In today’s digital era, eCommerce is rapidly revolutionizing the way businesses operate, offering vast opportunities for growth and expansion. Off-the-shelf eCommerce platforms provide ready-made solutions for businesses to quickly launch their online stores, catering to various customer needs with minimal customization. However, for companies seeking a tailored approach, eCommerce development plays a crucial role. Custom eCommerce solutions enable businesses to create unique, scalable, and feature-rich online stores that align perfectly with their specific business and branding goals. Businesses are thus hiring experts in eCommerce development with global exposure to build innovative custom eCommerce solutions that enable them to increase operational efficiency, enhance user experience, improve overall performance, and gain a competitive advantage in the ever-evolving digital marketplace.
Goodfirms Roundtable is a series of podcast interview discussions where leading industry experts, CEOs, and people holding prominent positions in IT services and software companies share their valuable experiences and opinions on various topics. The podcast discussion becomes a rich source of information for budding entrepreneurs willing to start their businesses.
Goodfirms recently had a chance to interview Serge Guzenko, CEO, Wezom. In the following podcast discussion, Serge shares his knowledge and views about the importance of developing tailored eCommerce platforms for businesses.
Wezom is a US based custom software development company that specializes in broad-spectrum digital services, including web development, mobile app development, eCommerce development, custom software development, data science consulting, maintenance & support, and more. The company enables businesses of all sizes and across versatile industries to solve their issues, respond to market needs, transform their internal operations, embrace the latest digital technologies and trends, and grow uninterruptedly. Wezom believes that businesses must innovate to stand out and create a mark in the global market amidst immense competition. The company thus builds tailored solutions for every client based on their business goals and target customers, providing them new opportunities beyond the confines of readymade software solutions.
The Podcast Discussion Highlights the Following:
- Understanding the key differences between custom eCommerce solutions and off-the-shelf platforms; and how can businesses choose between these?
- Steps to identify the need for a custom eCommerce solution. What signs should businesses look for?
- Critical components of a thorough needs analysis for a custom eCommerce solution. How businesses can ensure covering all the necessary aspects.
- How to achieve a balance between current business needs and future scalability when planning a custom eCommerce solution.
- How does Wezom prioritize features during the development process? What strategies does the company use to manage "feature creep", budget, and timeline?
- How important is choosing the right technology stack for custom eCommerce development, and what factors influence this decision?
- The importance of seamless integration with existing CRM, ERP, and inventory management systems in the success of a custom eCommerce solution.
The Podcast Also Covers These Crucial Points:
- How Wezom approaches testing and quality assurance for custom eCommerce solutions; and, what types of testing are crucial?
- Strategies to handle seamless data migration from an old system to a new custom eCommerce solution, and potential pitfalls to be avoided.
- How does Wezom measure the success of a custom eCommerce solution post-implementation? What metrics or KPIs should businesses use?
- How can businesses future-proof their custom eCommerce solutions to adapt to evolving market trends?
- What skills must developers and organizations acquire with the rising trend of AR, voice search, and chatbots in eCommerce solutions?
What Are the Key Differences Between Custom eCommerce Solutions and Off-The-Shelf Platforms? Why Might a Business Choose One Over the Other?
Serge explains the key differences between custom eCommerce solutions and off-the-shelf platforms. Off-the-shelf eCommerce platforms are commonly available at low entry cost with possible subscription fees. These provide general features with limited customization and thus typically have scalability limitations too. On the other hand, custom eCommerce solutions provide tailored features and functionality to fit the specific needs of businesses and allow easy scalability. However, these require a higher initial investment compared to off-the-shelf solutions.
Businesses can opt for custom solutions to cover their end-to-end and unique operational needs, ensure seamless integration with existing systems, and gain competitive advantage through tailored features.
Can You Walk Us Through the Initial Steps of Identifying the Need for a Custom eCommerce Solution? What Signs Should Businesses Look For?
To identify the need for a custom eCommerce solution, businesses must look for some crucial issues like performance limitations, unique business model, and integration needs such as when existing solutions are unable to handle increased traffic or transactions efficiently, unique product types or sales processes are not fully supported by standard platforms, or standard solutions cannot seamlessly integrate with the existing internal systems.
What Are the Critical Components of a Thorough Needs Analysis for a Custom eCommerce Solution? How Do You Ensure You Cover All the Necessary Aspects?
Stakeholder input, market analysis, technical assessment, and risk analysis constitute the critical components of a thorough needs analysis. To ensure covering all these necessary aspects, businesses must gather requirements from all user types and stakeholders, deeply analyze the customer needs and market trends, evaluate the current technological landscape and infrastructure, and identify the potential risks and challenges.
How Do You Balance Between Current Business Needs and Future Scalability When Planning a Custom eCommerce Solution?
Businesses must use a modular design approach, opt for technologies that allow easy updates and scalability, and ensure regular strategy updates to accommodate the changing market conditions and new technologies.
