How Much Does A Woo­Commerce Store Cost?

Ecom­mer­ce is boo­ming. Accor­ding to pro­jec­tions, world­wi­de retail ecom­mer­ce sales will reach $4.5 tril­li­on by 2021. Sure, who does­n’t like to order com­for­ta­b­ly from home. 

Per­haps you are also thin­king about get­ting invol­ved in ecom­mer­ce? Done right, it can really be worth it. But before you fall into day­d­reams of bathing in money à la Dago­bert Duck, you have to invest in an online shop.

How much, exactly?

You’ve pro­ba­b­ly alre­a­dy asked Google about this. But the artic­les and data on the inter­net are rather vague. They explain what soft­ware and tools you’ll have to invest in (domain, hos­ting, plug­ins, Paypal, SSL, design, deve­lo­p­ment, to name a few), but not exact­ly how much.

In this artic­le we get to the bottom of this question:

How much does it cost to set up and run a Woo­Commerce shop based on WordPress?

Num­bers, Data, Facts

Accor­ding to new stu­dies and pro­jec­tions, ecom­mer­ce experts anti­ci­pa­te a 265% growth rate, from $1.3 tril­li­on in 2014 to $4.9 tril­li­on in 2021. This shows a future of steady upward trend with no signs of decline.

The num­bers speak for them­sel­ves: now is a great time to get into online tra­ding. More and more people are using the oppor­tu­ni­ty to order their goods and pro­ducts online and have them deli­ver­ed them to their homes.

They could be your products. 

Online Shop Systems

Before we go into Woo­Commerce as our favo­ri­te, I would like to brief­ly inform you about a few alter­na­ti­ves. Depen­ding on which kind of shop you need for your online trade, some sys­tems are better suited than others. 

Gambio

Gambio is a “real” shop system, which you can host yours­elf and that is not a plugin for Word­Press. Howe­ver, this also means that the total costs rise above 149€ per year due to in-house developments.

Gambio is very easy to use, offers an indi­vi­du­al shop layout and inte­res­t­ing fea­tures, which makes it well suited for smal­ler com­pa­nies and start-ups.

Magen­to

Magen­to is one of the most popu­lar eCom­mer­ce plat­forms for online shops world­wi­de. It offers a wide range of func­tions. Magen­to is highly cus­to­mizable, which at least requi­res simple, even more advan­ced pro­gramming skills – it is not a system for the enthu­si­a­stic beginner.

With its huge sel­ec­tion of fea­tures, many cus­to­miza­ti­on opti­ons to indi­vi­du­al busi­ness requi­re­ments, modu­la­ri­ty and high sca­la­bi­li­ty, Magen­to is sui­ta­ble for com­pa­nies of any size.

Depen­ding on the ver­si­on, the licen­se costs are bet­ween zero and five-digit USD amounts.

Open­Cart

Open­Cart is a plat­form-inde­pen­dent online shop system with no user rest­ric­tions on an open source basis, sui­ta­ble for small busi­nesses as well as large orga­ni­sa­ti­ons. It’s fle­xi­ble and adap­ta­ble with indi­vi­du­al pages and tem­pla­tes, as well as many free and char­geable add-ons.

Like Magen­to, Open­Cart also requi­res more exten­si­ve pro­gramming know­ledge in order to be able to make adjus­t­ments and is the­r­e­fo­re unsui­ta­ble for beginners.

Shop­ware

Shop­ware is a modu­lar online shop system deve­lo­ped in Ger­ma­ny that is available both as open source soft­ware and in com­mer­cial editions.

The simple hand­ling, the high ease of use, and the good sup­port with a pro­fes­sio­nal trai­ning center make it sui­ta­ble for beg­in­ners as well as com­pa­nies of any size.

Oxid

Oxid also offers seve­ral shop system edi­ti­ons with dif­fe­rent func­tions, for which the licen­se costs are bet­ween zero and five-digit Euro amounts.

