Building a website

[FamilyLife123]

At the moment I'm selling mainly through Etsy, but am wanting to develop a website this year. I am aware that there are sites that will allow me to build one myself, but I was just wondering if anyone had a rough idea of how much it would cost if I were to pay for someone to create an initial website for me?

That’s a how long is a piece of string question. It depends on what you want the website to do.

A half decent e-commerce site will cost you a few thousand, plus hosting and domain ownership which are ongoing costs. Then you need to be sure you can manage the site yourself once it's up and running. It's no good if you can't add and remove products and pages yourself after set up.

I did mine on wix, and paid 200 for help with the bits I couldn’t work out. It’s not quite right, but it’s ok till I earn a fortune!

I paid about 1500 for mine, but I don't sell physical products just services.

Im a tech/photography student. I need practice/experience in setting up web sites. Its very hard to break into coding without a lot of experience!

DM if you are interested in working with me as a project. I code/write/commerical photography. I also have a former tech trainer background, so could help with setting you up for onward site maintenance.

For an e-commerce website (I recommend Shopify) I’d say around 1000/1500

If I were you OP I would ask around in your local networking groups. I'm about to need something similar and I have asked in 2 local Facebook groups. I have 4 outlines and fleshed out quotes coming in the next couple if weeks.

Meantime I have a list of sites to browse, portfolios to check, website owners to contact.

This way I get someone who is known locally, am supporting local businesses and have, incidentally, found a couple of new suppliers 🙂

The building is just the start. You need to know what the cookie rules are (and they do change), you need to keep on top of security & you need to know at least the basics of how to optimise it for search engines and how much traffic you’re getting.

I built one on wix also and then got someone on Fiverr to help me redesign and add a few things I needed for about $150.

You could start a wix site and have a bit of a play around designing for no charge. It isn't too hard and as you are selling on Etsy, you are creative and I am sure that you could put something together really well.

Later, when you have your own domain name/need to accept payments you will have to upgrade on wix.

The best E-commerce platforms to date is hands down Shopify. its subscription cost starts at 30 dollars I believe, but it is well worth it.
Magento is a close second, and is free of charge. It does require a bit more technicality though.

If you want something easy and free, Woocommerce for WordPress is not bad if you have a small business and only sell a few products.

Forget about Wix, limited payment methods, very limited designing options and forget about the SEO and any chance of your clients finding your website on Google

Definitely build one through shopify.
I took a course on how to build a website, it cost £1500, but then allowed me to have the skills to fully manage it and even build others. You need a lot of time to dedicate to it though.