Truffle Shuffle has generated £70,000 from its mobile website costing £200. The company said it was originally deterred from investing in a mobile strategy by the £10,000-£30,000 price tag quoted by agencies to build its m-commerce site.

The online apparel company refused to pay what they described as exorbitant costs and opted instead to base their design on an early ‘90s strategy for a website, and develop it in-house.

The company, which is an online retail store selling popular culture themed t-shirts and gifts, spent £200 on building an m-commerce site after hiring a university student who built it in three weeks aided by Econsultancy’s Mobile Best Practise Guide. The site’s ease of use, including fully customisable payment pages, have led to £60,000-£70,000 revenue for the brand.

“We were quite shocked at the price to develop the technology for an m-commerce site,” says Truffle Shuffle co-owner Pat Wood. “We just couldn’t justify the money on a risk. We thought ‘could we do a rudimentary version of it ourselves?’ And we found out it’s not as scary as you think.”

Their mobile site is a very basic, diluted version of the main website, with around 300x400 pixel display. Wood explains how with the addition of limited bandwidth for mobile sites it’s similar to developing for PCs in 1993/94.

 “We wanted the same information that was on the site, with thumb nailed images, product description, a visible, simple, checkout and a way to store card details. This means that it takes ten presses of the screen to checkout, and the T-shirt is on the doorstep the next day.”

Wood also points out how social media is integral to his online business.“Facebook is my storefront to see how people view the business,” he says. Part of its strategy is to target commuters by driving traffic through Facebook status updates to their mobile website which covers every device platform.

“It doesn’t need to cost the earth - I’m the idiot who sold one million t-shirts online. If I can do it, it must be easy to do,” says Wood.

caroline@mobilesquared.co.uk