E-Commerce Websites and Online Sales Platforms

Four things move the figure more than anything else: a ready-made theme versus a custom design, the size and complexity of the catalog, the number of integrations (payment, shipping, marketplaces, ERP) and the number of languages and currencies. A 100-product store on a ready theme and a multi-currency B2B store sit at opposite ends of the same service.

Read any range as a reference, not as a price list. The quote is built from your scope, and the platform subscription, gateway fees and ad budget are never part of it. The Website Cost Calculator gives you a first orientation before the call.

• Hosted-platform store, running cost: about $500–5,000 a year (market range)
• Semi-custom agency build: about $10,000–30,000 (market range)
• Purpose-built SMB store: about $15,000–50,000 (market range)
• Enterprise platform: $50,000–500,000 or more (market range)

ikas offers a free Start tier capped at 100 products, and paid tiers billed monthly; at August 2026 list prices they ran from roughly $70 to $234 a month, a figure that changes with exchange rates and plan updates, so check the current page before budgeting. The plan is chosen in the needs analysis from your catalog size and the marketplaces you sell on.

Processing fees are charged by the gateway on every sale and never appear on an agency invoice. The setup quote is a one-time figure for the agreed scope, with the support period stated next to it.

• To ikas: the monthly or annual subscription for the plan you choose
• To the gateway: a percentage plus a fixed fee per transaction
• To Master Web: one scoped setup quote, delivered in writing within one business day
• Never to us: ad budgets, which you pay to Google or Meta directly

Outside the quote are the platform subscription, gateway fees, paid apps, product photography, translation of product copy, ad budgets and ERP or accounting licenses. Whether bulk product data entry is part of the project is a scope decision, so it is stated explicitly in the quote rather than assumed.

Compare quotes on the same basis. Ask each vendor to list exclusions on the same page as inclusions; a cheaper quote that silently leaves out data entry, training or the shipping integration is not cheaper once the store has to go live.

• Included: theme or custom design, payment and shipping integrations, SEO setup, training
• Professional adds: marketplaces, Google Ads setup, social shops, stock sync, 1 year support
• Separate line items: subscription, gateway fees, apps, photography, translation, ads
• Stated per project: data entry scope, number of revision rounds, support period

The variable costs scale with sales: processing fees, shipping labels, marketplace commissions and returns. The fixed costs are the subscription, apps and the domain. Model both at your expected order volume before you choose a plan, because a higher subscription tier with a lower gateway rate can cost less once volume grows.

Shipping deserves its own line. Your carrier contract sets the rates, and the margin you keep depends on whether you charge shipping, offer a free-shipping threshold or build it into prices.

• Payment processing: about 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (market range)
• Platform fee with an external gateway: 0.5–2% (market range)
• Paid apps and add-ons: $60–1,200 a month depending on the stack (market range)
• Custom-store maintenance: 15–20% of the build cost per year (market range)
• Advertising: budget paid directly to Google or Meta from your own account

Gateway onboarding is the step most teams underestimate. As a market reference, payment processing setup takes 3–10 business days and legal pages 3–7 business days, so both start in week one, in parallel with design. First-time sellers on hosted platforms typically launch in 4–8 weeks when they handle everything themselves.

You receive a written schedule before the contract, with the dependencies on your side marked. If product data arrives late, the launch date moves with it; if it arrives early, the 7-day path is realistic.

• Ready-made theme: live within 7 days once product data and accounts are in
• Custom design: 2–4 weeks including design approval and integration testing
• Parallel tasks in week one: gateway application, carrier account, legal pages
• Market reference: gateway setup 3–10 business days

Needs Analysis covers your products, audience and sales channels and ends in the written quote and schedule. Store Design produces the theme setup or the custom design for approval. Integrations connect payment, shipping and, in the Professional scope, marketplaces and social shops, each tested with real transactions.

Launch & Training is the go-live itself plus panel training for the people who will run the store. The test order matters most: pay with a real card, refund it, print a label and check that stock drops; only then is the store ready to sell.