With over 300 exten­si­ons, high modu­la­ri­ty and sca­la­bi­li­ty, a multi­tu­de of inter­faces and a high qua­li­ty stan­dard, Oxid is sui­ta­ble as a shop system for com­pa­nies of all sizes.

The eShop Pro­fes­sio­nal Edi­ti­on costs 2,990 Euro upwards.

Woo­Commerce

Woo­Commerce is a Word­Press exten­si­on that con­nects an online shop to your Word­Press home­page. As an open source system, the basic ver­si­on of the soft­ware is available as a free download.

25% of all online shops world­wi­de run under WooCommerce. 

With its

• 4,000 both free and char­geable enhancements
• easy ope­ra­bi­li­ty
• large com­mu­ni­ty
• easy con­nec­tion to exter­nal systems
• easy setup and configuration
• Sui­ta­bi­li­ty for beg­in­ners as well as advan­ced students
• large range of Word­Press plugins

Woo­Commerce is par­ti­cu­lar­ly sui­ta­ble for small and medium-sized busi­nesses, or small and medium-sized online shops.

Woo­Commerce is great for the sale of both digi­tal and mate­ri­al pro­ducts. It has a solid SEO foun­da­ti­on, inclu­ding SEO-fri­end­ly links and inte­gra­ted meta­da­ta. As an expan­si­on option, it offers con­nec­ti­vi­ty to mar­ket­places such as Amazon and Ebay, and uses PayPal as the default pay­ment method.

How to set up Woo­Commerce in WordPress

Inte­gra­ting the Woo­Commerce plugin into Word­Press is easy. Your hos­ting must meet a few mini­mum requi­re­ments, but the actual instal­la­ti­on is done in two clicks.

Mini­mum requirements

Before you install Woo­Commerce and pos­si­bly Word­Press first, you should know the mini­mum requi­re­ments for your sys­tems. Then you’ll avoid pro­blems with the instal­la­ti­on and use of Woo­Commerce right from the start.

To use Word­Press and Woo­Commerce tog­e­ther, the fol­lo­wing requi­re­ments are recom­men­ded by your host:

• PHP ver­si­on 7 or higher
• MySQL ver­si­on 5.6 or higher
• HTTPS sup­port (ins­tead of HTTP)
• Woo­Commerce 2.5 requi­res Word­Press 4.1 or higher
• Woo­Commerce 2.6 requi­res Word­Press 4.4 or higher
• Word­Press memory limit of at least 64 MB (I recom­mend 256 MB or higher)

Two-Click Instal­la­ti­on

The Word­Press Admin is the easie­st option to install Woo­Commerce in your Word­Press site. It inserts the plugin by itself.

1. Log in to your Word­Press site
2. Go to Plug­ins > Create New
3. Type “Woo­Commerce” into the search plugin. The search first spits out the Woo­Commerce plugin from Automattic.
4. Select “Install now”.
5. Select “Acti­va­te” and you are ready to go.

Hos­ting

Web hos­ting is the pro­vi­si­on of web space and accom­mo­da­ti­on of web­sites on a web server of an Inter­net ser­vice pro­vi­der. Woo­Commerce recom­mends these hosts, which install Word­Press, Woo­Commerce and the Store­front Theme for you. They also have eCom­mer­ce-spe­ci­fic fea­tures that pro­tect your shop, such as IP and SSL certificates.

We also recom­mend the German ope­ra­tors Alfah­os­ting and All-Inkl, as well as the inter­na­tio­nal ope­ra­tors Cloud­ways and WPEn­gi­ne.

Setup Wizard

Once Woo­Commerce has been acti­va­ted for the first time, the Woo­Commerce Setup Wizard will help you set up your online shop. Click “Go ahead” to get star­ted, or select “Not now” if you prefer to set up your shop manually.

Costs for the instal­la­ti­on of a Woo­Commerce shop

It’s dif­fi­cult to fathom how many things actual­ly come tog­e­ther for which you pay month­ly or yearly fees for a Woo­Commerce shop. Since Woo­Commerce shops can be set up with many dif­fe­rent fea­tures, you usual­ly pay indi­vi­du­al­ly for these features.

