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Fred, who we recently met in our e-commerce Facebook group, operates a brick and mortar store. He is angling to start his own e-commerce site. “How much money did you spend on getting your store up and running and how long did it take to get a return on your investment?”, he asks.
Answer: It all depends on your market/target audience/turnover.
One participant responds, “I was on eBay for 8+ years before going to a website. I was sick of being a needle in a haystack and being eBay’s slave. You have to be constantly driving traffic to your website, but a website that will help compliment the retail world and the Internet world.”
“Regarding my own customized theme, I think I spent about $2K. The free ones now look good if you have good product photos, etc.,” she added.
More E-Commerce Suggestions
What is your retail business? Start by researching to see if similar businesses exist, what price points they sell at and if there is much interaction such as product reviews, forums/facebook chitchat about those items/services.
Professional web design fees can run about $10,000. The right agency will listen to your needs and help you choose the best technology for your company. ROI will depend on your industry, margins, and overall investment. E-commerce is a great business to be in and it will supplement, and probably overtake your in-store sales numbers.
The thing you need to know up front is that building the site is just the beginning. It takes either a lot of time or a cash investment to drive traffic and will for the foreseeable future. The days of “build it and they will come” are gone.

First of all, outline your goals

As a brick and mortar store, your local customers will be the first ones you tell about your site. Your site may both increase your total sales, and cannibalize a bit of your local in-store traffic. Consider offering free local delivery and you may find your local business greatly increases.
If you go online to expand your geography, what will your store bring to the web that isn’t already there? Is it a unique product, with distinctive packaging,
or some other “cool” factor?
Why Would Online Shoppers Prefer Your Site?
So, of course, you need a budget for marketing, advertising and search engine optimization. Ads bring immediate revenue. SEO takes time to simmer, but eventually brings you unpaid traffic (minus whatever you originally spent to earn it).
Then, know that if you’re only enhancing local service and you don’t wish to spend what it costs for development, you may want to do it alone, using a premade template (customized for your store) and the knowledge base for BigCommerce.
Consider our BigCommerce Startup Special for only $999. It includes everything you need to get up and running quickly, affordable and hassle-free.
As to how soon to expect a positive ROI? That is a question based on what you offer, what you can invest, and how hard you plan to work it. Just putting up a site, without a strategy and professional finish, will generate very little, and in some cases, nothing from people who don’t already know and trust your brand.
Build your online store with BigCommerce. 
Customize your site, manage shipping and payments, and list your products on Amazon, eBay, and Facebook with the #1 e-commerce platform.
Take a fully-featured BigCommerce Free Trial (no credit card required).

Just the tip of the iceberg! Here are two of the main advantages of BigCommerce for small business — the SaaS model and the extremely rich core, out-of-the-box features.

But there are many more BigCommerce benefits and considerations focusing on small and medium-sized business owners!

Setting up a new e-commerce business involves various hidden costs and challenges so making the right platform decision can mean the difference between a black or red number at the bottom of your balance sheet.

So what does BigCommerce do for the small owner?

It gives you the ability to build and manage your own website. The core software has everything you need to run a business without plugins beyond plugging in a payment gateway. That said, most businesses will add plug-ins that either add functions – like email marketing software, or popups to gather emails for email marketing, accounting software like Quickbooks … or plug-ins that offer richer feature sets than the built-in feature within the cart.

Creative marketing solutions also define BigCommerce. For example, the built-in product reviews can be enhanced by adding a third party program to make it easier for customers to review, offering coupons in exchange for reviews, and making reviews easily shared.

Benefits of the BigCommerce SAAS platform

SaaS (Software as a Service) based platforms offer the biggest ROI in terms of money and implementation time. Why Saas?

