The average cost of developing and launching an enterprise e-commerce web site is $1m, according to a Gartner Group report. That cost, a whopping 79% of which is spent on labor, is expected to increase by 25% per year over the next two years. Survey participants said they found every stage of the process, from time and money to the hiring of professional services firms, more complicated than they had expected. Regardless of whether they spent less than $350,000 or more than $2m, not one participant claimed to finish on budget. The average site took five months to complete, although some took as long as a year. Most corporations used two or more external firms, usually including one nationally recognized media firm and one local systems integrator. Building an e-commerce site is a definite requirement for any midsize to large enterprise that intends to remain competitive during the next two to five years, said research director Roy Satterthwaite. One of the challenges, however, is that today’s state-of-the-art e-comer site will become outdated in just a few months if the back-end connections and interactive applications do not keep pace with the new technologies that are being developed.
