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How Much Does a Website Cost? [VIDEO]

Posted on October 31, 2020April 2, 2025 by Phil

Along with how much does a logo cost, we get asked all the time how much a website costs. And similarly, there are a lot of factors that go into a web design. The enormous price range depends on a plethora of factors. You can talk to all the website designers in Invercargill and the prices will range from very little to a lot.

Some of the factors that affect website cost are:

The technology being used to build the website
How many pages are needed
What kind of customer interaction there will be
The number of images and videos
The way that data is collected
If the website is an eCommerce site where customers can buy products online
Amount of time and urgency to complete the site
Design of the website
If professional copywriting, photos, or videos are included
Whether or not there is an existing site with content that can be imported
And much more!

However, you can get a website for as little as $0. That’s right; free. Free moneywise at least. That amount increases depending on the list above and what features you need your website to do. A simple custom, professional website can start at around $3600. When done right, a website can be your best sales and marketing tool, built for you and your specific needs, goals, and style will pay for themselves multiple times over, especially when adopting a Growth-Driven Methodology. These days a website is only as good as the content that is on it. And the website cost itself should be indicative of that. A results-focused Inbound website including content creation and SEO optimisation, will cost you anywhere from $8000 + GST. However, if you choose the right people to collaborate with and maintain the website regularly, you’ll start seeing results.

Free, Cheap or Custom Websites

So what’s the difference between a free website, a cheap website, and a professionally built and custom-made website like we do here at Back9 Creative?

Can you own a website for free?

Technically, yes. Although “Free” might be a tad misleading. As is “website”. Some of the major website builders like Wix and Weebly have a free option with severe limitations and branding. Your site will be full of company branding, have minimal storage, and have the company name in the site address, like username.wixsite.com/mywebsitename. But as the price goes, that’s hard to beat. For something like a personal blog or brief info page, these sites can be a good option, but for a business, that “free” price will eat at your sales as you won’t be able to do SEO to get found in Google, you’ll be limited on personal branding, and you won’t be able to actually process payments on the site.

Free Google Business Listing

If you really don’t have the cash to spare and need a free website for a business, your best option would probably be Google. By creating a Google My Business account and connecting your business listing to it, you have the option to make a “website” that’s a single page.

The benefit of Google over the competition is that it connects to your business listing, so when somebody searches for you and your business pops up, you can have something for them to look at when they click the website field. Again, this type of website is extremely limited but could be a good option if all you wanted to do is show something like a single menu for a new cafe or want to display a list of services and get people to call you. This is an easy way to get yourself online and Google makes it work well on phones too.

When is a free website a good option?

If you have very little capital and need some way to get yourself online, a free website might be a good option. An optimised Facebook page tends to do better than a free website and reach more people. However, if you don’t put in money, you’ll have to put in a lot more time. This means more frequent posting, and the best possible content you create. For someone who’s money-poor but has plenty of time, a Facebook Business Page combined with a free Google My Business website is a great start.

These articles can help you get started with that combination:

Once you start to gain a following and get more customers interested, that’s a good time to consider upgrading your website too–hopefully getting more customers means you’ll have more to invest to help your business grow even more!

Can I create a website myself?

The next step up from getting a free website is to build your own website with a website builder. These sites don’t cost much to run, but you’ll have to invest a lot of time adding content yourself. You’ll also be very limited on the design. This is because it’s not built specifically for you. So you have to adapt to the design. Most low-cost options don’t let you change much if anything on the design. But you may be able to purchase a theme if you don’t find one you like out of the normal options.

If you aren’t tech-savvy, you’ll probably run into some roadblocks when building your site. Even with drag and drop editors–where you can pull content into the page and that’s the same thing visitors will see–there’s a lot to consider. At minimum, the design will need to work on 3 screen sizes; phone, tablet, and desktop. Images and videos also should be optimised so that the page loads fast.

There’s a lot of things to consider, but if you’re up for the challenge, you can find some options on our article, What is the best platform to build my website on? Building your own website costs about $10-50 per month depending on the platform and what tier you choose.

How much does it cost to have a website built for you?

For any established business or business looking to grow, sell online, or rise in a competitive industry, the lowest cost options won’t have the same kinds of benefits to your customer as having a fully-functioning website. If you want your website to work for you and be more than a simple reference point online, you’ll want a website that’s designed and built with your specific needs and goals in mind. This is when it’s ideal to have a professional design and marketing team create your website.

By having your website built and then marketed under one roof, your website will be built with your current and future needs in mind. A major advantage of having the professionals build your site is that they can suggest features you didn’t anticipate or didn’t know existed.

But perhaps the biggest benefit is having a custom design. There is a lot of work that goes into professional website design. It’s a lot more than making it look pretty! Take a look at the image below.