In addi­ti­on, there are the fees for your Word­Press web­site: domain, hos­ting and SSL. If you have a Word­Press site up and run­ning, you’re alre­a­dy paying these fees. Since they also belong to the run­ning costs of the shop, we’ll be inclu­ding them in this case.

In the fol­lo­wing, we go into detail about the mini­mum and maxi­mum prices that a Woo­Commerce shop can cost. It should be noted that the prices can vary depen­ding on the type and scope of the shop.

Domain

The domain is your website’s inter­net address. The domain name of this web­site is for exam­p­le franzsauerstein.de. You have to buy this domain name.

A domain usual­ly costs bet­ween 8 – 50 US dol­lars a year.

Hos­ting

In order to be able to create a web­site of any kind on your domain, it must be placed on a web server and web space pro­vi­ded for it. This is called web hos­ting and is pro­vi­ded by Inter­net Ser­vice Pro­vi­ders (ISPs) such as Blue­host, Pressa­ble and WP-VIP. Woo­Commerce auto­ma­ti­cal­ly sug­gests some pos­si­ble trus­ted providers.

The costs for hos­ting are billed month­ly, but amount to appro­xi­m­ate­ly 60 – 400 US dol­lars per year.

SSL-Cer­ti­fi­ca­te

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. SSL-cer­ti­fi­ca­tes are used to encrypt the data on your inter­net pages and emails. If, for exam­p­le, the con­nec­tion to your pro­vi­der is SSL-encrypt­ed, no third party can read your emails. SSL-cer­ti­fi­ca­tes are indis­pensable for the pro­tec­tion of cus­to­mer data, espe­ci­al­ly for ecom­mer­ce shops where the trust of your cus­to­mers is a top priority.

The costs for SSL-cer­ti­fi­ca­tes vary great­ly depen­ding on the type of use. For ecom­mer­ce pur­po­ses, you should expect bet­ween 50 – 400 US dol­lars per year.

Woo­Commerce Plugin for WordPress

With the costs for domain, hos­ting and SSL-cer­ti­fi­ca­te, your Word­Press web­site is ready. Now you can insert the Woo­Commerce plugin as descri­bed above under “How to set up Woo­Commerce in WordPress”.

The plugin itself is free of charge, but you will be asked to pay for most of the themes and exten­si­ons you need to cus­to­mi­ze your shop.

Woo­Commerce Themes

Woo­The­mes offers a sel­ec­tion of 14 themes, some of which are free. One of them is “Store­front”, the offi­ci­al Woo­Commerce theme. Howe­ver, the opti­cal cus­to­miza­ti­on opti­ons and the fea­tures of free Woo­Commerce themes are limi­t­ed com­pared to the pre­mi­um versions.

The free themes are Store­front, Bou­tique, and Deli.

All other themes cost 39 USD per year: Hotel, Pet­shop, Book­shop, Gal­le­ria, Purcha­se, Outlet, Toy­Shop, Phar­ma­cy, Home­s­to­re, Arcade, Bistro, and Sta­tio­na­ry.

In addi­ti­on, Woo­Commerce is com­pa­ti­ble with many other Word­Press themes. Howe­ver, for this cost over­view, we’ll stick with these 14 WooThemes.

Woo­Commerce Theme Extensions

Woo­Commerce offers a varie­ty of so-called exten­si­ons to sup­ple­ment and indi­vi­dua­li­ze your themes. These cost bet­ween zero and approx. 150 USD per year.

For this cost break­down, we will con­sider some basic exten­si­ons that make sense for a Woo­Commerce shop in terms of cus­to­mer satisfaction.

Woo­Commerce cal­cu­la­tes costs depen­ding on the number of your web­sites, i.e. for Single Site, 5 Sites and 25 Sites, which we will descri­be in more detail as Single Site / 5 Sites / 25 Sites USD per year. The packa­ge prices are espe­ci­al­ly inte­res­t­ing for agencies.

