Reading all the information on the eRetailNews website and other coverage of the online retail world, it is easy for small retailers to become disheartened. It seems the cost of getting a retail store online these days is running into the millions of dollars! Well, the good news is there are ways of getting an online store going without breaking the bank (or robbing one!). In this short report, I'll give you a quick tour of online retailing on a shoestring budget. Before we start, I want to emphasize that a high quality, high volume retailing site can only developed with the use of advanced technology and some serious engineering and design talent (hence the big bucks!). So why should a small retailer consider developing an online store on a shoestring budget? Just because a fancy brick and mortar store can cost millions of dollars to open, it doesn't mean there isn't room for small entrepreneurs to open up their own stores on a more restricted budget. It follows that, even though the biggest online stores do cost millions to build and maintain, smaller online stores can be built for far less money and be a highly useful and lucrative addition to any small retail business. While many of our clients and readers are large online retailers, we also want to be help smaller retailers get online without driving them into bankruptcy! So what are the options? Template stores on trusted brand sites If you don't want to spend much money and you only have a need to get a few products up on the Web, then go to a trusted brand service offering low-cost eRetail templates: Yahoo! Stores. This is an excellent service offering a great variety of retail functionality and it definitely comes on a shoestring budget. Pricing starts at $100 a month for stores with less than 50 products. Up to 1000 products will run to $300 per month. Beyond that I doubt you really should be considering this type of service. Yahoo! also gives you the option to opt into Yahoo! Shopping, which will help drive traffic to your store (you pay them a 2% commission on sales over $5,000). Pros: Low cost; integrated credit cards processing (for a fee), Yahoo! Shopping Directory listing, modestly easy to follow template guides. Good stats. Cons: You are restricted to the Yahoo template layout which makes site design limited and restricts creativity. The template driven system uses a proprietary coding system which you may find complex to understand. If you want to integrate the store to a wealth of supporting website content (recommended) then may end up having your content site hosted elsewhere because template tools such as this are not well suited to maintaining large amounts of non-merchandise content. Excite Freetailer: This is truly shoestring stuff! Excite Freetailer will let you build a 21 page online store, including shopping cart for no charge. They will charge you for processing credit cards though. The only other restriction appears to be a requirement to let Excite put two banner ads of their choice on your site. They will add your site to search engines and include it in their shopping portal. They offer unlimited products (whatever you can fit on twenty pages I guess!) and 100 free transactions. Pros: Its free! Integrated credit cards (fees apply). They will list it on search engines for you and include it in Excite Shopping. Cons: Similar cons to Yahoo! The restricted template design limits freedom of expression and can result in a rather amateurish looking design. Because of the limitation on pages, you will quickly run out of room for a well designed site. You pay more for a unique web address such as www.mystore.com. Amazon zShops: You can create an online store on Amazon.com's zShops site for $39.99 per month. For that you can list up to 5,000 products. The major drawback is being limited to Amazon.com's zShop site. The major advantage is being in Amazon.com's zShop site. This doesn't really give you the option of building your own freestanding Internet store, but it is a good place to get some experience online. Think of zShops as having a store concession in an online department store. There are several other eRetail template services available, so shop around. The biggest limitation of these services is one of flexibility in store design and layout. Other restrictions make it difficult to customize your site to support third party affiliate programs and other good features. However, a good place to get your feet wet! Develop your own store with an off-the-shelf shopping cart There are a number of packages available on the marketplace today the are designed to allow relative novice developers to build a complete store online. Packages such as ecBuilder provide a variety of template formats within which a store can be designed, with transactions being processed through its integral shopping cart. This type of tools makes it relatively easy to design and built your own store within the design parameters laid out by the templates in the package. Pros: Easy to use; templates provided. Cons: Limited design choices; not well suited to broad content inclusion and custom features. Requires some technical and design expertise to establish a quality image for your store and incorporate custom features. Use a freelance designer to build a storefront for you You can request bids from any number of willing freelancers looking to make an extra buck developing a shopping cart website for you. You might try posting your requirements on a site such as Guru.com to see what type of bids you get. However, the best freelancers are the ones that come to you via a reference or recommendation from someone you know. Pros: You can get a custom site developed for relatively small investments ($3,000 to $10,000). Cons: You might become dependant upon your freelance resource for ongoing development; you assume much more risk in managing the project to make sure you get what you expect; your resource might disappear on you leaving you with a half finished project. Professional custom store design and development This is undoubtedly the best way to go for a professional looking store design that is scaleable. There are plenty of web design companies that specialize in developing online retail websites. The costs of a professionally developed store will run anywhere from $20,000 to over $1m. Because of the high costs associated with this option, it does not fit within the budgets of many small store owners. Pros: You normally get quality store capable of scaling to high volumes. Cons: You are unlikely to be able to maintain the store yourself, resulting in not just high development costs, but also high ongoing maintenance costs. Hybrid Professional Store Development Utilizing Off the Shelf Tools This scenario is a compromise between full custom store development and template driven shopping cart technology. Professional store designers will build your online store for you by utilizing low-cost, readily available software such as Microsoft FrontPage. Although not as scaleable as a custom store built with scaleable tools, this option is ideal for many store owners looking to get to the next level beyond template driven tools. Typical development costs will be between $10,000 and $50,000. Pros: You get a professionally designed online shopping site; you can easily maintain the site with limited PC expertise; your ongoing maintenance and running costs are low; you can add almost unlimited features to your store incorporating new technology as it becomes available. Because the hybrid option is well suited to many small store owners, the eRetail Association and eRetailNews created the eRetail+ service to provide a high quality professional framework for delivering custom store development to small retailers within a realistic budget. Summary That sums up the main options open to the small retailer. If you have the time, are familiar with HTML and like working with computer projects, go ahead and try one of the many online options such as Excite's Freetailer or a package solution such as ecBuilder. If you know a good web developer who has the time to develop your store (an oxymoron), ask him how much it would cost for him to develop and maintain a store for you. If you have the budget, get your store custom designed and budget for outsourcing the ongoing maintenance, or bring on board your own in-house team to maintain the store and continue development. If you lack the budget for a high-end store, but like the flexibility that comes with a custom developed solution, utilize a hybrid professional development approach. Remember: Stick to your knitting - you probably run a retail store because you are good at it. Time spent in pursuit of online store development takes you away from you core competency. That said, make sure you, or your merchandisers, will have the ability to easily merchandise your online store. After all, you wouldn't let a computer programmer dress your shop window would you? To check out eRetail Services, click here FREE NEWSLETTER, click here | 