Building an online store is a pivotal step for any business venturing into the e-commerce space, but understanding the time investment required is crucial for planning and execution. This blog post delves into the various factors that influence the timeline of creating an online store, from choosing the right platform and designing a user-friendly interface to integrating payment systems and testing for launch. Whether you’re a small business owner or a seasoned entrepreneur, we’ll provide you with detailed insights on what to expect during the development process so you can set realistic timelines and effectively allocate resources. Join us as we break down the hours needed to bring your online store to life.
Custom design & development of the home page and theme elements.
The homepage of your website should be custom-designed so that it does not look exactly like one of your competitors. This usually requires a few design ideas going back and forth over a few days. However, sometimes, with a more particular client, this process can go on for a week or more until a design that fits your client’s vision while still looking professional and easy to navigate is created, allowing it to convert better.
The time range to fine-tune the design perfectly is between 12 and 36 hours. This includes the most important elements of your website, such as the header, home page, and footer. The header and footer will cover most of your website. Any custom development, such as scripts, slide shows, and galleries, can greatly increase the time.
Adding Internal Content Pages
A content page usually contains around 1500-2000 words provided by the client and a few images. These pages are custom-designed to match the overall look of your home page and theme. Each page usually takes around 4 hours to complete, including adding content, images, SEO tags, links, and graphics and getting feedback from the client and any edits required. As the average small eCommerce website has at least five web pages, this adds about 20 hours to the project.
Creating Categories
Categories are like pages, which contain the products within them. Each category page usually has content and one image related to its products. The categories also have SEO tags such as a title, h1 tag, and possibly links to other categories, pages, and or products.
The typical small online store would have around four categories, each taking about 30 minutes to create, which adds 2 hours to our total.
Adding Products
Each product on your website is like a landing page on the Internet. A product details page can be set up in many ways, but the average setup contains the following items.
- Product images, usually around 3-5 images. These images must be correctly sized both dimensionally and in actual file size. This normally requires some time in PhotoShop to correctly size each image so they are matched visually and optimized to load quickly online and take up less server space. They will also require the correct names and tags called “Alt Tags’ which will help search engines know what the image represents. These images are then added to the product they belong to via the administration area.
- Product titles, descriptions, tags, UPCs, prices, sale prices, colors, sizes, shipping rates, stock levels, and possibly other features.
- SEO tags for the product SEO title, description
- Internal links when possible
- Stock Level, if required
- Upselling and cross-selling products
- Weights, product dimensions
- Shipping Zones
Normally, this can take between 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how many features, images, and so on are required for each product. So if your store has 20 products, then it would take between 10 and 40 hours.
Basic USPS Shipping Setup National Only
Shipping can require many hours, depending on the client’s requirements. We are sticking to the basics for the estimate, which would be the USPS basic setup. This requires us to configure the USPS plugin to accurately calculate your shipping based on the weight of your products. However, as mentioned above, there are many ways to set up your shipping; some take much longer. This method usually only takes about 2 hours to set up and test.
Sales Tax Setup
Again, there are many different requirements for sales tax based on the client’s needs. This outline is only for the basic, one-nexus sales tax setup. A nexus is the region/s you sell in and have a nexus in. Normally, we have to import around 1000 or so zip codes, with their corresponding sales tax rates, into WooCommerce. And configure the site to use them. This normally takes around 2 hours to set up and test.
Set Up Yoast SEO Plugin and Optimize The Website.
This is one very important step that many web designers neglect. However, it must be completed to ensure your web pages are indexed correctly in Google and other search engines. For an eCommerce website, we recommend installing Yoast for WooCommerce.
Configuration & Setup of Website & Plugins
Every website requires plugins for speed optimization, spam blocking, security, shipping, etc. Normally, an eCommerce website requires at least five plugins, which are estimated to take around 4 hours to install and configure.
Website Training
A normal website is initially overwhelming, and an eCommerce website is even more so. However, once you get the hang of a few tasks, such as processing orders, adding, updating, and deleting products and pages, you will have a much easier time learning the rest. We usually spend about 2 hours training a client on how to use their website. This is normally broken up into 1 hour on the phone and 1 hour creating a short video tutorial to show them around their new website. Adding 2 hours to the project.
Website Hosting & Email Setup
After the website has been accepted and tested, we move it onto the server, where it will go live. Normally, this requires between 4 – 8 hours, depending on the complexity, the host it’s going on, and the ability to communicate with all parties involved efficiently.
Domain Name Setup
If the domain name is not currently pointed at the server, we will set it up so that it loads the new website. This normally takes about 1 hour. However, waiting for the domain to connect completely can take up to 48 hours of non-work hours. This time is not charged for but should be noted.
Adding your website to Google Analytics
If you want to know if your website is receiving traffic and from where, then one of the best and free options is to use Google Analytics. This usually takes around 30 minutes to set up.
The above is only the basic setup of an online store. But it’s enough to get you started and in business.
Total Hours
- Custom design & development of the home page and theme elements. 12-36 hours
- Adding Internal Content Pages 20 hours
- Creating Categories 2 hours
- Add 20 between 10 hours and 40 hours.
- Basic USPS Shipping Setup National Only: 2 hours
- Sales Tax Setup: 2 hours
- Set Up Yoast SEO Plugin and Optimize The Website. 3 hours
- Configuration & Setup of Website & Plugins: 4 hours
- Website Training 2hrs
- Website Hosting & Email Setup 4-8 hours
- Domain Name Setup 1 hour
- Adding your website to Google Analytics ½ hour
Total Estimated Range: 62.5 to 120.5 hours.