PayPal Pro allows you to accept credit card pay­ments via PayPal direct­ly in your shop. Cost factor: ⁷⁹⁄₉₉ / 199 USD per year

Pay­Mill Gate­way is the com­ple­te solu­ti­on for online pay­ments. It allows you to accept pay­ments in a hundred cur­ren­ci­es direct­ly in your Woo­Commerce shop. Your cus­to­mers can pay with all major credit and debit cards. Cost factor: ⁷⁹⁄₉₉ / 199 USD per year

Instant Trans­fer allows your cus­to­mers to pay as an instant trans­fer. Cost factor: ⁷⁹⁄₉₉ / 199 USD per year

Amazon Pay allows any Amazon buyer to buy your pro­ducts direct­ly from your online store. It uses the pay­ment and deli­very infor­ma­ti­on in their Amazon accounts. Cost factor: 0 USD

Print Invoices & Pack­ing Lists makes it easy to print and edit order and ship­ping docu­ments, and allows your cus­to­mers to view their invoices. Cost factor: ⁴⁹⁄₇₉ / 149 USD per year

Ano­ther 25 useful Woo­Commerce plug­ins 2019 are listed here.

Woo­Commerce Plug­ins for Legal Compliance

When doing busi­ness these days – whe­ther on- or off­line – you need to ensure that you’re com­pli­ant with local, natio­nal, and inter­na­tio­nal laws. Laws vary from loca­ti­on to loca­ti­on and depen­ding on what type of web­site you’re run­ning. While no plugin should ever be a sub­sti­tu­te for actual legal advice, here’s a list of free plug­ins to sup­port with com­pli­ance issues for Woo­Commerce. They help you navi­ga­te these respon­si­bi­li­ties quite reliably. 

As Schwung­voll is a German Com­pa­ny and sup­ports a lot of German cli­ents, we’re going to have a look at the Woo­Commerce plug­ins pro­vi­ded for the some­what spe­cial German market. 

German Market Plugin (Mar­ket­Press)

The German Market Plugin from Mar­ket­Press sup­ports you in desig­ning your Woo­Commerce shop in Ger­ma­ny and Aus­tria as legal­ly com­pli­ant as possible.

We stron­gly recom­mend this (or a simi­lar) plugin becau­se Ger­ma­ny has spe­cial legal requirements!

For exam­p­le, the plugin helps to pro­tect yours­elf from writ­ten war­nings. With only a few clicks, it adds the neces­sa­ry legal texts and func­tions – it’s really worth its weight in gold to help you pene­tra­te the German legal jungle.

Depen­ding on the type of licen­se the plugin costs bet­ween 69 – 149 Euro per year.

Woo­Commerce Germanized

Woo­Commerce Ger­ma­ni­zed is an alter­na­ti­ve to German Market Plugin. Woo­Commerce Ger­ma­ni­zed allows you to easily create legal notice pages and inte­gra­te them into your check­out and emails.

In addi­ti­on, the plugin offers many spe­ci­fic set­tings for the German market. From deli­very times to small busi­ness regu­la­ti­ons, there are count­less func­tions that pro­tect your shop against writ­ten warnings.

The Basic Ver­si­on is free of charge.

The Pro Ver­si­on “Stan­dard” for one domain is available for 69.95 Euro, with annual rene­wal costs of 49.95 Euro per year.

The Pro ver­si­on “Deve­lo­per” for five domains is available for 99.95 Euro, with annual rene­wal costs of 69.95 Euro per year.

Costs for Work Effort

When dra­wing up a cost break­down for the instal­la­ti­on of a Woo­Commerce shop, one thing mustn’t be for­got­ten: the cost of the work invol­ved in plan­ning, desig­ning, and set­ting up the shop.