How Do You Prioritize Features During the Development Process? What Strategies Do You Use to Manage “Feature Creep” and Stay on Budget and Timeline?
Serge clarifies that typically in project development, the client sets the priority of tasks. Then, the development team analyzes, details, and breaks down these tasks into simpler tasks and works on these based on a technological approach; for example, first developing the reference data and building the other functionalities based on this data.
How Important Is Choosing the Right Technology Stack for Custom eCommerce Development, and What Factors Influence This Decision?
Businesses have varied eCommerce challenges. While some businesses can cover all their needs through off-the-shelf solutions or template-based tools, others require customized tools to accomplish their goals. They must go for custom eCommerce development to fully cover their business requirements. However, it is crucial to choose the right technology stack that not just meets their current needs, but allows development and easy scalability for almost next 5 to 10 years.
How Crucial Is Seamless Integration With Existing CRM, ERP, and Inventory Management Systems for a Successful Custom eCommerce Solution?
To maintain data integrity and flow, it is essential to ensure seamless integration of the new system with existing CRM, ERP, and inventory systems.
How Do You Approach Testing and Quality Assurance for Custom eCommerce Solutions? What Types of Testing Are Crucial?
Serge elaborates that for testing and quality assurance, the company performs extensive requirements planning and analysis by defining the functional and non-functional requirements, identifies potential risks, and creates a test plan. Wezom then chooses between manual and automated testing approaches as per the project needs; while manual testing covers detailed checks and scenarios that are difficult to automate, automated testing leverages tools to automate test scenarios to increase efficiency and coverage.
Besides, the company leverages functional testing and non-functional testing. Functional testing includes unit testing, integration testing, system testing, and UI testing, while non-functional testing covers performance testing, load testing, stress testing, scalability testing, compatibility testing, and usability testing.
How Do You Handle Data Migration From an Old System to a New Custom eCommerce Solution? What Are the Pitfalls to Avoid?
Serge highlights that a successful data migration requires close collaboration between technical experts and business users to minimize risks. Moreover, integration and automation can help reduce manual intervention and errors in the process.
The data migration process involves numerous stages. The first step is analysis and planning, which includes assessment of the current system, defining scope to determine what data needs to be migrated, and developing a detailed migration plan including the timeline and resources needed. The next step is data preparation that includes data cleaning to reduce the volume and complexity of the migration process, and data validation to ensure that the data is accurate and ready for migration.
Then, migration tools are developed, including migration scripts to automate the data transfer process and conducting test migration of a small data set to verify that the tools and scripts work correctly. After this, the data is transferred through parallel system operation to minimize downtime. After migration, it is essential to verify the integrity and accuracy of the transferred data.
The next stage is testing and implementation, including functional and performance testing, user training, and discontinuing the old system and switching to the new system. The final stage is support and optimization. It includes monitoring the operations to identify and resolve potential issues and making necessary improvements to ensure that the new system operates flawlessly and efficiently.
Also, How Do You Measure the Success of a Custom eCommerce Solution Post-Implementation? What Metrics or KPIs Should Businesses Focus On?
The metrics include performance metrics to monitor system performance and uptime, sales metrics that track changes in sales figures and customer retention rates, and user feedback.
How Can Businesses Future-Proof Their Custom eCommerce Solutions to Adapt to These Upcoming Trends?
Serge believes that businesses must adopt a flexible and modular architecture to accommodate new technologies and keep themselves updated with the emerging eCommerce trends and technologies.
With Demands Like AR, Voice Search, and Chatbots Increasing in eCommerce Solutions, What Are the Skills Developers and Organizations as a Whole Need to Equip Themselves With?
Developers and organizations must equip themselves with some crucial skills, including technology, user experience, and data analysis. They need to be familiar with AI, AR, and voice recognition technologies. Besides, they should be able to design intuitive and engaging user interfaces. Moreover, they must have the ability to analyze and generate relevant data insights to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency.
You can listen to this podcast here.
What’s Next
E-Commerce enables global reach, 24/7 availability, streamlined transactions, personalized shopping, and exceptional customer experience. There are numerous off-the-shelf eCommerce solutions that typically offer all the standard and popular eCommerce features to cover the common needs of businesses. However, these lack flexibility and customization, potentially limiting efficiency and growth. Tailored eCommerce solutions not just meet the business goals, these allow easy scalability, seamless integrations with existing systems, and a higher edge in the marketplace. Thus, developing custom eCommerce solutions can benefit businesses much more compared to off-the-shelf or readymade options.
Custom software development allows eCommerce platforms to be tailored to specific business and customer needs, enhancing functionality and user experience. Moreover, investing in custom eCommerce development through domain experts, can be a game-changer for businesses looking for long-term success and adaptability. However, businesses must choose the right custom eCommerce development companies to reap maximum benefits of tailored, market-leading eCommerce platforms, stay ahead, and rise to new heights.
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