Did you read it in the order they predicted? Even if you didn’t, most people do. Website and Graphic Design is complicated and not something that can be learned in a half day’s training. Professional graphic design involves learning how to use the latest software, colour theory and science, print vs digital renditions, using imagery to convey ideas and messages, and much more.

How much does a basic website cost?

At the beginning of this article, we said that the cost of a professional website starts from $3000. So what does a $3000 website look like exactly?

On the low end, you can get a professionally-designed, basic website that includes a home page, about page, and contact page at a minimum. If you have content for a services and blog/articles page, you can probably get those added in as well. But you’ll have to write the articles yourself. Your basic website might include professional copywriting for these few pages however, and that will vary depending on which agency you use and the specifics of your project. The more information you can provide–imagery, existing articles, etc–the more you can get for your dollar, as your existing content can be optimised instead of made new.

If you have a service-based business with a couple of core services, a basic website might be a good option.

What are the features of a good website?

Looking for more than a basic website? Adding more features and functionality will add to your website cost, but they can make the difference between getting customers or getting people to go elsewhere. Here’s a quick list of some of the extra features you can get on your site:

Professional photographyand videos
Copywritingto fill your website pages with options for regular blogging
Booking and reservation calendars
Animations and illustrations
Customer logins and members-only area
Forums and discussion boards
Chatbots to answer frequently asked questions automatically in real-time
Accept and review job applications
Ability to sell products and services online

And there’s many, many more. If you can think it, a good website developercan build it! A website that is designed and built by a website designer and developer. And in addition includes professional photography, videos, and copywriting realistically starts at about $7000.

Is it profitable to sell online?

Online sales have steadily been on the rise, but after COVID-19 changed the way we shop. In fact, there was an enormous spike in online sales. Many people simply didn’t have the option to go in person, and a lot of those people found that the experience online was good or even better than going in-person. Retail giant Wal-Mart in the US saw online sales double since early 2020. Of course, they were harder hit than other countries, but they’re planning on focusing much more effort into streamlining the website experience.

Even with the relatively tame experience we had in NZ, online sales are still up massively. In-store retails sales in June dropped for the first time in over a decade. And at a sharp 15 percent too. At the same time, online sales rose 20 per cent in NZ. While we hopefully won’t have another lockdown situation, being able to sell online keeps you going in case there’s a disruption to normal business practices. If you have set prices and can sort out shipping, we highly recommend selling online!

How can I start selling online?

eCommerce websites are websites that have the functionality to sell online. They’re quite a bit more complicated to build as it’s very important payment is effective, secure, and goes where it’s supposed to! Products also have to be added and organised, with descriptions and imagery to accompany them. Getting a professionally-built basic eCommerce site starts at around $5000.

For the next level up, a custom-built eCommerce site gives you a unique design, any features that you can think of. And detailed measurement reports using platforms like eCommerce reports on Google Analytics. A custom-built eCommerce is ideal for larger inventories or businesses that sell several thousand dollars worth of product online each month. Because of all of the extra work and testing, custom-built eCommerce sites start at around $8000.

Make your Website work for you

We recommend going with a custom eCommerce site if it makes sense for your business. A custom eCommerce site can far more flexibility. Especially with things like;

Payment method
Customised Sales process
Integration with in-store stock.

Everything can be automated except for packing the item up and getting it off for shipping. Not only is this a huge time-saver, it works to sell for you night and day. Yep that’s right… And 365 days a year!

A custom eCommerce site is ideal for larger stores or established businesses looking to sell online. If you only have a few products and need a store immediately, maybe custom is not right for you. Read about the different eCommerce platforms in our article, Which eCommerce platform is the best for me?

How much does a website cost per month?

Unless you’re going with a fully free website, websites have ongoing costs to pay for as well. At a minimum, you’ll have to pay for a domain–the actual website address e.g. www.mywebsite.co.nz–and for hosting. Hosting is basically reserved space on a web server so that your website can be shown on the internet. Combined, this is typically around $40-80 per month. But can be more if you have a lot of content on your website.

One of the benefits of a custom site is that you only pay for the domain and hosting. That $0 monthly fee can certainly save you in the long run! However, we do recommend including website maintenance with your custom site. Website maintenance covers anything from quick updates and additions to speeding up the website to protecting it from security threats. There’s a lot of benefits you can get from website maintenance. It typically costs around $50-100 a month for website maintenance.

So what’s the total cost of getting a website?

As you can see, website costs can vary quite a bit! Here’s a quick summary of some of the different costs:

Building a website yourself

A free website can be made on Google and some other platforms, with limitations, branding, and restrictions.
You can build your own website for around $10-50 per month. You’ll have to design and update it on your own.
In most cases, you’ll need to pay for a domain and hosting too, about $100-450 per year.
- This amount varies so much because it depends on the specific domain name, required server space, and other factors. For example, Internet.co.nz is valued at $11,400 USD as of this writing; back9.co.nz is under $100 per year. Most business names will be at the low end, while popular terms cost more.