Plan­ning & Design

Before you get star­ted and set up your Woo­Commerce shop in Word­Press, it makes sense to plan its struc­tu­re and con­tent. You should answer the fol­lo­wing questions:

• What kind of shop do I need?
  Word­Press offers dif­fe­rent themes that are ideal for dif­fe­rent types of shops. From hotel to book­shop to bistro, you will find the right theme for your shop.
• How many pro­ducts do I want to sell? Or how many pro­duct categories?
  The answer to this ques­ti­on leads you direct­ly to the next ques­ti­on, namely:
• Which exten­si­ons does the shop need?
  Think in advan­ce what you would like to offer your cus­to­mers in terms of ser­vice. The more com­fort for the cus­to­mer, the more Woo­Commerce Exten­si­ons you have to expect in general.
• What should the layout of the shop look like?
  The layout of a shop can also con­tri­bu­te a lot to cus­to­mer satis­fac­tion. Amazon’s pro­duct page layout is so well-known that it can alre­a­dy be descri­bed as the ideal and most intui­ti­ve layout. Create a draft of the layout to pre-define each element.
• Which texts and (pro­duct) images do you need to start the shop?
  At the very least, you will need pro­duct descrip­ti­ons and images for your pro­ducts. Most of the time there are also texts for landing pages, about pages and maybe for a blog. Either you write them yours­elf and shoot your own photos, or you hire a copy­wri­ter and pro­duct pho­to­grapher (more on this in the later chap­ter Mar­ke­ting & Sales). If you out­sour­ce the texts and photos, you should order them as soon as pos­si­ble so that you have all the neces­sa­ry ele­ments at hand for the design of the shop.

If you answer these ques­ti­ons before you start with the actual setup of the shop in the Woo­Commerce plugin, you can save a lot of time and effort for later chan­ges or a lot of trial and error. The better and more detail­ed your shop’s design plan, the easier and faster the design setup.

Of course, a well thought-out plan can still change during the setup phase; you may dis­co­ver ele­ments, exten­si­ons or other pos­si­bi­li­ties that you never con­side­red during the plan­ning phase. Ans­we­ring the above ques­ti­ons will still serve as a red thread, so that you don’t lose sight of the essentials.

The above-men­tio­ned ques­ti­ons are only the essen­ti­al ones; there are many deeper aspects hidden behind them, which have to be cla­ri­fied indi­vi­du­al­ly for each online shop. Web desi­gners can give you won­derful sup­port in plan­ning and desig­ning your Woo­Commerce shop.

Layout

Once you have the plan and design for your Woo­Commerce shop, you can get star­ted with the setup in the plugin. Choose your theme and buy the desi­red extensions.

Woo­Commerce works accor­ding to the modu­lar prin­ci­ple; you can place indi­vi­du­al ele­ments (e.g. images, shop­ping carts, descrip­ti­ons and ratings) exact­ly where you would like them to be accor­ding to your layout plan.

You add pro­duct images and descrip­ti­ons, set prices and add extensions.

Cost Over­view Instal­la­ti­on Workload

Even if you set up your online shop com­ple­te­ly by yours­elf, you can some­ti­mes spend many hours working on it. After all, you’d be paying a web­de­si­gner for these hours as well.

Of course, we also want to include this effort for plan­ning and design in the cal­cu­la­ti­on of costs and put con­cre­te figu­res behind it. To do this, we cal­cu­la­te a flat rate hourly wage of 110 USD per hour.

If you’re buil­ding a simple online shop with only the basic Woo­Commerce exten­si­ons, the time requi­red for its plan­ning and design is of course less than for a huge shop that wants to offer the cus­to­mer every pos­si­ble ser­vice. Expe­ri­ence is also a factor; if you’re set­ting up a Woo­Commerce shop for the first time, you are gua­ran­teed to need a lot more time than a Woo­Commerce web desi­gner would, for example.

So there are an incre­di­ble number of fac­tors that make it dif­fi­cult to narrow down the amount of work invol­ved in plan­ning and desig­ning your Woo­Commerce shop. If we take expe­ri­ence values and the two extre­mes (very simple versus very exten­si­ve shop) as a basis, we get the fol­lo­wing range of appro­xi­ma­te values:

Workload for a simple shop: 63 hours. Makes a total of 6,930 USD.

