Buying and selling of goods and services has taken a different toll since the past decade. Several entrepreneurs have taken the bold step in taking their business online and examples of these type of businesses are Amazon, Microsoft, Domino’s, amongst others.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in 2020 has caused business managers in Nigeria to place more value on using websites to promote their sales. Before taking a leap at e-commerce, it is important to evaluate the cost of building it from scratch.
Building a fully functional and responsive e-commerce website in 2025 cost between #350,000 to #900,000 if entrepreneurs employ the service of a freelancer.
The estimate covers the overall cost of launching the web platform from the purchase of a website name, hosting plan, SSL certificate, business registration, etc.
This blog post will expose the market price of developing an e-commerce website and the cost of maintaining it.
Concept Of Ecommerce Web Development
E-commerce websites were introduced to help businesses market and sell their products or services through the use of web platforms.
These types of websites act as a connecting link between buyers and sellers. Buyers can manage their orders, and keep tabs on shopping history, while sellers can interact with customers, process orders, publicize, and reach a larger audience.
E-commerce websites also help business owners understand their customers’ likes and dislikes through website analytics. This allows business owners to better understand market demand and, in turn, use it to develop their businesses.
Historically, e-trade was widely adopted in Nigeria after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Research has shown that by 2030, 80% of business transactions will be completed online through the use of web applications. This explains why most businesses are jumping on the opportunity to have an online store.
Essential Factors affecting the Cost Of Ecommerce Website Development
Domain Name:
Every business that desires to have an online presence must creatively think of a domain name that effectively represents the brand in context. Thereafter, businesses must purchase their selected domain names from a reputable domain service provider.
The cost of purchasing a domain name for an E-commerce website is not static. However, Nigerian entrepreneurs can buy a domain name for as low as N35,000 for a .com domain extension while domain names with .com.ng or .ng extensions can be purchased for as low as N2,500 to N10,000.
Web Hosting:
Once an entrepreneur successfully purchases a domain name, the management of the domain becomes imperative. This is where the service of a web hosting service provider comes into play. Hosting brands helps entrepreneurs reach a larger audience in their country of residence and abroad.
The price of hosting plans in Nigerian currency ranges between N7,500 to N50,000/month for a shared hosting service.
However, do note that depending on the hosting service provider, the price of the hosting plan varies. Entrepreneurs can save more money when they purchase from specific hosting providers that provide free domain name registration.
Web Development Cost:
The performance of an e-commerce website is dependent on the professionalism of the web developer.
A developer is a person who utilizes one or more programming languages in customizing the design, enhancing audience visibility through SEO, and creating a responsive web platform.
Because the service of a web developer is essential to the website’s growth and performance, some developers are expensive to hire.
Some web developers charge as high as N1,200,000 to design an e-commerce website.
The key to saving money when hiring a web developer with proven track records and experience so you dont have to cough a second budget due to a first sub par ecommerce web design done by rookie.
Thereafter, send your request alongside your proposed budget on freelancing platforms such as Fiverr, and Upwork to get developers with the right skill set.
The budget for hiring a freelance web developer should be set below N400k to N1m and hiring an agency can cost around N600k to N2m, all depending on the project scope and working terms.
However, the design of a more complex website like Jumia.ng, Alibaba.ng, and much more may cost above N8m.
Web Content:
A web developer can only help create or customize your e-commerce website to your taste. The content on your E-commerce website is what enhances sales generation and keeps your visitors glued to your website. A professional content writer may charge you up to #30,000 to polish your product listings.
Payment Gateway:
Payment gateway is a must have feature for every e-commerce website, it allows your to receive payment from shoppers in realtime. Paystack and Flutterwave are one of well-known payment gateway providers in Nigeria with minimal charges on transactions. The likes of Kora pay and Wema Payment gateway recently joined the league.
Large e-commerce websites also have the option of subscribing to any of the monthly packages provided by these payment gateway providers.
The service of a web developer will be required in integrating any of the available digital payment gateway. However, entrepreneurs can also set it up themselves without any tech expertise.
Marketing:
Launching your e-commerce website will not generate sales instantaneously until you start spending money on advertisements. Entrepreneurs should focus more on digital ads than offline advertisements to reach a larger audience.
There’s no amount of marketing budget that will be too much to market your online store. However, the least amount to budget should be between #20,000 to #150,000 per month budget.
Customer Support Or Chatbot:
E-commerce websites can not be managed by a single individual. When the business starts recording growth, there will be a need to hire an assistant who will help interact with customers.
A Chatbot automatically replies to people’s requests, but there are cases where the services of a Chatbot may be unsatisfactory.
A customer support representative thus becomes inherent and the cost of purchasing both a live bot and a customer care representative should be between #30,000 to #70,000.
Ecommerce Website Cost Calculator In Nigeria
The following are rough estimates for starting a fully functional e-commerce website:
Payment Gateway (Flutterwave, Alatpay, Paystack)70,000
Payment Gateway (Flutterwave, Alatpay, Paystack)70,000
| Elements | Estimated Cost (in ₦ Naira) |
| Domain Name | 30,000 |
| ultrafast Ecommerce Hosting | 300,000 |
| Premium SSL Certificate (Comodo) | 300,000 per year (optional) |
| Web Developer Charge | 400,000 |
| Website Content | 80,000 |
| Payment Gateway (Flutterwave, Alatpay, Paystack) | 70,000 |
| International Payment Gateway (Shop pay, Klarna, Stripe, Paypal) | 400,000 |
| Product Uploads (1000 simple/variable products) | 400,000 |
| Marketing | 400,000 |
| Customer Support Or Chatbot | 100,000 |
Why is a premium SSL certifcate optional for a small business website?