Professionally built websites

A very basic professional website can start at around $1800 in total, plus hosting and domain.
A more complex website without any content creation will start at around $3000. However, you’ll have to supply all of the content yourself like videos, writing, and images. It’s important that these things are optimised for the web, or you could have a lot of problems!
Adding more pages, some customisation, copywriting, photography, and videos starts at about $7000.
A basic professional eCommerce website typically starts around $5000.
A custom-built eCommerce site with a unique design and advanced functionality start at approximately $8000.

How do I get a quote for my specific website?

The easiest way to get an accurate quote for your website is by doing an in-person meeting. Depending on your budget, business size, and goals, the total cost of your website will vary slightly. And if you aren’t sure what you need in a website, the team at Back9 Creative are happy to help. For tighter budgets, we also offer payment plans and packages starting at just $350+GST per month.

Book a meeting by clicking the link below. And we’ll meet with you and discuss what might be the best fit for you. This will be based on your industry, products and services, size, and objectives.

AMP Up Your Website for Mobile Devices

Posted on October 8, 2019May 19, 2021 by Allison Robinson

When you’re out and about, you’ve probably noticed that it seems like people spend more time on their phones than they used to. And it’s true; the data backs it up. In the last four years, the amount of mobile data usage has quadrupled, and according to Google, mobile is now the go-to choice for browsing the net, and their mobile-first index is now in effect.

Yet, a lot of sites are still buggy or slow on phones and tablets. Speed is a huge issue. Nobody wants to sit around waiting for sites to load, and to help out, Google has created the AMP framework that anyone can adopt for their sites to load faster, but it has a few requirements your site must meet first.

What is AMP?

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, and the goal is to make pages load lightning fast on tablets and phones. An AMP page is a simplified version of the code created specifically for mobile that is stripped down to optimise for speed. Pages using the AMP framework have a little lightning bolt next to them on the Google search results.

While this stripped-down code does come with some restrictions and limitations, for many business owners the speed advantage is worth the change. And for the most part, sites look and function the same as they did without AMP—only faster. AMP pages don’t allow custom JavaScript (unless in the amp-iframe) and have a size limitation for the stylesheet, and instead uses an optimised script that loads faster.

The AMP Logo

Are there other benefits to AMP pages?

The main benefit of AMP is to deliver lightning fast, amplified pages to users. But you might find that you get some other benefits as well, such as:

More likely to have a higher spot in Google when someone searches on mobile
Less load on your web servers so performance can go up
Potentially higher chance of display network ads being shown if your site has advertising
Chance to be featured at the top of Google results in the Top Stories Carousel.

AMP is great thing to implement on your site. Just keep in mind that it requires making changes to the code of your website, and it’s important to pay close attention to make sure it’s done right so your website keeps working. If you aren’t comfortable doing this or aren’t sure how to access or change the code, the team at Back9 has an experienced website development team that’s happy to help!

Quick Tips for Website Maintenance

Posted on October 2, 2019April 22, 2025 by Phil

In the past, we’ve talked about how a website can be your hardest working employee. It works nights, weekends, and even holidays. As a point of reference or even a place to purchase products directly from, your website can make a substantial, measurable difference on your sales. When it’s well maintained and works properly of course. Website maintenance ensures that your website will continue working for years to come.

Is your site loading right?

Proper page loading is an essential part of having a functional website. Pages that aren’t working or redirect to a 404 page (Page not found placeholder) don’t provide any value to visitors. It can erode trust, especially if they encounter multiple broken pages on the same site.

Loading speed is another crucial thing to check for. People don’t want to wait around hoping that slow pages load anymore. Instead, they’ll be more likely to leave and do a Google search on the topic to find the content they’re interested in. A Google study says that over 50% of people will leave a site where the page takes 3 seconds or longer to load. So it’s important to check your pages regularly.

But just checking briefly on a desktop isn’t enough. Most people access the internet through their mobile device these days. Therefore, don’t neglect fast loading on mobile. Are the pages loading correctly? And what about the photos? A giant grey box isn’t going to appeal to most people. If you’ve spent the time and effort to get good-quality photos, it’s important that they get seen!

Keep your content up to date

If your business is still doing the same thing it’s been doing forever, it might not seem like there’s any point in updating your content. But you might want to take a closer look.

Have you hosted or attended any events lately? Did you talk about them on the site? Then make sure it wasn’t for one that happened several years in the past. What about your staff? Have you hired new people you want to talk about on your site? Can you upgrade your years of experience?

