Even now, at the time of the e-commerce boom, many businesses do not have their own online stores. By doing so, these organizations not only lose their competitive edge, but they also lose customers. However, in addition, companies and entrepreneurs who already have an online business have not fully realized its potential, and this could give a huge boost to their business and an invaluable competitive advantage.

Excellent online shopping is not a matter of chance. They are meticulously developed from start to end to convert casual visitors into paying clients. So that you can figure out how to create the perfect eCommerce website, the RewiSoft team has prepared a detailed guide for you.

What Is Custom eCommerce Website Development in 2024

By creating tailored software solutions to match exact user needs, custom development enables organizations to realize the potential of technology in unique and innovative ways. From design to maintenance and deployment, this detailed process brings bespoke products directly from concept into reality.

The eCommerce market is on the rise, and it’s no wonder why. In 2022, this lucrative industry reached a staggering $5.7 trillion – an indicator of digital retail being a viable choice for online retailers worldwide! In just two years’ time, we’ve seen tremendous growth; 17.8% of sales were made online in 2020 alone – projected to exponentially increase by 2024 with 23% expected within five years’ time – signifying over 5 percentage points gained from now until 2025!

eCommerce is quickly becoming the preferred shopping option for consumers. According to Nasdaq, online sales accounted for 15% of purchases in 2017, and this number could grow as high as 95% by 2040 – a staggering increase that demonstrates the impact digital marketplaces are having on consumer habits.

Why Do You Need a Custom eCommerce Website Development

A custom approach to developing an online store gives you the opportunity to fully control the entire project, from the appearance to the smallest details of the functionality. That is the main difference from ready-made solutions. They don’t give you that much freedom and flexibility when creating your unique store.

Want to make your purchase/order process as simple as possible? Make it with a custom solution.

Do you want to launch a loyalty program? Everything is in your hands, experiment.

Want to enable your customers to share products on social media networks? And this is also realizable without problems.

In the case of a custom online store, you have more influence on its success through your decisions. And at the same time, give the buyer a unique experience. In turn, feedback from the buyer is what will allow you to achieve better results based on previous experience.

Custom-made websites have the following technological advantages:

• Scalability and extensibility are important considerations. 
• Customization is more easily implemented.
• Maintenance is better.
• Capacity for integration is wider.
• High level of security.

Let’s also consider commerce grounds:

• High adaptability of retail Internet websites.
• Custom-made sites load fast.
• AdWords performance is great.
• The rate of bounce is modest.

What Things to Consider Before Starting Custom eCommerce Website Development 

The building of a custom online retail website is a difficult task. You should think carefully about all the details and plan everything clearly. There are certain things to examine before starting a custom web design and development for eCommerce: 

Find out the industry of your business

Comprehensive research and analysis of your business sector are one of the most important things to accomplish before you start the web-building process for e-commerce.

You must be aware of the numerous loopholes and take into account your industry’s target clients. Investigate their tastes, age, and other criteria to help you build effective product categories, descriptions, payment gateways, product photos, and other features. 

Set the development budget of your online store 

Your account is simple to get insane, especially while your online sellers are still in the early phases of development. However, you should be extremely careful to keep to the budget and use techniques that help you with it. It’s a good idea usually when you make a financial decision to alter your budget.

Focus on the competition

Doing business means that you have to stand out from others. And you should consider the numerous advertising methods and features that will help you attract new customers. It is therefore important that you evaluate your functional components in a browser.

Think about the needs of your target audience

The most important element of running such a business is that you need to put the potential client as the highest priority. To do this, you must be familiar with their culture, geography, demographics and purchasing habits. The easiest way to collect all this knowledge is through a survey. And based on the survey results, you will be able to create solutions that will cover all these categories.

Build an MVP (Minimum viable product)

MVP, as an approach to commerce, will help you assess the buying power of customers within your business. Suppose you want to build a creative and innovative shopping platform with a high conversion rate, backed by a particular algorithm designed to deliver a great user experience and the best products. In that case, you should enlist the assistance of an MVP.