Workload for a com­plex, exten­si­ve shop: 325 hours. A total of 35,750 USD.

Cost Over­view Instal­la­ti­on Woo­Commerce Shop

In order to give insight into pos­si­ble costs for dif­fe­rent Woo­Commerce shops, we’re going to cal­cu­la­te three dif­fe­rent sce­na­ri­os from these costs.

Mini­mum costs for the instal­la­ti­on of a small, simple Woo­Commerce Shop

For the instal­la­ti­on of your Single-Site Woo­Commerce Shop with the exten­si­ons PayPal Pro, Pay­Mill Gate­way and Instant Trans­fer (79 USD per Single-Site Exten­si­on) the mini­mum costs come down to the following:

• Domain 8 USD
• Hos­ting 60 USD
• SSL-Cer­ti­fi­ca­te 50 USD
• Woo­Commerce Plugin 0 USD
• Theme 39 USD
• Exten­si­ons (3x) 237 USD
• Plan­ning and design 6,930 USD

Summed up, a simple Woo­Commerce shop costs you at least 7,324 USD.

Costs for the instal­la­ti­on of a medium-sized Woo­Commerce Shop

For the instal­la­ti­on of your 5‑Site Woo­Commerce Shop with the Basic Exten­si­ons PayPal Pro, Pay­Mill Gate­way and Instant Trans­fer (99 USD per 5‑Site Exten­si­on), as well as five fur­ther Exten­si­ons, the costs listed below apply. We also assume medio­cre costs for domain, hos­ting and SSL certificates.

• Domain 20 USD
• Hos­ting 150 USD
• SSL Cer­ti­fi­ca­te 150 USD
• Woo­Commerce Plugin 0 USD
• Theme 39 USD
• Exten­si­ons (8x) 792 USD
• Plan­ning and design 16,000 Euro

A medium-sized Woo­Commerce shop will cost you at least 17,151 USD.

Maxi­mum costs for the instal­la­ti­on of a large Woo­Commerce Shop

For the instal­la­ti­on of your 25-Site Woo­Commerce Shop with the Basic Exten­si­ons PayPal Pro, Pay­Mill Gate­way and Instant Trans­fer (199 USD per 25-Site Exten­si­on), as well as ten fur­ther Exten­si­ons, the costs listed below apply. We also assume medio­cre costs for domain, hos­ting and SSL certificates.

• Domain 50 USD
• Hos­ting 400 USD
• SSL Cer­ti­fi­ca­te 400 USD
• Woo­Commerce Plugin 0 USD
• Theme 39 USD
• Exten­si­ons (13x) 2,587 USD
• Plan­ning and design 35,750 USD

A simple Woo­Commerce shop costs you at least 39,226 USD.

Sum­ma­ry Installation

• Mini­mum costs: 6,930 USD
• Avera­ge cost: 17,151 USD
• Maxi­mum cost: 39,226 USD

Annual fixed costs of a Woo­Commerce shop

The instal­la­ti­on is only the begin­ning of your Woo­Commerce shop. You have cover­ed the costs for the instal­la­ti­on and ope­ra­ti­on in the first year. In the fol­lo­wing years, howe­ver, fixed costs will be added to keep the shop running:

• Domain
• Hos­ting
• SSL cer­ti­fi­ca­te
• Theme
• Exten­si­ons (13x)

The annual fees are usual­ly the same as at the time of instal­la­ti­on, unless you expand the shop over time, for exam­p­le by adding more exten­si­ons. If your Woo­Commerce shop is run­ning well, such exten­si­ons can become neces­sa­ry very quick­ly to satis­fy or even manage the gro­wing number of cus­to­mers. Read more about this in the next chapter.