Checking your content for accuracy is important—both for your users and for your visibility online. Some websites go so long without updates that their About page still shows an old business name!

Refreshing or adding new content also signals to Google that your site is active, which can help boost your rankings. Ideally, aim to add new content every few months. At the very least, review your site occasionally to make sure nothing is outdated.

If you spot old or irrelevant info, it might be time for a bit of website maintenance. A few updates can go a long way.

What if my site has a complex issue?

You don’t know what you don’t know. And if you don’t know that your site’s having performance problems, how could you know how to start fixing them? To keep you in the know, we recommend giving your site a performance review every 6 months. This is much like you probably do with your staff.

In your review, track your site’s performance. Is it doing what it should? Are you getting the kind of sales that were projected? If you aren’t, there may be a bigger issue at play. If this is the case, you might want to check in with your website provider. They can see if there are any issues that they can make right or tell you how to fix. For more complex issues, you might need the help of professionals. However, if it helps get your site performing how it should be, it’s a good investment!

How to Sell Products Online

Posted on August 13, 2019April 22, 2025 by Phil

Shopping online is becoming less of a bonus and more of an expectation these days. While mega online stores like Amazon and eBay aren’t as popular here in NZ as they are in other countries, they won’t stay that way for long. With many big NZ chains already having online stores and Amazon AU now open to New Zealand, online shopping is becoming massive worldwide. COVID-19 showed us how convenient shopping online and having products delivered straight to our door can be. Now, it’s almost an expected feature. So how can you start to sell products online?

Why sell products online through your website?

Not long ago, it was common to find many businesses that list their products online but have no prices or options to buy on the site. The idea was that people would see a product they like, drive to the store to buy it, and maybe pick up a few other items while they’re already there. It might seem like a solid idea, but now it’s an outdated one. Websites can suggest great pairs of products right there while you’re shopping. And while a lot of people were resistant to shopping online, the COVID Pandemic forced it upon them–and a lot of people found they preferred it. In the US for instance, online shopping rates doubled compared to the 2 years previous, and the trend continues to go strong.

This means that when possible, businesses should be considering adding e-commerce options–options for purchasing products directly from the website–to make sure that customers can find what they’re looking for and can buy what they want easily. Having an e-commerce option lets visitors decide they want something and buy it on the spot. Without it, you could be missing out on people on the final stage of the Buyer’s Journey, the ones ready to buy now. If you have shipping options, you can also reach people across the country who would never come into your physical store. If you don’t sell online, you could be missing out from people from all over who want what you have to offer!

How to sell products online

Once you decide to start online, how do you get started? We’ve got you covered; simply follow these 9 steps to start selling products online!

Decide what items you want to sell online and choose an e-commerce platform.
Decide on and purchase an inventory management system.
Choose and purchase a payment gateway.
Build the website and integrate inventory management and payment gateway systems into your site.
Write out descriptions of all your items, take/upload images and videos, and publish them to the site.
Sort out a shipping option (if having items delivered).
Customise your checkout process to fit your ideal customers.
Preview and test your new online store and ensure that everything is working.
Refine and update your processes based on how customers buy products and use the site.

In this article, we’ll briefly cover each of the 9 steps. We’ve also covered each of these in more detail and we’ll link to the full article with more information at if you want to know more about any one of them.

1. Choose an e-commerce platform

An e-commerce platform is the place your website is built and how it is stored. Each e-commerce platform has its own ways of adding and displaying products along with advantages and limitations. Some platforms are designed specifically for certain industries or business sizes. Others are more general purpose.

The right choice for you will depend on the number and type of products you plan on selling, how comfortable you are with technology, your budget, and who you want to build your website.

Who will build your website?

For most businesses, budget is the most important factor for the website. Your budget determines who builds your website and how much money you have to invest in it. If you have a small budget but a lot of time, you’ll probably want to use a platform like Shopify. With these platforms, you choose a templated site and simply change the elements like the logo and pictures to fit your brand. These are relatively easy to use; however, you’ll be limited in customisation and features. Getting found on Google through SEO will also be more challenging without added plug-ins, most of which are on a paid subscription plan.

If you have a higher budget and want a professional to build your website for you, a custom option like WordPress with WooCommerce will be better. With these sites, your website design will be structured around your brand and how your customers use the site. This means you’ll likely have higher conversion rates and the site will feel more natural to your users. A professionally-built custom site takes longer to make but it will be unique to you.

To find out more about Shopify, WooCommerce, and other e-commerce platforms, take a look at our article What is the best eCommerce platform for my business?

2. What’s the right inventory management system?

While you might be able to try to keep track of your inventory with a notebook and a pen, it’s a lot of trouble that can be automated away with an online inventory management system. Depending on your business size, a simple database manager may do the trick, or you might need a comprehensive digital suite to make sure everything is handled properly.