Organize team training

Investing carries risk. And before investing in a business, understand whether you have a talent for this or not. You may experience some difficulties in your team from time to time with productivity and efficiency. Therefore, you can exchange vital talents. 

Custom eCommerce Website Development in 8 Easy Steps

Let’s look at the main stages of custom eCommerce website development. Our team has prepared a step-by-step guide for you, thanks to which you can easily and quickly reach your goal and build a valuable product:

Step 1: Conduct in-depth business analysis

Before you start creating a custom online store, you need first to perform market research and analyze rival online shops. Define the items or services you will supply and investigate whether shops offer similar things.

You should also define goals and KPIs. You may need to consider your pricing strategy, how many revenues you need to cover expenditure and other financial elements for beginning a store and make it financially viable, depending on whether your plans are for the resale or provide your own product.

Don’t forget to identify the USPs of your products and online services. To build a successful custom eCommerce solution from the ground up, choose a unique and easy-to-remember name and find a suitable eCommerce domain. Investigate how you may differentiate yourself from your competitors, as well as what your unique selling proposition will be.

Step 2: Create functional specification document 

Then it is time to think about the functional specification of your custom eCommerce solution. A functional specification is typically a formal document used by software engineers that explain in detail a product’s expected capabilities, appearance, and interactions with users. A functional specification may comprise the following aspects, depending on the project and team:

• Project scope refers to the project’s objectives, features, tasks, deliverables, costs, and timeframes.
• Risks and assumptions are concerns that may have an impact on the product’s functional design.
• Product overview – a description of how the solution will solve a specific problem for the intended audience.
• The functional requirements are placed in the context of a user action in use cases. This depicts what happens from the user’s point of view.
• Requirements are the essential parts of a product that describes what it achieves.
• Configuration entails the processes required to set up a product, such as creating a user account.
• Non-functional requirements are non-essential features that aren’t central to the product’s design.
• Error reporting entails describing how the product will handle errors or exceptions.

Step 3: Select the best design & web development partner

You naturally need a professional, competent partner to make your store building process easy and orderly. Take into consideration the following considerations for web development partners and design partners:

• experience in providing outstanding software development services;
• great examples of eCommerce websites they created;
• feedback of previous clients;
• whether they provide continuous development and support.

RewiSoft specializes in web store design for small to big companies, and we can speak about developing an online shop that fulfills your requirements and business objectives.

Simply get in touch with us and we will assist you with your project. It is always preferable to hire a single agency or company to design and develop your custom eCommerce website so that you have consistency, no delays, minimal communication issues, and package pricing that saves you a significant amount of money as opposed to hiring multiple vendors and agencies for design and development. 

Step 4: Create a visually-appealing UX/UI design 

When it comes to eCommerce website design, your options may vary depending on your company’s capabilities (budget), aims, and ambitions. In general, remember that in order to be successful in the market, you will need a resource that attracts, satisfies, and encourages clients to make additional purchases.

Most often, the process of creating a design for an eCommerce website consists of the following steps:

Formulating the problem. Design teams dive into the depths of user experience, creating a foundation for success by thoroughly understanding their users’ needs. Utilizing proven UX tools, they uncover any potential problems that may hinder progress and come up with tailored solutions to benefit all stakeholders. Some of these tools are user personas, user journey maps and empathy maps.

Conducting UX research. UX designers conduct comprehensive research to uncover the best solutions for their projects. This scope of work includes user, market, competitive and product analysis- all crucial steps in developing thoughtful designs that solve real-world problems.

Sketching & low-fidelity prototyping. Designers can foster a broad comprehension of their customers, target market and competition to arrive at the idea creation stage. To efficiently craft concepts, designers may utilize traditional methods like sketching and paper prototyping along with more advanced strategies such as wireframing and lo-fi prototyping.

High-fidelity mockups & prototypes. The UI design team is tasked with bringing wireframes to life as interactive prototypes. From utilizing the company’s design system and building high-fidelity mockups, designers are instrumental in constructing an immersive user experience that reflects the final product.   

