There’s a myth in the world of web development that using a premade ecommerce platform is the only way to start generating online revenue. The web has come a long way since credit card transactions first garnished support in the 1990s and paved the way for the ubiquitous world of online shopping, which over the decades, has changed life as we know it. There are a number of great ecommerce platforms to choose from when it comes to selecting something that’s “out-of-the-box” – but there are many times that building a custom ecommerce platform will bring greater benefits and help reap more lucrative results. We’ve compiled just a handful of the benefits that come from leveraging custom ecommerce development in your website, app or online store.
Over time, proprietary solutions can often be more cost effective.
At first glance, it might seem like using a premade ecommerce platform will be a money saving endeavor. Why pay a web developer or digital agency to create something that is a bespoke, custom solution, when many out-of-the-box solutions are either free or come with a small initial monetary investment? The answer is simple: hidden costs. Premade ecommerce solutions exist on a subscription model. They try to get as many customers to sign up and commit to their platform as possible, and then as time goes on and your needs develop, the hidden fees start to bubble to the surface. If you’ve tried subscription-based ecommerce in the past, or if you have read our blog post comparing popular platforms Shopify and WooCommerce, you probably already know the nitty gritty details. To give you a couple quick data points: Shopify charges a monthly fee and takes a percentage of your sales from day one, and as your needs evolve, those monthly fees can jump to as high as $2,300 per month! WooCommerce’s base platform is free, and includes a number of key features at no cost – however, once your needs evolve to require the selling of more complicated products (like subscription-based products), then those monthly subscription fees come out of the woodwork – sometimes totaling to several hundred dollars monthly in software subscription fees alone.
Knowing that running a business that relies on online sales in any capacity is going to come with associated monthly costs (check out our article on payment gateways and online merchant accounts for more), it’s nice to find a way to minimize these costs to help maximize your ROI over the long term. One of the benefits of custom ecommerce development is that your associated ecommerce platform costs are all upfront and are not subscription-based, at least when you work on an ecommerce project with a company like MBM. You’ll always have to pay monthly fees to the third party that is processing credit card transactions for you, so you may as well offload the costs you have control over onto the initial investment, instead of paying out of your profits until the end of time!
Staying away from commercial ecommerce platforms can sometimes improve site performance and reduce bloat.
Something that holds true for ecommerce is a principle that encompasses the greater realm of custom web development as a whole as well. We recently made the point in our article on the truth about pre-made website templates that anything pre-made is going to be bloated and possibly negatively affect your website’s performance, loading times, and subsequent user experience and SEO value. This is because, in general, pre-made anything is going to need to cast a wide net in terms of what it offers by design. Pre-made ecommerce platforms are going to need to cover a wide range of cases – often more than your particular business or online store will ever truly need – and as such will have a ton of code to cover those cases that your website will never need, but will be required to include because the platform is structured as such. More code also comes with greater opportunities for dysfunctional behavior or security exploits, longer loading times, and to a lesser degree, more disk space and more attention towards ongoing maintenance. One benefit that custom ecommerce development can bring to your website or web app is that it can be tailored to your specific needs only. It addresses the situations and functionalities that you actually require, thereby reducing bloat, closing loopholes through which issues could arise, and streamlining your entire operation from system maintenance to user shopping experience.
Custom ecommerce development ultimately gives you more control and flexibility over your selling platform.
Perhaps the most important benefit of custom ecommerce development is the added level of control and flexibility it gives you over every aspect of your operation. While many out-of-the-box ecommerce solutions will advertise flexibility as a benefit, they’ll understandably never highlight the ways in which using their platform ties up your options and create roadblocks. Flexibility is a broad term, and while some platforms may be flexible in one regard, they may be closed off or rigid in many others. Let’s take a look at the two very popular premade ecommerce platforms we have looked at in the past. Shopify might be versatile in the general sense, but most of its subscription levels prevent you from making very common and simple customizations that should otherwise be straightforward and simple – a notable example being the inability to add custom fields (such as birthday or referral source) to a standard checkout form or page. WooCommerce has more versatility in customizing the user checkout experience than Shopify does, but using it means you are required to use the greater WordPress framework and ecosystem for the rest of your website, limiting both the tools you can use and arguably the pool of individuals you’ll be able to work with. Developing a custom ecommerce platform specifically for your purposes ensures the ultimate level of flexibility and versatility with every detail from the way you process transactions to the finest nuance surrounding your customers’ experience spending money on your website.
A final note we would make is that working with an experienced group of developers like MBM ensures that you’ll get a level of personal attention to both the creation and maintenance of the ecommerce platform you’re trusting to generate online revenue for your business. Over the years, MBM has helped companies secure tens of millions of dollars in online sales and revenue, most of which has been through the implementation of custom ecommerce platforms developed specifically for the business or organization in question. To learn more about what we’ve done in the world of custom ecommerce, or how MBM can help you with your platform, shoot us a note using the form on our Contact Page.
