How to Budget for Your E-Commerce Website: 5 Key Cost Factors

Your website isn’t just a website; it’s the backbone of your brand’s growth, conversions, and most importantly, customer experience. A poorly planned budget can lead to missed opportunities, so taking a strategic approach is key to ensuring long-term ROI. In this article, we’ll explore five critical factors to consider when budgeting for your next e-commerce website.

1. Platform & Scalability

Choosing the right platform for your new site is beyond crucial. We’re Shopify specialists, and Shopify offers a solid foundation with great scalable features but it’s worth considering that your business might need a Shopify Plus upgrade or custom development depending on what features and traffic volumes you’re expecting. Our rule of thumb is that if you’re making more than £100,000 / month in sales through your website, the benefits of upgrading to Plus most likely outweigh the costs.

Other features that are most commonly sought-after on the Shopify Plus menu is B2B selling, checkout customisations, enhanced discount complexity and internationalisation–but these really are down to you and your business' unique requirements. Feel free to get in touch if you would like to soundboard your situation.

We can say with confidence that Shopify is a great platform for brands; their 99.99% uptime guarantee, the flexibility around Themes, the App Store and headless capabilities make it a solid choice for businesses of all sizes.

2. Customization & Brand Experience

Probably the biggest choice that will affect budget is whether or not you’re powering your store with an off-the-shelf theme or building bespoke. We won’t go over that here as we’ve already written a blog post around the pros and cons of both approaches. But again, if you’re selling over £100,000 / month through your website, and you’re on Shopify Plus, a bespoke website is a no-brainer. Under that point, it’s specific to the requirements and trajectory of your business.

We can’t deny that customisation does require a larger upfront investment, but the long term benefits include; improved site speed and conversion rates, better AOV as well as complete freedom to build a strong brand identity that ultimately contributes to a higher CLV.

3. Third-Party Integrations

It’s easy to think about your website as a singular entity, but it needs to work seamlessly with your whole tech ecosystem; your email marketing platform, 3PL, advertising channels and third party apps. Whilst some of these things can be straightforward, others require custom API work, which does have an increase on development costs.

Saying that, these things should all be fairly straightforward no matter which Plan or Theme-approach you’re going for so no need to budget too heavily on development effort here –but you should understand the respective subscription costs and plans necessary on those platforms to support your business requirements.

4. Ongoing Maintenance & Performance Optimization

A lot of businesses focus only on the upfront development costs and overlook the ongoing maintenance that is required for maximising your websites performance; ultimately how much money it’s making for your business.

When you’re pulling together your budget, decide on whether or not you want to constantly work on the website or if you’re happy to “set and forget” for the most part. We’re big believers the continuous improvement philosophy and would recommend this to all businesses where the website is the primary sales channel. This normally looks like a monthly retainer with a freelancer or agency, but larger brands may have in-house development resources they can lean on.

Whichever way you go, it’s essential to work with a web developer who continues to support you beyond just the initial build, someone that understands your evolving business goals and ensures your website continues to meet your needs as you scale. Constantly keeping an eye on your website’s performance is also key to ensuring it’s working as hard as it can be. Check CRO, SEO and site speed metrics regularly to make sure “site rot” doesn’t set in that can silently strangle your sales over time.

5. Marketing & SEO

A new website should always compliment your marketing strategy. So if you’re buying “off-the-shelf" make sure you’re considering a site speed and SEO audit when the site goes live as a minimum. Think about other tools you may need too, such as additional analytics beyond GA4 and Shopify, heatmapping, AB testing, session recording and more. A well thought out and structured website will make sure you keep your search rankings as well as provide you with the data you need for ongoing optimisation. When you invest in SEO and analytics from the outset, you’re making sure that you’re attracting high-intent traffic, know what’s converting on your site, and ultimately driving sustainable revenue growth.

Final Thoughts

Budgeting for a new e-commerce website isn’t just about the upfront cost—it’s about ensuring long-term success. By considering these five factors, you can build a website that delivers a strong ROI and supports your business growth. Ready to discuss your project? Get in touch with us today.