What should you charge for an e-commerce website integration project?
July 2, 2022
I got this question put to me recently:
I’m wondering what a person should charge for an ecommerce website integration project?
I’m trying to help someone with a rental business go from a generic form ordering on their site, to a professional shopping cart that works with rentals.
I’ve researched lots of options, and I can see I can figure out a solution with shopify, square, or some online booking software.
My question is regarding price. I know my bottleneck is going to be customizing a new site, or customizing a store site to match their old site. I’m wondering if you have any general suggestions on what to charge someone if I just make their site work with some software, or alternatively if I do that and have to custom design a new site or a shopping cart site.
I have thought it’s possible I might have to hire someone else to do site design or customizations, and I wonder if you can recommend anyone I can hire if I’m not able to do this myself.
The simple answer to this (likely) less than simple job:
- First thing you do, is figure out whether a 3rd party solution like Shopify, Square etc … can in fact do the job.
- Remember the top 3 rules of code: reuse, reuse and reuse. Don’t write code unless you have to.
- IF you can’t get a 3rd party solution to work, then you have to build at least part of it from scratch.
- When figuring out the answer to #1, you shouldn’t spend too much time on this … unless you are getting paid to figure this out. So, do maybe 15 minutes of research to see if you can use (for example,) Shopify, and then quote the client on that integration cost.
- If you follow what I teach in the Complete Freelance course, you should be able to figure out a price that you can safely quote.
- If you can’t do some parts of the job, then hire someone who can, and you take care of the aspects that you can do, while managing the project.
Hope that helps!
Stefan
I teach people how to be pro developers. unclestef.com