For most small e-commerce websites, investing in a premium SSL which cost extra hundreds of thousands is nit necessary.
Your hosting provider will most likely offer you a free SSL certificate option from Let’s Encrypt or any other provider. This SSL is sufficient to exert your online shop’s security status and also give it strong encryption it needs for secured data transfer. Also, if you partner with a top payment gateway orivider to handle all payments on youe online shop, you get to enjoy the enterprise level security solution such as the PCI-compliant security measures of payment gateways, it meets industry standards and helps protect your customers data.
However, as your business grows, there will be need to build extra trust with your customers and one of the many ways you can do this is by having a premium SSL installed on your ecommerce web. This wll ofer them a warranty and also serve as visible trust indicators.
If you’re just starting your ecommerce buiness on a shoestring budget, a premium SSL certifcate is not mandatory, but rather an optional upgrade for well established businesses and corporations wanting to enhance credibility and upheld the confidence their customers have in them.
How To Design An E-commerce Website Yourself
E-commerce entrepreneurs with low financial budgets can evade hiring a website developer, some even decide to use turnkey platforms that allows to create a mini-carting website for around N5000 per month.
Using such a solution to build an ecommerce website or tending to the DIY pathways of trying to put it all together yourself might be daunting.
Using website themes and plugins to customize your websites may lead you into another failed experiment if you don’t have a good technical grip of what you are trying to do.
Even though you can buy your own domain name, purchasing a hosting service, and website themes, you might need the support of an experienced ecommerce web development agency. This is to make sure you pick the right solution for every of those elements.
For example, a shared hosting I often tell our client, especially when it’s from a local hosting provider might be non-performant for an ecommerce website which requires descent server resources to perform optimally.
Better to engage an Ecommerce web professional…
At Web Design Nigeria, we host our clients’s ecommerce website on managed cloud servers from Google cloud and AWS, each website has scalable access to server resources as required at any given time.
Entrepreneurs can also install their desired theme themselves without hiring a web developer. A simply search for the keyword “e-commerce website themes” and check all the designs available before making a purchase.
After installation on the WordPress-supported cPanel, your website will look professional. However, the service of a web developer may later be required to modify some settings or provide support on your website.
There is more to building a great ecommerce website than just installing WordPress with WooCommerce. There are aspects of ecommerce developments that requires precision and an experienced hand to handle.
For example payment gateway API integration, bulk ecommerce product uploads, REST API set up, all needs to be handled by a professional web developer for best results.
If you don’t want to go through all of these hassle and simply just focus on your business while you have a technical hand get at it for you, then we are you go-to-guy for functional ecommerce web design in Nigeria.
Additional Cost Of Building An E-commerce Website From The Scratch In Nigeria
Business Compliance:
Every e-commerce website must abide by the trade policy as stipulated by the Nigerian government or the government of the region it primarily targets. This means business owners are expected to legalize their business by having it registered with the appropriate bodies; get all the necessary license. In Nigeria, there is the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), and other bodies like SMEDAN certification, etc.
The current price of CAC certification is for business name registration is N25,000 while SMEDAN certifcate and TIN certificates can be applied for free. Id you operate in other professional industries such as Pharmacy, medical or engineering, extra license and compliance filing may be required to launch your ecommerce business.
Tax Payment:
E-commerce website must always pay their taxes to the regulatory bodies on a monthly basis. Tax payment varies depending on the type of business but entrepreneurs should budget between #5,000 to #15,000 monthly. You can also set up your payment gateway in a way that VATs are deducted for every sales from qualifying customers.
Logistics:
While setting up an ecommerce website if approached professionally will help you make more sales and grow your customer base, it is important to mind logistics. You need to start making plans for instances where some of your customers and their orders will have to be waybilled to them because they are outside the city or even outside the country.
Entrepreneurs must thus make necessary arrangements for both local and international logistics in other to easily convey customers orders in good time without breaking their trust.
For these, we will help you you to configure your websites shipping module and also integrate your logistics request for every order you get. We handshake your ecommerce website to some of the top logistic providers for ecommerce websites in Nigeria, such as Paveway logistics, Kwik Delivery, TopShip and Terminal Africa.
You can have your orders shipped both locally and internationally hassle-free using the services of the logistic partners once we have their solutions baked-in to your online shop.
The cost of logistics for an e-commerce company is undefined and can subject to change from time to time, so its important to work closely with your logistics partners to get timely information on the present-day cost of logistics.
Website Maintenance:
Once an E-commerce website is fully functional, entrepreneurs should bear the cost of maintaining and updating the website in mind. In most cases, website owners have to continually renew various services in other to aid the smooth running of their website.
The cost of maintenance may either be monthly or yearly, and your hosting or domain service provider determines maintenance costs.
Conclusion
In summary, having an e-commerce website has become one of the best methods of enhancing business growth. The cost of starting a basic e-commerce website has been highlighted in this publication thus helping entrepreneurs to effectively project the cost of starting and maintaining a e-commerce website. If you need an ecommerce for your business, do not hesitate to speak to us today on 08114900422 or send us your project brief via the contact page.
Need a website that actually grows your business?
Web Design Nigeria builds fast, SEO-ready websites for Nigerian businesses. Let’s talk about yours.