Using an online inventory management keeps track of how many of each product you have left and allows you to quickly change prices for sales. Many will also automatically track sales numbers and create reports comparing month-to-month performance. A solid offering will also integrate with your in-store stock so you don’t have to try to coordinate stock manually. There on many to choose from, we’ve covered some of the best inventory management systems in NZ in a quick comparison below.

Inventory Management Systems Comparison

Name	Price (Month)	Number of Products Tracked	Trial Period	Features
Unleashed	$259-$899	Unlimited	14 Days	Cloud-based, Multiple Currencies; Optional B2B eCommerce; API Access; Document Designer
Sortly	$FREE-$119	100-unlimited	14 Days	Cloud-based, Desktop/Mobile Access; API Access; Cloud Storage; 30-90 Day storage; Auto sync data
Vend	$129+	Unlimited	14 Days	Cloud-based, Custom receipts, in-store register, barcode scanner, cash management, auto reordering
Cin7	$375-$1245	Unlimited	Guided Demo	Cloud, based 24/7 support, automation, CRM, POS integrations, Warehouse Management, Payment Portal
Accredo	Not Specified	Not Specified	Demo Version	Invoicing, reporting, automation, sales tracking
Ostendo	$1500 (Year);$300 renewal	Unlimited	30 Days	Stock takes, allows negative stock, unlimited supplier catalogues, multi-currency and tax rates
Infusion	$35-$85	Unlimited	30 Days	Kitset pricing, print barcodes, product catalogues, integrated cashbook
SAM \| Orion	Not Specified	Not Specified	Guided Demo	Multiple currencies, full sales and costing analysis, vehicle industry special features

Inventory Management Systems in more detail

Want to know more about inventory management systems? We cover some more of the basics about these systems and go into more detail about each of them in the above table in our article Best Inventory Management for Selling Products Online.

3. Choosing the right payment gateway

If you decide to sell products on your site, protecting sensitive customer information is one of the most important things that you can do. While website maintenance can protect some of your customer details, financial information should never be in a position to be compromised, and using a decent payment gateway makes sure hackers and data thieves shall not pass through.

There are many different payment gateways to choose from, each with different upfront and per-transaction costs. But there’s more to consider than simply cost. Some offer better service or incentives, while others aim to provide the service for the lowest cost, but have minimal customer support or extras. To help with your decision, take a look at a quick comparison of some of the best payment gateways in NZ.

Payment Gateways Comparison

Name	Setup Fee	Monthly Fee	Transaction Fee	Transfer Speed	Extras
PayPal	$0	$0	3.4% + $0.45 per transaction	Usually within minutes (To your own PayPal Account, not bank)	Online invoices and Mobile Payments included; lower rates with more sales, invoices and estimates, subscription payments
Windcave	$150	$30	$0.30 + 2.8% per transaction	Overnight	Automated Phone Payments; Batch Processing, in-store terminal, Account2Account
Stripe	$0	$0	2.9% + $0.30 per transaction	4 Business Days	Real-time reporting; Pay as you go; Multiple Payment Methods accepted; Anti-Fraud tools
Paystation	$99-$149	$19-$149	75-500 free transactions, then $0.32-$0.45 depending on plan	Varies (Based on Bank)	15 supported currencies, batch processing, cashflow reporting, Customer Support, API Integration, onboarding,
Cybercom Pay	$99+GST	$0 (If using CyberCom Pay Online)	2.85%, 1.29% for NZ Charities	Same Day before 6PM	Subscriptions, Mini CRM, Mobile App, 12 currencies with no exchange fees
Paymark Click	$125	$25	$0.20+	Overnight	Online EFTPOS, business insights, API Integration, 24/7 local support
Worldline	$45	$25	2.8% + $0.30 per transaction	3 Business Days	Customisable checkout, API Integration, 24/7 local support, Subscription payments, batch processing
Flo2Cash	$200	$30	From 3.4% per transaction	2-4 Business Days	Customisable checkout, API Integration, Batch Processing, Subscription Payments, Direct Bank Transfer, Phone and PDF payment options

More about payment gateways

Payment gateways can be confusing at first glance. Why exactly do you need one and what are the benefits? We cover how payment gateways work and more information about the ones we listed above in the article Best Payment Gateways for Selling Online.

4. Building the website

Once you decide to sell products online and have chosen an e-commerce platform, you need to build the website. As we mentioned above, you need to decide if you want to build the site on your own or have someone do it for you. Depending on your chosen e-commerce platform, building it on your own may not be the best choice. Platforms like Squarespace and Shopify focus on simplicity and ease of use. In contrast, WordPress offers greater versatility, but you’ll trade some user-friendliness to get it.. While this makes it more challenging for a standard user, a professional web developer has many more options with this route.

