Thinking of getting your business online?
Step 1: Get a name for your Shop
1. Is the name relevant to the business?
2. Small name. Names with 2 to 10 characters would be ideal.
3. Have just alphabets in the domain name. Avoid special characters or Alphanumeric combinations.
* #1, 2, and 3 would help Customers remember names and access sites easily.
4. Have a ".com" extension.
* ".com" extensions are commonly known and used across the world
5. Additionally procure similar or same domain names with other generic extensions. For example: if your domain name is fashion.com. If you are operating your business from India. Then, it is advisable to procure fashion.in domain name too.
* This will help prevent your competitors from using fashion.in for negative marketing.
6. Make sure you buy the Domain Name from a reputed Domain Registrar.
* The Registrar should have the capacity to provide the best DNS facilities. (Google / Godaddy)
** None of the above criteria are mandatory but are good to have.
** The average cost of a Domain Name would come around 1000 INR per year
Step 2: Decide on how you want to build your E-Commerce Website
Broadly, there are two ways by which you shall build your E-commerce Website
2.1. Software As Service (SAS) E-Commerce Solution
2.2. Building E-Commerce Website on your own
2.1. Software As Service (SAS) E-Commerce Solution
SAS E-Commerce Solution is a concept of providing ready-made and customizable E-Commerce solutions to Merchants for an agreed monthly fee. The service provider will manage the Infrastructure and Security of the shop. The Merchants are just required to select the required shop layout, features, and other relevant shop specifications. SAS relieves the Merchants from concentrating on irrelevant tasks like maintaining the hosting server or securing the shop and allows them to completely focus on their business. It is very easy and quick to bring the Shop alive. But, this benefit comes at the cost of an additional fee. This additional fee is worth spending as compared to the time and money that you would otherwise spend to maintain the infrastructure and to protect shops from hackers.
Some of the renowned SAS E-Commerce Solution providers are
1. Shopify
2. WIX
3. Woocommerce
4. Magento
For a start-up E-Commerce venture, below are the approximate cost required with SAS E-Commerce Solution
1. Shopify: 4000 INR / Month (https://www.shopify.in/)
2. WIX: 500 / Month (https://www.wix.com/upgrade/website?businessTab=true) _
3. Magento: A very expensive solution. Meant only for Enterprises. We need to contact Magento Sales team through their inquiry form with specific requirements. https://magento.com/contact-us
4. Godaddy: 2000 / Month (https://in.godaddy.com/websites/online-store)
* In addition, Merchants might need to accommodate the domain renewal cost of 1000 INR / year, additional security cost of around 1000 / month, annual payment gateway cost of around 5000 INR / month.
* Most merchants would also spend an additional one time cost of around 15000 to 20000 INR for upgrading their shop with PAID plugins
Merits:
* All websites are prone to hacking attacks. Here in SAS, the Service Provider will take the pain of protecting the Shop from hacking attacks (or) restoring the shop to its original status if it is already hacked. Merchants need not worry about the Shop's security and shall simply focus on their business.
* Most SAS supports Mobile responsiveness
* Some SAS provides Mobile Apps at extra cost. ex: Shopify
* Some SAS provides POS support at extra cost. ex: Shopify
* Most SAS provide SSL for Free for the lifetime
* Shop's performance and capacity upgrade are easy for an additional cost
* Merchant need not worry about the Server setup / Shop installation
Demerits:
* Shop customization has limitations. Extreme shop customization requires hiring costly developers from the Service Provider's Resource Pool
* Some localized features may not be readily available. Integrating localized features may require a considerable fee
* The shop source code will always be owned by the SAS Service Provider. The Merchant will have no rights to their Shop source code. In other words, for any reason, the Merchants cannot view / edit / deploy shop source code on a different server. Though, the Merchant always has the right to take a copy of their Data present in their own shop.
2.2. Building E-Commerce Website on your own
2.2.1. Building E-Commerce Website from scratch
2.2.2. Building E-Commerce Website from an existing Open Source E-Commerce Applications
Approximate cost requirements for building a mid-range E-Commerce website:
Domain Name / Year: 1000 INR
Hosting Server / Year: 6000 INR
Security: SSL certificate: 3000 INR
Payment Gateway: Annual Maintenance Cost 4000 INR / year + 1% to 2.5% of Order Total as Transaction Fee
Logistics: 40 - 60 INR per KG
Data Entry: 60 - 100 INR per product
Images: 60 - 100 INR per product
* Hiring developers for maintaining Open Source E-Commerce applications is comparatively easy. Hence the shop customization or integrating localized features can be done at a reasonable cost
* The shop source code will be owned by the Merchant
* As the Open Source Applications are continuously upgraded by an active developers community, any loopholes will be identified quickly and upgrades will be available on a regular basis. Keeping the shop up-to-date by applying all upgrades will avoid most of the security vulnerabilities.
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