• Step 1: Needs Analysis, written quote and schedule
• Step 2: Store Design, sign-off on the design
• Step 3: Integrations, sign-off on a real-card test order
• Step 4: Launch & Training, sign-off on the live store

The product sheet is the biggest time saver. Bulk import from CSV or Excel is standard on ikas, so a clean spreadsheet uploads in minutes, while scattered data in emails and PDFs takes days. Who enters and cleans that data is written into the quote, so there is no surprise either way.

Policies need decisions, not perfection: delivery regions, shipping cost rules, return window and who pays return shipping. Those decisions feed the checkout settings, the legal pages and the carrier integration at the same time.

• Product sheet: name, SKU, price, stock, variants, category, description
• Images: product photos, logo, brand colors and fonts
• Documents: company registration for the gateway and carrier applications
• Access: domain registrar login or DNS control
• Decisions: shipping regions and rates, return window, payment methods

The migration itself follows industry practice: export and clean the catalog, run a test import on a staging store, map every old URL to a 301 redirect so rankings and bookmarks survive, and keep those redirects live for at least a year. Keep the old platform in read-only mode for about 90 days to answer questions about past orders.

Rankings are the quiet risk in any platform move. Category and product URLs change, so the redirect map is checked before launch and the first 30 days of search traffic are watched closely.

• Moves: products, variants, categories, customers, pages and blog content
• Confirmed per platform: order history, reviews, gift cards, subscriptions
• Protection: staging import, 301 map for every old URL, redirects kept for a year
• Fallback: old platform read-only for about 90 days

For a merchant the practical benefits are operational. There is no server to patch and no plugin stack to keep compatible, so the store does not break after an update. The drag-and-drop panel lets your team manage products, campaigns and orders without a developer, and marketplace orders arrive in the same panel as store orders.

The partnership matters at setup time. The agency configures the theme or custom design, the integrations and the SEO architecture, and trains your team, while the subscription stays a direct contract between you and ikas.

• Hosted platform: hosting, updates and SSL included in the subscription
• Ready connectors: payment gateways, shipping, marketplaces, social shops
• Drag-and-drop panel for products, stock, campaigns and orders
• Official partner setup: design, integrations, SEO architecture, training

Cost structures differ. As a 2026 market range, Shopify plans run $19–399 a month plus a 0.2–2% fee on third-party payments, and a local gateway is still needed to accept cards in Turkey. WooCommerce has no subscription, but hosting, security, backups and plugin updates are your responsibility or a maintenance agreement.

ikas bundles the pieces a Turkish or cross-border seller otherwise assembles from plugins: bank virtual POS and PSP integrations, marketplace connectors and e-invoice integration. Master Web builds stores on ikas; if another platform fits better, we say so in discovery.

• ikas: local gateways, installments, marketplaces, e-invoicing, hosted
• Shopify: hosted, large app ecosystem, $19–399 a month (market range)
• WooCommerce: self-hosted, full control, you own updates and maintenance
• Decision inputs: target countries, marketplaces, custom rules, in-house skills

Cost is the counterweight. As a 2026 market range, a purpose-built SMB store runs $15,000–50,000 and an enterprise build $50,000–500,000 or more, with maintenance at 15–20% of the build per year and a full platform migration taking 3–8 months. Most brands do better staying hosted and adding custom pieces around the edges.

A useful test: list the five workflows that make you money and mark which ones need a workaround on the hosted platform. If the workarounds cost staff time every day, custom development pays; if they are occasional, an app or an integration is enough.

• Triggers: ERP price lists, B2B approvals, custom checkout rules, high volume
• Enterprise scope: custom development, ERP integration, B2B module, reporting
• Market range: SMB custom store $15,000–50,000; enterprise $50,000–500,000+
• Migration time: 3–8 months for a full platform move (market range)

Setup involves mapping your categories and attributes to each marketplace, deciding which products are listed where, and choosing whether prices follow the store or get a channel-specific markup to cover commissions. Shipping and invoicing then run from one place, so the team does not switch between seller panels.