When possible, we recommend having an expert build your site. They simply have the experience and skills to ensure the site functions properly. Your site will also be up and running faster. Some website building companies also include ongoing updates like adding products or optimising for SEO. Of course the more services you choose to include, the more the site will cost. We go over basic website costs and what causes them to increase in more detail in our article How much does a website cost?

Having a professional build the site isn’t for everyone. For some, the initial investment is simply too high. Others like full control of all content on the site. If you aren’t sure which option is best for you, our article When should I hire a professional to build my website may help.

5. Product description, images, and videos

This part of the process is where many people trip up. Depending on the number of items you plan to sell, it can frankly be overwhelming to create the content for it. If you are a reseller with thousands of products for instance, how can you possibly take the time to write out a description and upload high-quality, relevant product images for each of them? Doing this for all products might seem like an endless task. Even some of the major retailers in New Zealand have trouble doing this for every product!

How to handle large inventories to sell products online

There are a few ways to overcome a large inventory to sell products online. One is by using a growth-driven design philosophy. With a traditional website building process, you’d build every page and add every product before making the site live. Then every couple of years or so, you’d do a major site upgrade such as changing the entire design.

With a growth-driven philosophy, you start out by publishing a functional website and continually improve it over time. You might start out with a limited stock of your most popular products and add more over time. This will allow people to buy online sooner, then you add more products when you can. With this method, each product can have an excellent, thorough description and high-quality images. You can even add a video demonstration when applicable too, as product demo videos are the most effective way to convince people to purchase. You can find out more about growth-driven design in our article How Growth-Driven Website Design Works.

Another option is that some inventory management systems allow you to import this information directly from suppliers. This can greatly simplify the process, especially when you have a massive inventory. While this ensures that your product information is accurate and added quickly, it will also make it the same as any of your competitors that do the same thing.

Professional content creators

Finally, you can have professional content creators help do this step for you. Professional copywriters can help give you compelling, unique descriptions and combined with product photography can help you have a consistent look, tone, and feel for your products. For some of your best products, a product demonstration video can be extremely powerful. You can also have some of your products updated by content creators while others are imported automatically.

No matter which method you decide to do, having a solid product inventory to accompany your website launch will help your customers make informed decisions and increase your sales percentages too!

6. How to handle shipping

Shipping can be extremely complicated. As a store owner, you have to do a lot of planning to make sure everything goes smoothly. New Zealand makes this even more challenging with different rates depending on the island and rural vs urban delivery. Because of this, some e-commerce sites in urban centres choose to avoid shipping altogether. However, this also greatly limits your reach to people nearby. Plus, most people expect home delivery when buying online these days.

If you do decide to have products ship, there are several things to sort out. Among these are choosing a courier company (or companies), product packaging and labelling, emails and tracking information that goes to customers, and of course the price.

Finding the sweet spot for shipping might take some time. You may not get it right when you launch the site and might need to adjust it to cover your costs. Or if it’s too high, you may need to lower it to entice customers to choose you. Many studies show that free shipping is best incentive a customer can get. But a business owner, that may not be practical or even possible if you want to make a profit.

Because shipping is so complicated, we go into it in much more detail in our article Ecommerce shipping solutions for selling online.

7. Customising the checkout process

Nobody likes long, convoluted checkout processes. Unfortunately, this is the default option for some website templates. If you have a customisable website, however, you can change this.

Ideally, you want your site to be as easy as possible to use. What makes the site easy depends on the type of customers you have and how they use your site. For instance, having something like Apple Pay on an individual product so a customer can buy a single product and complete an order on the product page might make sense. Or having an option to make an account where customers can reorder the same products with a few clicks might increase sales.

Including special business pricing or the option to pay by invoice might be ideal for B2B businesses instead. There are limitless features you could add, but choosing which ones you should add depends on who is using your site and how they are using it.

These kinds of steps can be addressed when making your business plan or when developing buyer personas. A process like a digital marketing roadmap can help you identify your actual customers and how to best reach them.

8. Testing and reviewing your site

Before you publish your site and make it live to the world, you need to make sure all the processes work as expected. For site builders, most of the functionality will be built-in. Just make sure that purchase order emails etc go to the right place and you’ll probably be good to go.

If you’ve manually connected your own inventory management and/or payment gateway systems, you’ll also want to run through various scenarios and test purchases. These systems have fake credit card details you can use to test purchases without them actually going through, so do as many as you want! Ensure that everything works as expected and all of the emails, tracking information, and everything else goes to the right person.

Once everything is all good, make your site live!

