That is an honest testimonial.

Which is why, I always say you always need to ask about the company, their process and see if they're honest with you. Especially when it comes to the design and development. Those who don't say they use pre-made templates want you to think they design their own so can charge you higher.

maybe this is out of topic..

i read from joomla malaysia forum

the company who's in charge of this webpage development
this webpage --> www.moa.gov.my
charge rm98k for the whole system.

n its a joomla system.

flash for the wholepage would be quite heavy too load isnt it

best way to develope ecommerce site is to use ready made software like oscommerce, joomla, zencart, drupal and so on.

Pay for the integration and ready made template. That also will cost more than rm2000. Customized template will even be more expensive (at least 2000 more). Compare monstertemplate's unique price and you will know.

Those who charge so cheap like RM500 are those who don't know what they are doing. Cause there are also other things to implement in ecommerce website like shopping cart, payment gateway, SEO, search engine, product DB design and so on.

Please understand what your pay is what you get. Get professional freelance designer. Not students trying to earn some money. They are spoiling the already bad market for designers.

Dude...it's a government project. Anyway, those in the industry will know when you're dealing with the government or MNCs you'll price your product upto 3-5 times more (10 times even) for work to be done. There are seen and unseen variables to why you want to charge high. Though I'm saying this from a non-greedy POV.
Exactly. Don't know what they are listening, seeing and understanding (or have to understand).

Anyway, back on topic is what I've been observing in the market thus far.

E-commerce can be really affordable. Even without knowledge to setup an e-commerce shop, you can pay as little as RM500-1500+/- to setup a reliable e-commerce shop with a pre-made template. The figures would be something like this:

RM 0 - Open source e-commerce software
RM 500+ - Installation/Integration of e-commerce software and design
RM 300 - Pre-made template from TemplateMonster and etc. (got cheaper but RM300 makes it more flexible)
RM 500+ per month - Payment Gateway (local)

Total there already is RM1300 with a recurring monthly cost. So like I said, +/- you can setup an e-commerce for less than RM1500. But end of the day, you should not expect to have other funky ideas you might've seen on other websites. Because it'll only increase your setup cost - doh!

Also, instead of making the e-commerce layout totally different. Focus more on your brand (logo). The brand is what will be established between you and your customers. Open source options like Magento now have incorporated good user experience during development therefore user-friendliness of an e-commerce platform is almost guaranteed.

So invest smartly.