Reliability and tech support are the big advantages of choosing the BigCommerce SaaS platform rather than WordPress w/ WooCommerce.
Here are many more:

• 24/7 support
• Enterprise level servers with redundancy and backup.
• Far less downtime.
• BigCommerce management of all technical updates, site security, security patches, and PCI compliance.
  Important because small businesses can be vulnerable to hacking, DOD attacks, and non-compliance with PCI standards (which can cause loss of payment processing).
• Better “out of the box” toolset, and more robust API so you can adapt your online store to meet changing business needs.

“We chose BigCommerce because, for a very low fee every month, we got all the technology we needed to run our business and reach more customers.” – Jeff Conarko, CEO & Founder   BigCommerce Small Business Case Studies

Check out our BigCommerce StartUp Special Offer.

Or, find out for yourself! Take a fully-featured 14-day BigCommerce Free Trial (no credit card required). Click below. 

Merchants like yourself who are focused on content can now have a robust eCommerce experience by way of the BigCommerce plugin without ever leaving WordPress.
Introducing  BigCommerce for WordPress, a plugin that allows you to scale eCommerce further than ever before on WordPress.
With WordPress on the front-end, this new plugin frees up server resources from things like catalog management, processing payments, managing fulfillment logistics and more with BigCommerce on the back end.
Built to integrate seamlessly with WordPress, you get access to BigCommerce native e-commerce features from a single plugin, the ability to sell across multiple channels and marketplaces from a single location, and best of all, an embedded checkout experience that takes on PCI compliance and customer security on your behalf.
Benefits of Using eCommerce plus Content Solutions
The BigCommerce for WordPress plugin leverages the best aspects of both platforms. It allows WordPress to manage content and BigCommerce to manage eCommerce.

• Scalable eCommerce for WordPress
  Now you can continue to enjoy WordPress customization while pairing it with the most scalable SaaS e-commerce engine. Build complex catalogs, manage large volumes of traffic, orders and analytics. The plugin creates pages for your cart, checkout, account profiles, sign in, shipping & returns, gift certificates and order history.
• The key difference in our approach?
  You don’t need to install additional extensions to access e-commerce features. Enjoy many features, such as complex catalog support, global payment gateways, currency handling, taxation, shipping calculations, and channel management.
• Offload Backend Resources
  Processing orders and running your store will not affect the speed of your site. The plugin does the heavy commerce lifting.
• Let Us Handle PCI Compliances
  BigCommerce powers the full checkout experience, assuming the burden of PCI compliance for you.
• Many Payment Gateways
  BigCommerce has over 65 payment gateway integrations available out-of-the-box, serving 100+ countries and over 250 local payment methods.
• Scalable Product Catalogs
  BigCommerce is built for large, complex catalogs with up to 600 SKUs per product, and 250 product values for a single option.
• Multi-Channel Selling and Management
  With the BigCommerce platform, you have access within the control panel to sell across multiple marketplaces simultaneously, such as eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, Square and more! Save time and eliminate errors and overselling with bulk listing, automatic inventory syncing and unified order and fulfillment management.

BigCommerce versus WooCommerce

They’re both plugins and they both do commerce. But they are very different. This is the fundamental difference between the two:
BigCommerce – A single WordPress plugin that uses the BigCommerce tech stack for commerce activities.
WooCommerce –  A collection of plugins/extensions that use the WordPress host for commerce horsepower.
BigCommerce is taking what they do well at scale – commerce, and pairing it with a CMS that does content well at scale, WordPress.

Why Use a WordPress eCommerce Strategy?

WordPress provides the foundation for more than 30% of the world’s websites, many of which sell goods alongside their storytelling.
Why you would want this strategy for your brand?

1. Build community and customer lifetime value through your own website rather than through a marketplace like Amazon.
2. Achieve organic search visibility and decrease PPC costs.
3. Nurture customers through a longer buying cycle, especially suitable for more expensive products.
4. Build a brand with high customer lifetime value.

Contact Marcia Coffey, a BigCommerce Partner, to learn more about BigCommerce and how it can work for your business with WordPress.