9. Updating and refining the site

The easier and more intuitive your website is to use, the more likely a potential customer is to make a purchase. A good website is like staff--and can even be your best salesperson! And like staff, a performance review can help show your website’s strengths and areas where it can improve.

Your website is an investment. While it might seem like a relief to publish it and not worry about it anymore, there’s still a lot you can do. With a data-driven approach, you review the data of your website and make changes based on what the numbers show. And with websites, there is a ton of data.

Google Analytics

With Google Analytics, you can how many people visited any page or product on your site. If you’re running Google Ads and have it connected properly you can see your cost vs revenue at a glance for all of your campaigns. Then if one isn’t performing as expected, you can adjust it until it does.

Website Audit tools

A website audit tool can help make sure your site doesn’t have errors like broken links or products with no prices. Facebook Ads has Insights to show you which ads are bringing in visitors. You can even use a tool like Hotjar that shows you an image snapshot of each page and where on the page people keep their mouse the most and what links are most clicked.

We go over these and other data-driven approaches in more detail in our article Is my website performance working for me?

Ready to get started to sell online?

It’s a bit of work up front, but having the option to sell products online can open you up to a whole new segment of the market! So once you’ve looked through everything you need to do to sell online, then what?

First, make sure you have a business plan, especially if you’re a new business that doesn’t have a customer base. We cover some other startup items in our article Selling online – Where to Start with eCommerce? From there, if you want to build the site on your own, follow the instructions from your chosen e-commerce platform. Most of them have guided tutorials to help you get started and walk you through the essentials. If you want to have a professional build a site, many marketing agencies combine website development and ongoing marketing in one place. Our article How to choose the right marketing agency for your business can help you see what to look for when searching for your team.

Start with a plan

If you’re unsure about doing any of these steps on your own or would rather have an experienced team handle getting your store ready to sell products online for you, we can help. We recommend starting out with our guided digital marketing roadmap where we cover your goals and help you make a plan on how to achieve them. We’ve helped several stores get online, from small local businesses with a few products to working with stores with massive inventories that ship throughout the country. And we can help you too! Many of our e-commerce stores have seen their sales increase over 100% in a year.

Selling online takes planning, time, effort, and funds to get started. But it helps you bring in new customers, increase sales, and provide more value to your website visitors.

Keep your website running smooth with regular web maintenance

Posted on July 16, 2019July 4, 2024 by Phil

Website or web maintenance is key to longevity for your website – Just like with a car. If you let your car sit without doing any work on it, eventually it starts to act up. It might start drifting in one direction, take longer to start-up in the morning, or make weird sounds. You wouldn’t want to go years without getting an oil change, rotating the tyres, or changing the fluids.

And you shouldn’t do it for your website either.

Website Design or Website development doesn’t end when the site is launched. After the site is done, you need to keep your site maintained. Web maintenance means regularly check it for issues and errors, such as links to pages that no longer exist. Doing check-ups regularly helps keep it running strong, which can increase your Google rankings and encourage more visitors to come to your site.

Do websites need maintenance?

It’s true, that a website doesn’t have mechanical parts like a car, but that doesn’t mean its structure is immune to degradation either. but there are still constant changes in technology and some website maintenance tips that can keep it running smoothly.

While the physical parts rarely break down (servers or cables can go down) the structure can become obsolete. Think of it like apps on your smartphone; occasionally, you have to update the apps. Some of them need updating every few weeks, whether it’s addressing a bug or some vulnerability or adding new sections.

The same is true for websites, except that they’re updated without visitors having to authorise the changes. It’s all done by the site administrator instead. Changes for platforms like WordPress are rolled out constantly, and it’s important that the administrator stays up to date to keep site data safe. There’s also occasional glitches and hiccups. One example is that some products might disappear from your online store due to a bug and it’s important to be able to fix the problem quickly.

How do I maintain my website?

The best way to stay up-to-date on your website is to be aware of when critical updates happen, the check engine light of the digital world. This could be on your CMS system (WordPress, etc.) any plug-ins your site uses, or integrated software. Any security patches should be installed immediately, as not doing so can put your site or data at risk.

Checking for broken links periodically is helpful too, especially when you link to an external site or have made changes to your site like updating or adding new pages. A broken link pulls visitors out of the experience because the related content they wanted to visit doesn’t exist. And having multiple broken links can cause visitors to lose trust and abandon your site for someone else’s, and also weaken your SEO for Google searches.

Toxic Backlinks can also be harmful and are a little harder to spot. A “backlink” is when another site links to your website. Like it sounds, a toxic backlink is when a bad or harmful site links to your site. This can be a spam site, a site that has malware, or simply a link-building site that offers no value except for linking to other sites. Whereas a normal backlink is helpful and can increase your ranking on search results, a toxic backlink has the opposite effect and harms SEO. Since you can’t go to the site and remove the backlink without administrative access, your only options are to ask the site owner to remove the link, or to use Google’s disavow tool to tell Google you don’t want that link counted.

