Custom eCommerce Development

What is custom eCommerce development?

Custom eCommerce development is a process of building a unique, tailor-made eCommerce website to fit the specific needs of your business. The process involves planning, designing, and coding a complete eCommerce solution.

Why build a custom eCommerce website?

Building a custom eCommerce website provides a unique and engaging shopping experience for customers, meets the specific needs of your business, and can have a lower total cost of ownership in the long run.

There are no limits on what you can do if you go custom. Want to add VR and cryptocurrencies to your online store? No problem.

As you can see, this flexibility can give you a competitive edge.

And it can be worth it because the eCommerce industry is getting more and more competitive:

In 2021, retail eCommerce sales amounted to approximately 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide, according to Statista.

This figure is forecast to reach 7.4 trillion dollars by 2025.

Let's look at some of the key benefits of custom eCommerce websites:

Unique shopping experience

A custom eCommerce website is the best way to provide a unique and engaging shopping experience for your customers.

With a custom platform, you can control every aspect of the user experience, from the design and layout of your site to the functionality of your checkout process.

Complex business needs

If your business has specific needs that can't be met by an off-the-shelf solution, then a custom eCommerce platform is the way to go. For example, if you need to integrate with third-party systems or offer complex B2B features, then a custom platform will give you the flexibility to do so.

The low total cost of ownership

In the long run, a custom eCommerce platform could have a lower total cost of ownership than an off-the-shelf solution.

Keyword: could.

The pricing model of an off-the-shelf is based on your transaction volume. As your business grows, your costs will increase.

So it's all about identifying the break-even point.

For example, a business with annual sales between $20 and $500 million can expect to pay an annual licensing fee of between $200,000 and $700,000.

On the other hand, with a custom platform, you pay for the development once. From there on, you just pay for maintenance. So your costs will stay the same even as your business grows.

What are some popular features of custom eCommerce websites?

Here are some of the most popular website features that make businesses decide to go custom:

Omnichannel Commerce

Omnichannel commerce is providing a shopping experience that is easy to use, no matter what channel you are using. This includes shopping in stores, online, and on mobile devices.

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality helps customers to make buying decisions from anywhere, anytime. For example, you can see how a chair would look in your living room or how a pair of glasses would look on your face.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

AI/ML is important for eCommerce businesses because it can help personalize recommendations, customer service, and search functionality. AI can help you understand how consumers shop online beyond just demographics and purchase history.

Personalization

Showing relevant products and content to customers is important for keeping them engaged with your site. Custom eCommerce development can help you personalize the shopping experience for each customer.

Checkout Process

The checkout process is one of the most important aspects of your eCommerce website. A custom platform gives you the flexibility to tailor the checkout process to your specific business needs, including using third-party payment processors and shipping providers.

Search engine optimization

Many online shops rely on organic traffic from search engines to generate sales. If you want to optimize your website for search engines, then a custom eCommerce platform is the way to go. With an off-the-shelf solution, you're limited to the features and functionality that the vendor provides. But with a custom platform, you can tailor your site specifically for SEO.

Multi-country and multi-language support

If you want to sell to customers in multiple countries or offer your site in multiple languages, then custom eCommerce development will give you the most flexibility. In particular, you'll need to consider things like taxes, shipping, and currency conversion.

Development process

The custom software development life cycle involves the following stages:

• Discovery: The first stage of the project. The development team gets to know your business goals, target audience, and existing processes. Based on your needs, they create a product roadmap and project timeline.
• Prototyping: Helps you visualize the future product and get feedback from stakeholders in the early stages.
• Design phase: The UX/UI designer creates mockups of the eCommerce websites. It's intertwined with the prototyping phase.
• Development: The development team writes code, connects integrations, and creates database structures.
• Quality Assurance: Testers make sure the site is working as expected.
• User acceptance testing: The final confirmation from stakeholders the website meets all the requirements.
• Launch: Your online store is ready for customers.

Pros

Flexibility

Flexibility is the biggest advantage of building a custom eCommerce site over going with an existing platform.

Essentially, you can build whatever you imagine.

Here are some examples where flexibility is crucial:

• Complex multi-channel commerce: If you have complex selling channels with B2C and B2B rules.
• Highly regulated industry: You must abide by laws.
• Freedom to choose: You can integrate with any software you want, not just software offered by a vendor.

No license fees

Most of the eCommerce platforms have a monthly license fee plus a percentage on each sale.

For example, if you do more than $800,000 per month with Shopify Plus, they will charge you $2,000 fixed plus an additional 0.25% of online store sales per month.

Remember, pricing could always change.

Longevity & Brand protection

What if Shopify goes out of business?

With a custom solution, you don't have to worry about such things. You own your website and, as long as it's maintained, it should run fine for many decades.

The stability of ownership increases the value of your business and allows you to protect your brand.

Cons

Upfront cost and effort

Building a custom eCommerce store has a lot larger upfront cost. On the other hand, SaaS eCommerce platforms, such as BigCommerce, have zero upfront costs.

On top of that, developing a custom eCommerce solution takes months of focus that could be spent elsewhere.

Time to market

eCommerce platforms have a lot faster time to market compared to custom eCommerce solutions.

For example, BigCommerce claims 90% of BigCommerce Enterprise clients launch in under 90 days.

Maintenance

As we discussed in the Costs section, maintenance costs can range from a couple of hundred dollars to thousands of dollars a month.

Plus, your team needs to take care of logs, hosting, certificates, and other operational tasks.

Integrations

Even when you decide to build a custom eCommerce solution, it doesn't mean you have to build everything from scratch.

You can still take advantage of existing solutions and platforms, such as eCommerce CMS, CRM, and ERP systems.

With a help of an integrations specialist, you pick which integration makes the most sense for your online business.

Some of the most popular integrations for eCommerce businesses are:

• Payment processors (e.g., PayPal, Stripe)
• Shipping providers (e.g., UPS, FedEx)
• Accounting software (e.g., QuickBooks, Xero)
• Analytics platforms (e.g., Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics)
• Live chat and customer support software (e.g., Zendesk, LiveChat)
• Conversion rate optimization software (e.g., Optimizely, VWO)
• Email marketing platforms (e.g., MailChimp, Constant Contact)

Technologies for Custom eCommerce Development

Even if you are not technical, it's good to understand the eCommerce technology involved in custom eCommerce development. This will help you understand how much your project will cost and how easy it will be to maintain your site in the future.

You don't want to build your site on a technology that is going to become obsolete in a few years.

A custom website involves a backend, frontend, and database.

Backend

The backend is the brain behind the website. It's responsible for all the logic and processes that happen behind the scenes.

The most common backend languages are:

• PHP,
• Java,
• Python,
• Ruby,
• C# (.NET)

Frontend

The frontend is what the users see and interact with. It's responsible for the design and user experience of the website.

The most common frontend technologies are:

• HTML,
• CSS,
• JavaScript (React, Vue, Angular)

Database

A database stores all your data. This can be anything from product information to customer data.

The most common database technologies are:

• MySQL,
• Microsoft SQL
• MongoDB,
• PostgreSQL,
• Oracle Database