David Ogilvy once expressed, “In the advanced business marketplace, it’s unworthy to be a creative, native thinker unless you can sell what you build.”
You may have used a pre-made Shopify theme or template for your E-commerce business (like the ever-popular Shopify Showcase). And now, as your company has evolved, you're exploring a more customized E-commerce website.
You enjoy the concept of being able to represent your brand more precisely than with a cookie-cutter appearance. And that's fantastic! We like the sound of "no compromises." However, before you embark on the custom site building road with the assistance of a developer or agency (and a lot of code), you should balance the advantages and downsides.
And in this MarsDevs guide, we are here to tell you all about it and beyond!
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E-commerce development is creating, personalizing, and optimizing an E-commerce website or platform. It entails utilizing numerous technologies such as site design, software development, and digital marketing to provide clients with a flawless online buying experience.
Integration of payment gateways, delivery providers, and other third-party services required to run an online store is also part of E-commerce development services.
E-commerce development has changed how people purchase and connect with businesses. Statista predicts that worldwide E-commerce sales will reach $6.38 trillion by 2024. As a result, businesses that fail to create an online presence risk losing a sizable chunk of their target market.
In the words of Joel Anderson, “You can’t launch a website and assume people to flock in. If you need to succeed, you must build the search traffic.” And that’s where custom website development comes in! E-commerce development enables firms to use the internet's potential to reach a larger audience, enhance brand awareness, and drive revenue.
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If you've gone as far as you can with traditional E-commerce platforms or leading Shopify page builders, a custom-built E-commerce website might be a smart next step to acquire the control you need over the site's front end.
Working with an agency or developer to make custom code changes to your store can bring numerous advantages over pre-made themes or templates, including:
A custom-built E-commerce website may give you and your design team more ability to rank better on search engines by restoring control over the website's HTML, how pages are connected, and structured information. In contrast, if you use a standard or default theme, you will lose control over many critical onsite ranking variables and potentially jeopardize your SEO efforts.
The overall perception of a user's encounter with your brand is called user experience (UX). This review reflects a consumer's many interactions with your firm.
From browsing your website through navigating it, speaking with customer support, making a purchase, receiving the items, and expressing pleasure with your products and services - every action a customer takes on your website determines whether or not they will become a loyal customer. 64% of customers say their brand experience is the most important factor in purchasing.
Gaining clients' attention requires a seamless user experience. Make sure you provide your target audience with what they want. Furthermore, the importance of individualized user experience must be considered. The more distinctive the experience, the larger your company's clientele will become.
As Donald Porter says, “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They want you to resolve things if it goes wrong.” Putting your branding first in the design stage (rather than filling in pre-formatted text and picture fields) generates a customer experience that reminds shoppers of you at every point of the customer journey.
It improves the consumer experience, and because your E-commerce buyers have 12 to 24 million alternatives, sticking out benefits your organization. A highly customized website can help you prevent market commoditization.
Custom-built E-commerce sites can offer a broader choice of aesthetics than themes and templates. For example, you may include rich merchandising elements like GIFs displaying product attributes or films that parallax scroll directly into the website's design—an extension of what a standard E-commerce platform can accomplish out of the box.
When using a theme or template, you must insert these attributes into pre-made boxes that may or may not correspond to your vision. A custom-built E-commerce site also allows you to customize interactions throughout the store. It allows you to create everything as you wish & you may choose the site flows you want and have them custom-coded to your specifications.
Custom E-commerce solutions can help you enhance business administration and increase productivity. Customized E-commerce software allows you to create, deploy, or integrate whatever solution you need to automate and optimize your internal business operations.
Process automation has several advantages, including lowering the amount of human mistakes, making corporate administration easier, and minimizing human labor. Furthermore, employees can zero in on more important tasks.
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Future custom E-commerce advances are expected to include the usage of blockchain, the acceptance of voice commerce, the introduction of headless commerce, and the rise of chatbots.
Blockchain technology is being utilized to improve e-commerce transaction security and transparency, which makes things easier for firms to develop client trust.
With the incorporation of voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant into e-commerce websites, voice commerce is also growing more popular. Customers will find exploring and purchasing items with voice commands easier, resulting in a more convenient and simplified shopping experience.
Headless commerce separates your site's front and back end, enabling your preferred platform to manage checkout and inventory while a specialist platform handles graphics and customer-facing functionality. Unlike traditional E-commerce website development, headless commerce software for your front end provides all the benefits of a custom site plus increased agility and performance.
Then there’s AI. Chatbots are also being utilized to provide real-time customer help, eliminating the need for firms to engage professional support personnel. In reality, chatbots can respond to consumer inquiries, giving a personalized experience that increases customer happiness and loyalty.
Every E-commerce development business is attempting to use these technologies to outperform its competition. If you include these technologies in your website, you will undoubtedly be ahead of the competition.
Custom web design is the only way to create a varied, scalable, authoritative e-commerce firm. While the convenience and seeming diversity of e-commerce website templates may be appealing, they are the proverbial poison apple for your business.
Pre-made templates may appear appealing, but using them will ensure your long and painful spiral into monotony, finally killing your e-commerce firm. With an effective E-commerce website, you can take advantage of opportunities to improve product recognition and elevate your digital brand.
An optimized design promotes product exposure, increases shop traffic, and delivers a tailored customer experience. So, invest in bespoke E-commerce website design to offer your brand a chance in the vast sea of e-commerce firms with MarsDevs! Catch up on a free 15-minute call with us!
