr-2016 23:45

One of the few ecommerce apps I am aware of is Apples one, and that isn't great. Also Amazon has one, but that is more of a market. Both those companies turn over billions. Even though they have apps, I still use the website. IMO there is really no point in an app for a shopping cart, as you then have to make one for for IOS, Anddroid, Windows, and you also have to fix it when new OS updates come out.

itxtme

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#1525563 4-Apr-2016 09:37

mattwnz:

One of the few ecommerce apps I am aware of is Apples one, and that isn't great. Also Amazon has one, but that is more of a market. Both those companies turn over billions. Even though they have apps, I still use the website. IMO there is really no point in an app for a shopping cart, as you then have to make one for for IOS, Anddroid, Windows, and you also have to fix it when new OS updates come out.

This!!! There are ways around it like using a hybrid system like ionic. But then we are talking about potentially learning new frameworks (AngularJS) and understanding Cordova (no easy feat). An app has to add value to a client so they take the time to install it. I do not consider buying off your online shop to be valuable to them. In fact many (if not most) customers would be infuriated that they even needed to install an app to "go shopping".

There are exceptions to this, and that depends on your business type. Take NZsale for example, is a business that has limited time offerings, and their app makes sense in their model. People install it, get push notifications when new sales open up and can browse them on their mobile device and purchase. This happens on a daily basis, and its that knowing a new sale that could be what you need is what drives that app, not just the fact they sell stuff.

Last point I will make is around the different rules in OS. I will talk about Apple because they are the most strict. They have rules against taking users through a payment gateway that isnt their app store one (they want their 30%). This means you can kiss goodbye to a larger proportion of your profit, or attempt to get an app through that redirects (difficult).

Hope this is helpful

martyyn

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#1554682 18-May-2016 10:49

Thanks everyone.

I didn't need any convincing a website was the way to go but they've decided to give it all a miss at this stage.

Ipv89

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#1560222 26-May-2016 19:11

Just my 2c, Me and a few others have successfully created a ecommerce site that was built using SilverStripe, of course we had to do a lot of custom stuff but it was fun and performs very well :) It would be easy to incorporate it into a mobile app too.

Mike