Marketplace commissions, seller requirements and approval processes belong to each marketplace and are agreed between you and that marketplace. The integration handles the data flow; the commercial terms stay in your seller account.

• One catalog: product, price and stock managed once in the panel
• Automatic stock sync: a sale on one channel updates every channel
• Orders from all channels in one list for shipping and invoicing
• Channel pricing: optional markups to cover marketplace commissions
• Seller accounts, commissions and approvals remain between you and the marketplace

The setup gives the store a sound structure to grow from; it does not include monthly content, link building or rank tracking. Those belong to the SEO service, which is quoted separately and never comes with ranking promises. Search Console and Analytics are opened in your account and stay yours.

For a store the architecture decisions made at setup are the ones that are expensive to change later: category hierarchy, URL patterns, filter handling and product schema. Get those right before launch and the monthly work later compounds instead of repairing.

• Starter: titles and meta, clean URLs, sitemap, Search Console setup
• Professional: category and product architecture, structured data, speed
• Separate service: monthly SEO with content, links and reporting, 6-month minimum
• Accounts: Search Console and Analytics owned by you

The feed is where Shopping campaigns are won or lost: product titles, GTINs, images, prices and stock must match the storefront, or Merchant Center disapproves items. Setup therefore includes a feed check against the live store before the first campaign spends anything.

Ownership is simple. The Merchant Center and Google Ads accounts are opened in your name, Master Web works through manager access, and the management fee is invoiced separately from the budget, so the accounts, data and history stay with you if the engagement ends.

• Included in Professional: Merchant Center, product feed, conversion tracking
• Feed quality check: titles, identifiers, prices and stock matched to the store
• Separate service: campaign management, 3-month minimum, then month to month
• Your accounts: ad budget paid to Google directly, management fee invoiced separately

The connection uses a catalog feed, so price and stock changes in the panel flow to the shop without manual updates. Collections can mirror your store categories or be curated for a campaign, and products out of stock disappear from tags automatically.

Selling through the shop tab and advertising to shoppers are two different jobs. Pixel setup, retargeting and paid social campaigns belong to the social media advertising service, which runs in your own Meta Business account with the budget paid by you to Meta.

• Included in Professional: catalog sync to Meta, product tagging, shop tab
• Checkout on your store: orders, payments and customers stay in one system
• Automatic updates: price and stock follow the panel
• Separate service: Pixel, retargeting and paid social campaigns

Work in order of evidence. Check analytics for the step where sessions drop, then read the page as a first-time buyer on a phone: is the total shown before checkout, does the payment step load fast, do errors explain themselves? Roughly a fifth of abandonment is fixable through design alone, which is the part an agency can change quickly.

If traffic quality is the issue rather than the checkout, the fix sits in acquisition: product pages that do not match the ad or the search intent convert poorly. Conversion optimization is a named item in the Master Web Enterprise scope and can be quoted on its own for an existing store.

• Benchmarks: conversion 1–4%; cart abandonment 70.22% (Baymard)
• First fixes: guest checkout, shipping cost and date shown early, fewer fields
• Then: payment step speed, 3-D Secure return path, clear error messages
• Then: product page content, trust signals, returns policy visibility

Training covers the tasks your team will actually repeat: adding a product with variants and images, running a discount campaign, processing an order from payment to label, handling a return and reading the sales reports. Industry practice is a recorded session plus a short written guide, and the training scope is stated in the quote.

Design changes stay simple too. The drag-and-drop editor lets you update banners, homepage sections and campaign pages without touching code, while structural changes to the theme or new integrations go back to the agency.

• Daily tasks in the panel: products, variants, stock, prices, campaigns
• Orders: payment status, shipping labels, tracking, returns and refunds
• Content: banners, homepage sections and campaign pages in the editor
• Back to the agency: theme structure, new integrations, custom development

The first step is to locate the fault. A declined payment can sit with the gateway or the bank, a missing tracking number with the carrier API, and a broken checkout with the theme or an app update; the agency checks the integration layer first and tells you when the fault sits on the platform side, where the ticket goes to ikas.

