Budget ecommerce websites - how good are they?

A few years ago everyone believed that starting a web-based business would become as cheap and easy as cutting the grass. According to most people, that never happened. Design agencies still charge a few thousand pounds for a basic web site and will happily tell you the first rule of e-business: build it and they won’t come. Successful search engine optimisation requires expert insight - and expert fees.

However, there are a growing number of companies claiming that all this can be done on a shoestring – often for a few hundred pounds. Itscoldoutside (www.itscoldoutside.com) is one such company. A leading provider of DIY web solutions, it offers a branded, e-commerce enabled web site for £299. For a further £399, it will also put your site on the first page of results on 25 major search engines.

It sounds too good to be true and many new media agencies would argue that it is. KD Web (www.kdweb.co.uk) is a London based agency, providing a full service suite including web sites, search engine optimisation and hosting to small and medium size businesses. “If you don’t have dedicated professionals designing your site, it will show and you will lose business,” says Managing Director Don Jacobs. “Do you really want to show the world a web site that’s similar to 5000 others?”

While some DIY packages can seem a little generic, Itscoldoutside offers a tailored design for every client that can’t find a suitable one from the pre-set sample of 400. “We realise every business wants a unique site and we make sure they get one,” says Sales Manager Michael Demartiis.

Don Jacobs persists: “A key goal of marketing is to raise and differentiate your profile from those of your competitors. That's awfully hard to do if your site looks and feels even a bit like theirs.”

While design is not a subject for brief debates, search engine optimisation is a more clinical matter. Itscoldoutside’s £399 deal is designed to put your site on the first page of results in 25 major search engines, under 10 search terms, within 8 weeks. There’s no guarantee that they will succeed, but success rates are reportedly very high and there’s a full refund if the promise isn’t delivered. Ongoing optimisation costs a minimal £29.99 per month.

In comparison, KD web takes a more traditional, tailored approach and charges £1,500 per year for its optimisation service. The price is higher, but they claim a 100% success rate in placing clients in the top ten on google and Yahoo rankings.

Each thread of the argument tends to lead to price and value. Itscoldoutside would say that it offers the same for less. KD Web would insist that it creates far more value, for little more cost. Unquestionably, KD Web has an excellent portfolio and can design a great site for a competitive fee. It’s also clear that Itscoldoutside provides an extremely efficient service of a very respectable calibre.

If you’re launching your first venture and want to test the water quickly, without plundering your budget, a DIY package makes great sense. If you want to improve your existing site, or a few thousand pounds just isn’t an issue, a traditional agency may be more suitable.

While design houses will always criticise DIY web sites, the low cost model does deliver on some of the fundamental early promises of the internet: it’s cheap, easy and fast - democracy at work.