How much does an eshop cost? This is one of the most common questions posed by prospective clients and sought after by internet users interested in acquiring their own online store.

The truth is that there isn’t a predefined answer to this question, as the final cost of an eshop is determined by several factors that a company cannot know without a detailed discussion with the prospective client.

In this article, we will examine the usual prices for constructing an eshop in the Greek market, as well as all the factors that determine the cost.

Eshop Construction – Price in the Greek Market

For the construction of a “typical or most common” eshop in the Greek market, you will need to pay from €800 to €5000. Of course, there are online stores that can cost even tens of thousands of euros, but in this case, they belong to large brands with complex functions, special external connections, custom design, tens of thousands of products, and certainly do not represent the norm.

When we say ‘typical eshop,’ we mean online stores for small to medium-sized and relatively large businesses, excluding projects for very large enterprises that we mentioned earlier.

The majority of Greek businesses that want to acquire an online store belong to the first category. Therefore, in this article, we will look at the factors that play a role in whether the final cost will be closer to €800 or €5000 or somewhere in between.

Factor 1: Method of Eshop Construction

The first and probably most important factor in determining the price of an eshop is the method of construction.

There are two dominant methods for building an online store:

Construction using a ready-made CMS platform such as WordPress, Magento, Prestashop (and several others).
Custom CMS construction by the company that will build your eshop.

The CMS (content management system) is the administrative program used to implement the functions that shape your eshop while also serving as the tool to ‘upload’ content and organize it on your website.

If your eshop is built with a custom CMS and not with a ready-made management environment such as WordPress/WooCommerce, Magento, etc., its price will definitely start from an amount above €5000 and can greatly exceed this figure, as developers will need multiple hours to write code and construct it from scratch.

Method of Construction Preferred by Most Greek Businesses

Fortunately, for most Greek businesses, there is no need to resort to custom construction, as they can create attractive and functional eshops with very good performance using a ready-made platform such as WooCommerce, thus saving significant amounts. The truth is that most Greek businesses resort to creating eshops with WordPress and Magento.

At WebOS, we build eshops with both ready-made CMS and custom CMS according to the needs of each client, what they want to achieve, and the budget they have.

Factor 2: Eshop Design Method (Graphic Design)

The second most important factor that determines the cost of your eshop is the design method. There are 3 dominant ways to design an e-shop:

Use of a ready-made design template with little or no modifications.
Use of a ready-made design template with custom modifications.
Creation of a custom design for the website.

As in construction, if you choose a completely custom design by web and graphic designers, you should expect the overall cost to increase significantly as work hours will increase substantially.

On the contrary, the first case, namely using a ready-made design template (from the thousands available) with little or no modifications by developers and designers, is the only way to minimize costs and achieve the lowest price, starting from €800 to €1500 depending on the case. However, even in this case, it is not certain that the final price will remain so low, as it may increase due to factors that we will see later.

The second design method is a middle ground for businesses that do not want to have an eshop exactly identical to the design template (and probably with other businesses) but also do not want to ‘go overboard’ financially by opting for a completely custom design. Thus, the eshop design is based on a design template with enough custom modifications according to the client’s ‘wants’ and the recommendations of the web designer.

Preferred Design Method by Most Greek Businesses

From our experience, the second method is the most popular among Greek small and medium-sized businesses that want to acquire an eshop with a unique design without spending a fortune. Large and very large businesses mostly choose custom design but with CMS utilization – open-source software construction, as the additional cost is not a problem for most of them.

Factor 3: Content Creation & Import into the Eshop

Another factor that may increase the construction cost is who will be responsible for creating and ‘uploading’ all the content to the website.

For example, will the eshop’s texts be written by the client or will they be taken care of by a professional copywriter? If the website is multilingual, will the translations be prepared by the client or by a professional translator?

The products and their descriptions will be entered by the client or will the web developers handle the import? Will the product listing be done manually or in bulk?

Bulk import of products is a very good solution that reduces time, but let’s not forget that when products are entered manually one by one, they can be much better and more effective in terms of SEO.

Someone might think that the product entry is included in the initial price of construction, but certainly it is not, as each eshop has a different number of products. Another online store with 50 products, another one with 600, and another one with 20,000. Each case requires a different approach, construction method, and product listing method.

Factor 4: Extra Applications that Increase the Price of the Eshop

As we mentioned, the cost of implementation of an e-shop is determined by many factors related to the real needs of each business.

If the business uses some Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, it may need online integration with it so that products can be easily listed, the inventory and availability can be updated for each product, prices can change automatically, etc. The method of integration is an additional cost factor that can be small or quite significant.

Another business may want to connect its eshop with its suppliers to automatically pull their products. The implementation and integration method may vary case by case, and of course, the additional cost will be greater or smaller accordingly.

In addition to these, usually extra charges apply for connection with platforms like Skroutz or Best Price, connection with courier services, etc.

Factor 5: SEO to Rank High on Google

Just like in the case of content creation and entry by developers, in the case of SEO work by digital marketers, additional work hours will be added to the project, resulting in an increase in the final price of the eshop.

If you are not familiar with what SEO is, read about it here.

The cost of SEO work can be charged upfront along with the charge for building the eshop or as monthly tasks where it will be charged as a separate digital marketing support service. In any case, the role of SEO work is crucial and is one of the key factors to increase the visibility and sales of your eshop. That’s why the overwhelming majority of Greek businesses that create an online store in recent years invest in organic promotion through SEO.

Factor 6: Experience

Of course, our list would not be complete without mentioning the factor of experience and specialization that a company or developer has.

Some companies have built thousands of eshops, including very demanding projects of high difficulty. While other companies may be taking their first steps and relying on young web developers. Of course, it’s not bad to trust a new company that may have lower prices. Nor does it mean that the final result will not be very good.

Simply, the years of experience provide an additional assurance that if a problem arises in the construction and design process, it can be addressed promptly, that the project will be completed faster, and that the company will have done what is necessary for the eshop to be attractive, functional, efficient, and satisfying in all areas. Of course, experience or the reputation of a company is not enough to guarantee the above, as proper organization and customer-centricity are also important.

Naturally, experience and a strong brand name, as in all fields, increase the implementation value.

At WebOS, we have over 10 years of experience in creating hundreds of eshops of various categories and requirements. We specialize in building eshops with WordPress and WooCommerce, integrating them with ERP, and organically promoting them through search engines, providing full SEO packages so that those who do not know it can find it and “sell” by converting visitors into customers.

How much does an eshop cost? and what determines the price