Ask for response times and severity levels in writing in the support agreement, so you know what a store-down incident means in hours versus a cosmetic fix. Outside those hours, the panel, the gateway dashboard and the carrier portal remain available to you.

• Hours: Monday–Saturday 09:00–19:00 Istanbul time (UTC+3)
• Professional: 1 year technical support; Enterprise: priority business-hours support
• Starter: support period stated in the quote
• Triage: gateway or bank, carrier API, theme or app, platform (ticket to ikas)

Ask for three things in writing before the project starts: the store account opened in your company name, the domain registered to you with your own login, and a list of every third-party account created for the project (gateway, Merchant Center, Meta, apps) with you as the owner. That list is the handover document when a project ends.

Data portability completes ownership. Products, customers and orders can be exported from the panel as CSV files, so you keep a usable copy whether you stay on ikas, change agency or move platform later.

• Store account and subscription: in your company name, agency on staff access
• Domain: your registrar account, your login, agency only on DNS when needed
• Third-party accounts: gateway, Merchant Center, Meta and apps owned by you
• Data: CSV export of products, customers and orders at any time

The merchant account is opened in your company name and the integration is configured and tested by the agency with real-card transactions and refunds. Approval takes time, as a market reference 3–10 business days, which is why the application is filed in week one of the project.

Rates depend on volume, settlement speed and card mix, and installment payments carry their own fee tables. Faster settlement typically costs more; negotiating a longer settlement window is the simplest lever a growing store has on its rate.

• Gateways: Stripe, PayPal, iyzico, PayTR, bank virtual POS
• Standard pricing: about 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction (market range)
• Turkey: providers advertise 2.19–4.29%; single-payment credit cap 3.56% (market reference)
• Security: 3-D Secure on every card payment, 256-bit SSL on the store

Pricing rules are configured in the panel: flat rates, weight or dimensional-weight tables, free shipping above a threshold and cash on delivery where it is customary. A free-shipping threshold set just above your median order value is the most common way to lift average order size.

The delivery promise you show at checkout is legally binding in most markets: the US FTC 30-day rule for shipping, the EU 14-day withdrawal right for returns. Keep promised dates realistic and the returns workflow as simple as the purchase.

• Your contract: negotiated rates, pickup schedule, insurance, return terms
• Integration: labels from orders, tracking to customers, return codes
• Rules: regions, weight tables, free-shipping threshold, cash on delivery
• Law: US FTC 30-day shipping rule, EU 14-day withdrawal right

The practical path is platform templates adjusted by your lawyer, then placed and linked by the agency in the footer, the checkout and the consent banner. Legal text is your responsibility and your counsel signs it off; the store setup makes sure the right page appears at the right step and that consent is recorded before marketing cookies fire.

Checkout is where most compliance failures happen: a missing withdrawal notice, a pre-ticked newsletter box or terms that are not accepted before payment. The test order before go-live covers these steps as well.

• All markets: terms of sale, privacy notice, shipping and returns, cookie consent
• EU: pre-contract information, 14-day withdrawal right, opt-in consent
• Turkey: distance sales contract, KVKK notice, ETBİS registration
• US: CCPA notice and opt-out for California residents where thresholds apply

Plan the accounting link from day one. Once you cross the threshold, every order needs an e-invoice or e-archive invoice issued automatically, which is why ERP and accounting integrations are part of the Master Web Enterprise scope and can be added to smaller stores as a separate line item. Manual invoicing stops scaling after a few dozen orders a day.

Foreign-owned companies can register in Turkey and open a local merchant account; your accountant handles the tax side, the store side is the invoice integration and the correct VAT display at checkout.

• Registered business: required by gateways, carriers and marketplaces in practice
• Sole proprietorship: about 3–5 days to set up (market reference)
• ETBİS: mandatory registration for online sellers
• E-invoice: threshold around $10,000 gross sales at 2026 rates, effective 1 July next year

The honest comparison is about risk, not design. A store that looks finished but charges the wrong VAT, loses tracking numbers or ranks nowhere costs more than it saved. As an industry figure, AI coding tools cut production time 15–30%, while integration testing, QA and legal setup take the same hours as before.

