If you contact us about a project you’ll see that we ask for a budget and timescale right off the bat. No one has ever questioned the request for timescale but a lot of people are uncomfortable giving a budget so early on. This can be because you have no idea how much it should cost, you genuinely don’t have a budget or, more often, you do have a rough budget in mind but you’re worried that you’d perhaps be putting more money on the table than needed.
Different solutions for different budgets
The problem with not knowing your budget is that we don’t know what kind of solution is going to be right for you. Brace yourself, here comes the metaphor…
When walking into a car dealership, it is understandable to not want to give them your top price – as it is then their job to sell you the most expensive car they can for that budget. If, instead though, we imagined a crazy world in which there wasn’t a car dealership so much as a place that solved transportation problems. You walk in and say you need to regularly get from point A to point B, budget is going to immediately be a factor in whether you’re looking for a push bike, a car or a private jet. The conversation about needs, requirements and objectives will differ greatly.
To continue along with my rather odd metaphor. We see ourselves as offering a range of beautiful cars, and your budget and requirements will let us know whether you need a large car with room for a whole family, a high-performance sports car or a more affordable small car. Our questions will be about the car interior, the fuel type, what sort of mileage you need to be doing etc. These questions (and we as an agency) are not suitable if your budget is more in the range for a bicycle. Similarly, if you’ve come to us looking for a private jet, then we’ll need to refer you to someone larger and more equipped to meet your requirements.
So how much does a WooCommerce store cost?
Let’s return to the world of web design and eCommerce – seeing as I actually know very little about cars!
If your budget is less than £1,000 then the best solution for you is going to be to roll up your sleeves, learn a bit about WordPress, buy a pre-made theme and a couple of plugins, get some hosting and do most of the work yourself and then maybe pay a freelancer to do some more advanced modifications for you. Alternatively you might not even be looking at WordPress and WooCommerce as your solution at all and instead could maybe look at one of the hosted services like Shopify that offer less flexibility but are more affordable in the short term.
If your budget is between £1,000 and £5000 then there will be freelancers out there who can help you. For a team of experienced specialists like ourselves, this is not really enough to achieve your goals properly but we could perhaps look at doing some aspects, with you again needing to take quite a DIY approach.
If you’re looking to invest between £5,000 and £15,000 then your budget is reasonable for a standard eCommerce site. With a budget like this you’ll get all the good stuff like wireframes, custom design, a bespoke theme and modern development so your site is responsive (looks great on all devices), secure and lightning fast to load. We’ll walk you through the whole process and take all the necessary steps to help you achieve your business goals.
If your looking to invest between £15,000 and £35,000 then, as well as getting all of the above, you’re likely to also have additional budget for integration with other systems (such as SAP) so stock management, customer management etc can all be streamlined. You will also then be able to get more advanced site features such as product builders, live customer feeds etc.
If your budget is in the range of £50,000 and upwards then, as much as we’d love to work with you, we’re probably not the right fit for you. Typically you’ve got specific ways in which you need to operate that just can’t be accommodated by a smaller agency such as ourselves. Feel free to get in touch though and we’d be happy to refer you to an agency who can help you with that.
Importance of goals
Another reason that we need to know your budget is that we need to know your goals, what sort of return you are looking for from your online store, how many sales would you need the site to generate to be deemed a success, where would you like the site to be in a year? We are not solely a development firm, we are a full service eCommerce agency – our mission is to help you grow your WooCommerce store and so a healthy discussion about where you see the store in 12-24 months and how much you are prepared to invest to get there are essential to building a partnership which stands the best chance of achieving those goals.
Next steps
So, now that you’re hopefully a little less afraid to speak about budget and have a better idea of whether we’d be a good fit for you, why not get in touch and see how we can help you grow your online business? If you still don’t have a budget in mind at all and are not even sure of what goals to set, then you actually need a discovery session before you jump head on into a project – we can help you with that.