Howe­ver, if we stick to our basic cal­cu­la­ti­on, the fol­lo­wing annual fixed costs arise depen­ding on the type and size of the online shop:

• Small, simple shop: 394 USD 
• Medium sized shop: 1.151 USD
• Large, com­plex shop: 3,476 USD

Run­ning Costs of a Woo­Commerce Shop

In addi­ti­on to the instal­la­ti­on and annual fixed costs, the run­ning costs of a Woo­Commerce shop are unfort­u­na­te­ly often for­got­ten. These are costs that don’t occur at the same amount every month or year, but can vary – and become higher over life­time and with the growth of your shop.

Sup­port and main­ten­an­ce costs

Stu­dies show: on avera­ge, ecom­mer­ce shops spend 3–10% of their online reve­nue on the sup­port and main­ten­an­ce of the shop. When con­ver­ted, this means that if a shop gene­ra­tes 1 mil­li­on USD, at least 30,000 USD must be cal­cu­la­ted for the support.

Pos­si­ble sup­port and main­ten­an­ce costs are:

• Assis­ti­ve tech­no­lo­gy: From a cer­tain size of the shop and Woo­Commerce site, you can no longer main­tain the shop on your own. As a shop ope­ra­tor and owner, you have other tasks than “tin­ke­ring” with the site – as simple as that may be with Woo­Commerce. You will have to hire IT-deve­lo­pers and web desi­gners to take care of the tech­ni­cal aspects of the sup­port and fur­ther deve­lo­p­ment of the shop.
• Updates and back­ups: Both Word­Press and Woo­Commerce regu­lar­ly update their sys­tems and plug­ins; these usual­ly cost not­hing them­sel­ves. Howe­ver, instal­ling the updates and per­forming regu­lar back­ups also impli­es cost and time.

These costs are easily for­got­ten – even in the price cal­cu­la­ti­on of the shop’s products.

Growth and deve­lo­p­ment costs

As alre­a­dy men­tio­ned, the costs for Woo­Commerce exten­si­ons vary depen­ding on the size of the web­site. You might start with a single site shop but want to expand to a 5- or 25-site size at some point. The annual fixed costs for the exten­si­ons rise and neces­sa­ry new exten­si­ons start at higher prices.

The bigger the shop, the higher the main­ten­an­ce costs descri­bed in the pre­vious chap­ter, as well as the expen­ses for the assis­ti­ve technology.

The docu­men­ta­ti­on, in which shop ope­ra­tors show how to use their shop, also falls under growth and deve­lo­p­ment costs. In larger shops, for exam­p­le, trai­ning is pro­vi­ded for each role in the shop (shop mana­ger, logi­stics spe­cia­list, etc.). You either create the trai­ning yours­elf or pay someone to set it up.

To find out how your pro­duct pages or mar­ke­ting efforts are per­forming, you have to test them, for exam­p­le with A/B tests to opti­mi­ze your shop. The exe­cu­ti­on of such tests is also costly and time-con­sum­ing. They are wort­hwhile, howe­ver, in order to impro­ve the user expe­ri­ence for your cus­to­mers and thus impro­ve cus­to­mer satisfaction.

Mar­ke­ting & Sales

With the instal­la­ti­on and ope­ra­ti­on of a Woo­Commerce shop, you are not yet sel­ling any pro­ducts, or at least most likely not in the quan­ti­ties that bring you large pro­fits. In order to gene­ra­te high sales, you also need to invest in mar­ke­ting and sel­ling your shop and products.

There are, of course, count­less ways to market your pro­ducts and your shop, which makes it dif­fi­cult for us to put a price on it. Whe­ther via social media, in rele­vant trade jour­nals or via your own blog: Adver­ti­sing costs money.

Face­book

When used cor­rect­ly, Face­book can be a cost-effec­ti­ve mar­ke­ting tool with a high ROI. Face­book offers many ways to market dif­fe­rent types of busi­ness. For exam­p­le, there are lead ads, dyna­mic ads and link ads that cap­tu­re leads, high­light pro­ducts for the right people, and direct people to your store.