A hybrid path works well: build the first version yourself, then have an agency audit the checkout, integrations, legal pages and SEO structure before launch. Master Web quotes that audit, or a full setup, in writing within one business day.

• AI or theme alone: fine for few products, no marketplaces, simple tax
• Agency value: integration testing, tax and legal setup, SEO architecture, checkout
• Industry figure: AI tools save 15–30% of production time, not the testing
• Hybrid: self-built first version, agency audit before launch

A workable method is AI draft, human edit, unique facts: let a model produce the first version, then add what only you know, such as dimensions, materials, fit, usage and returns conditions, and remove generic filler. Product and review structured data give search engines the facts in machine-readable form as well.

Translations deserve the same care. Machine-translated descriptions in a second language should be reviewed by a native speaker before they go live, because sizing terms, measurements and legal wording are where automatic translation fails first.

• Risk: duplicated manufacturer text, not the AI tool itself
• Method: AI draft, human edit, unique product facts, no filler
• Add structured data for products, prices, stock and reviews
• Review machine translations of sizes, materials and legal terms

Good store automation is scoped around repeated questions, which is why the first step is a review of your support inbox. A bot that answers the ten most frequent questions well beats one that attempts everything. Order lookups connect to the store data, so answers come from real order status, not from a script.

Consent comes first on messaging channels. WhatsApp notifications require opt-in and templates that follow the platform rules, and personal data shared with an AI model falls under GDPR and, in Turkey, KVKK; the setup minimizes what the model sees.

• Chatbot: order status, returns, size and stock questions, recommendations
• WhatsApp: order and shipping notifications, first response outside business hours
• Handoff: human takes over with the full conversation when the bot cannot resolve
• Compliance: opt-in consent, approved templates, data minimization under GDPR and KVKK

The honest version of the choice: with a small catalog, standard shipping and time to learn the panel, the direct route is enough and costs only the subscription. With marketplaces, custom design, a migration or B2B pricing, the partner route saves weeks and avoids the mistakes that are expensive to undo after launch, such as a weak category structure.

Partner status also means experience with the platform edge cases, which shortens integration problems. A free needs analysis tells you which route fits, and the written quote follows within one business day.

• Direct: you set up theme, data, gateway, carrier and integrations yourself
• Partner: brand design, integration setup and testing, migration, SEO architecture, training
• Either way: the ikas subscription is a direct contract between you and ikas
• Direct is enough when: few products, standard shipping, time to learn the panel

Live stores are the strongest evidence. Place a test order on a reference store, check the checkout on a phone and look at how categories and filters are built; that tells you more than a portfolio image. Master Web has delivered 850+ projects over 15+ years for clients in 20+ countries, and the references page lists work you can open.

Quotes mislead when scopes differ. Write both offers into one table with the same rows, add the costs each one leaves out, and compare the totals over two years, including subscription, support and maintenance.

• Scope: integrations listed, data entry stated, revision rounds counted
• Terms: support period and hours, account and domain ownership, exit terms
• Proof: live stores to test, comparable catalog size, references you can call
• Money: year-two costs, exclusions added back, same-scope comparison

Approvals are written, so nothing depends on a phone call: the design sign-off, the test order and the go-live confirmation are all recorded on the board. Support runs Monday to Saturday 09:00–19:00 Istanbul time (UTC+3), which covers the European day and US East Coast mornings.

Getting started is quick. Inquiries get a same-day reply, the needs analysis is free and the written quote follows within one business day. If you prefer to talk first, there is a US line at +1 (786) 612-9360 and WhatsApp at +90 532 655 00 95.

• Offices: Istanbul, Amsterdam, Miami Lakes (FL); English-speaking team
• Video calls for discovery, design reviews and training; shared board for approvals
• Support: Monday–Saturday 09:00–19:00 Istanbul time (UTC+3)
• Same-day reply; free needs analysis; written quote within one business day
• US line +1 (786) 612-9360; WhatsApp +90 532 655 00 95