Regular “tune-ups” help your site stay secured and optimised

Just like a vehicle, a website needs different things checked at different times. But unlike a car, instead of checking things every few months and a few thousand km, we recommend a monthly plan to address and stay on top of all of these potential issues such as some of the examples below

Making sure all of your pages load properly
Having no 404 redirects (page does not exist), especially when the link is to a page on your own site
Checking for broken links
Doing any updates for plugins marked as urgent or important
Checking page load speed to make sure pages load quickly and as expected.
Testing the site on multiple browsers and devices, such as a desktop, tablet, and mobile device.
Making sure that your website backups are working properly.
Making sure all email addresses mentioned are still active
Checking that forms still work as expected.
Confirming that your domain name will be renewed without lapsing.
Changing any references to the previous year on prominent pages such as the home page.

Like your car, it’s important to keep up on web maintenance. And also like your car, if you aren’t comfortable with doing it yourself, there are qualified professionals right here in town who understand Website Design and the importance of building and growing your website for you and who are more than capable of handling it for you. Get in touch with us today to get started.

If Your Website Sucks, It Won’t Convert

Posted on April 8, 2019July 18, 2024 by Phil

Where’s that bacon my site promised?

Get a website, they said. It will bring customers, they said. But it’s not. Why? Put simply: if your website sucks, it won’t convert.

There could be a lot of reasons to explain why a website isn’t pulling the pork. It could be that you have poor or even no content besides a home page. It could be an “artistic” design choice. Or it could be difficult to navigate with a complicated or confusing site structure. But they all come down to the same thing; if your website isn’t converting, it’s because it sucks.

Content is King

Content is the stuff on your site. Typically videos, images, and words. And the more useful and relevant it is to your audience, the more likely your site will perform well. Sure, a video of a monkey riding a lamb and kicking a football into a goal is cute, but it probably doesn’t have much relevance to what you do. Unless you make it relate. “Hop on the lamb and score at our unexpected sale, one-day only!”

The original is always the best

At least that’s what stubborn old people like to say. But unlike Batman and Ocean’s Eleven—that we can all agree got better later on—original content is unequivocally the best content for your website. Original content simply means that it’s not copied from somewhere else. It’s pictures that you take, videos that you star in, and articles written specifically for you.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use information from other sources. Linking out to an article with similar information can even be helpful, but it’s important to extract information and rewrite it for your audience using original wording. Think of it like writing essays in school; plagiarism, citing sources = good!

Customise, don’t compromise!

Your site design gives an immediate impression about your business. A tacky, homemade site with weird colour combinations and misaligned elements you made for your first assignment in an Intro Web Development class shouldn’t be used for your professional business. A bad design will kill your site—unless it’s so bad that it gains legendary status, like Arngren or LingsCars.

You might be thinking that maybe you should try that route and throw design principles out the window… But think of how many others with weird designs failed along the way. Yeah, not worth it.

Design is about aesthetics and usability

Good design isn’t all about appearance. A pretty site filled with broken links and no good way to get to other pages won’t perform well, because big brother (a.k.a. Google) is watching. You can’t neglect the appearance either. Ugly-looking sites are an immediate bye-bye for nearly two-thirds of consumers.

A lot of templates on web-building sites look nice at first glance, but use one and you’ll quickly find the limitations. You’re limited to certain colours. You can’t change picture locations. Or sizes. The ugly font choice is locked in. And so on. These template sites aren’t bad for a personal blog or a tiny, single-person side hustle, but as a site for your main business, getting a custom design is the much better option, especially if you want to grow and expand.

Is your site structure natural and intuitive?

Over the years, we’ve gotten used to expecting certain elements on a page. Like clicking on the logo to go back to the home page. Or that little down arrow that will expand content without taking you to a new page. Or highlighting menu elements on hover and showing a preview of the drop-down list. And plenty, plenty more usability features that are nearly ubiquitous these days. Forgetting one is annoying. Two, irritating. But a bunch? Might as well tape a picture to a cardboard box with a computer screen drawn on it for all the good your site will do.

Content + Design + Usability = Unsucky Site

So if your website isn’t converting, the solution is straightforward; make it less bad. And more good. Sure, it’s straightforward, but not necessarily easy—it requires an investment of time, effort, and usually some dollars as well. How do you do it? Create original, useful, relevant content (Or have a writer create it for you). Fashion an attractive, pretty, well-designed website (Or better yet, have a designer fashion one for you). Build an intuitive, friendly, navigable website (Or have a web developer build it for you).

Or of course, you can always leave it all to the experts.