Again, prices for Face­book ads vary depen­ding on the type and size of ads placed. But Face­book claims you can adver­ti­se on any budget – there are people who spend more on coffee every day than on their adver­ti­sing campaigns.

The avera­ge cost-per-click is around 0.5 USD per click.

Copy­wri­ting

Even after the instal­la­ti­on of a Woo­Commerce shop, you often need high-qua­li­ty, SEO-opti­mi­zed texts; not just for your pro­duct descrip­ti­ons or web­site texts, but also for traf­fic-gene­ra­ting blog artic­les or adver­ti­sing texts.

In most cases, good texts that encou­ra­ge people to buy or gene­ra­te traf­fic are neither easy nor quick to write. They cost a lot of time, rese­arch and inge­nui­ty. If you don’t have the time or the talent, you’ll need to hire a copywriter.

The prices vary depen­ding on the type and size of the texts. Usual­ly, bet­ween 0.08−0.5 USD is char­ged per writ­ten word. Job plat­forms like Upwork can be che­a­per, but in terms of qua­li­ty it is often better to work with free­lan­ce copy­wri­ters or agencies.

I highly recom­mend Pia Newman as a copy­wri­ter for both German and Eng­lish: she is very relia­ble and quick­ly fami­lia­ri­ses hers­elf with unknown topics in order to deli­ver high-qua­li­ty artic­les about them.

Image Design

You should also invest in the photos on your pro­duct pages becau­se the better your pro­duct images, the more valuable your pro­ducts will be viewed as. If you only ope­ra­te a small shop with a few pro­ducts, you may be able to take the photos yours­elf. In the case of larger shops, howe­ver, it may be wort­hwhile to hire a pro­duct photographer.

Prices for pro­duct photos accor­ding to Amazon and Ebay gui­de­lines with a plain white back­ground start from 6 USD per product.

Alter­na­ti­ve: Com­mis­sio­ning an Agency

Now you know the costs for the instal­la­ti­on and ope­ra­ti­on of your Woo­Commerce shop if you build and ope­ra­te it yours­elf. Alter­na­tively, there is always the pos­si­bi­li­ty to hire someone else, both for the instal­la­ti­on and for kee­ping things run­ning afterward.

Agen­ci­es or free­lan­ce web desi­gners can sup­port you either com­ple­te­ly or with indi­vi­du­al parts of your Woo­Commerce shop. The costs for this vary depen­ding on the type and size of the order and the shop, as well as on what the agency or the web desi­gner char­ges for it.

Accor­ding to our expe­ri­ence, the stan­dard budget of a small, simple Woo­Commerce shop is bet­ween 6,100 and 9,100 USD for the installation.

You also need someone at your dis­po­sal for sup­port after the instal­la­ti­on, who knows the system inside out, and who can help you with main­ten­an­ce and pos­si­ble growth. If you plan on not main­tai­ning the shop yours­elf fore­ver, but to hand it over to someone else in the long run, it’s alre­a­dy worth the sup­port of a web desi­gner or an agency during the installation.

Want a quote? Read more about Roadmapping

As alre­a­dy men­tio­ned, there are various ques­ti­ons to answer for each indi­vi­du­al shop. Pro­fes­sio­nals can sup­port you and save you a lot of time and stress; whe­ther com­ple­te­ly or only in indi­vi­du­al steps in the plan­ning, design and imple­men­ta­ti­on of your Woo­Commerce shop.

Schwung­voll offers a free con­sul­ta­ti­on as a first step to find out more about you and your shop. If we’re a good match, the next step will be to work with you to create a road­map, at which all ques­ti­ons regar­ding the design, plan­ning and imple­men­ta­ti­on of your Woo­Commerce shop will be ans­we­red. You can read how suc­cessful these think tanks work in our port­fo­lio.

Let us dis­cuss your ideas and poten­ti­al costs for your own Woo­Commerce shop in a free initi­al dis­cus­sion! Just cont­act me here.