Step 5: Start full-cycle custom eCommerce website development

Most often, the custom eCommerce website development process consists of the following steps:

• Tech stack & documentation. Development team determines technologies that will be appropriate for the project. The team compiles technical documentation describing all features and functionality and the relationship between user roles.
• Software architecture plan. Developers create the basic structure of the product. On the back end, they choose whether it will be, for example, a monolith or microservices and choose the controllers and types of APIs they will use. On the front end, developers determine how the user interface will be implemented and schematically depict which parts of the product will interact with each other.
• Sprints planning. At this stage, the team determines the priority and sequence of features creation. This stage is critical because the entire product development plan is based on it.  
• Infrastructure setup for testing + CI/CD to the test servers. DevOps set up the production-like environment for running the developed application on the cloud. The customer has access to it and can also test the product. The team configures the system so that all changes the team makes to the product automatically appear in this environment.
• Client and server development & QA. At this stage, client and server parts of the product are developed (development of UI components, API, etc.) and tested.
• Regression Testing. QA tests the entire product thoroughly. We fix bugs that may have appeared when we were adding new features and product components.
• Production Infrastructure setup + CI/CD to the prod servers. The development team creates a separate, more flexible and scalable environment on the cloud that is production-ready. They configure domains and the system so that all changes developers make to the product automatically appear in this environment.     

At RewiSoft, we most often assign 2+ developers to run these processes. All of our developers are middle and senior-level specialists. We usually develop all the functionality of the site gradually. That is, having developed one feature, we first test it and only then proceed to the next one. This method allows us to save time on the final testing of the product and deliver a high-performing pharmacy website.

Step 6: Test your new eCommerce website

Before releasing a custom eCommerce solution to the public, it is critical to test it. Otherwise, you risk losing both your money and your initial market reputation. Even if it’s just a minor issue, modern users don’t like seeing something that isn’t working properly.

By hiring a tester or QA specialist, you will receive professional assistance in fixing all software and design faults so that you may release a fully “finished” product. Dedicated specialists use A/B tests, manual and automated testing, and other methods.

At RewiSoft, we use our own UX Laboratory for design testing and UX Eye Tracker that allows studying user behavior during interaction with the web product. Only 1% of companies use this method. It helps optimize the interface and product design. If you want to create a really great custom eCommerce design, contact us, and we will help you find a suitable testing method.

Step 7: Support and maintain your website

Our congratulations! You’ve done it! You worked your way through it step by step, and now your custom eCommerce site is up and running, generating revenue and pleased consumers. From now on, you should be responsible for the support and maintenance to keep your website afloat and resilient in the face of all online adversity.

Step 8: Work with feedback

Don’t stop after you’ve finished eCommerce site development and gotten your online store up and running!

Connect with your customers, allow them to contribute their thoughts, observe their actions, and use the information gathered to plan future online business expansion and improvement.

Start Custom eCommerce Website Development with RewiSoft

RewiSoft team provides one of the best custom web application development services. With extensive domain expertise and advanced technology stacks, our web applications help businesses stand out with intuitive user experiences. Our strategies are tailored to maximize scalability, security, and progressive development while delivering value-added solutions that enhance online presence around the world.

Recently, our team worked on a project called E-Wish. It is the UK’s multifaceted marketplace that includes different services, e-commerce, apartment rent and taxi booking. This platform allows users to satisfy all kinds of their needs with a few clicks.

After we analyzed all the requirements of the client, we identified the main areas of our work:

• Enhance user experience. One of the requirements was to make the platform easy to use. E-Wish contains a lot of services, so we have been working on creating a clear and organized application information architecture. Our team paid a lot of attention to navigation, prioritization and sorting.
• New design system. We developed a completely new design system. We created new components, some headings, dropdowns, inputs, product cards, etc. We tested them on users to understand how accurately we picked up the colors and all the platform elements.
• Categories creation. We worked on product sorting, an integral part of BA, and tried to make the categories easy to use so users could find everything they wanted in a couple of minutes. There are 5 general categories on the platform: General Products, Services, Vehicles, Property, Holiday & Travel.

As a result, our team created a product that is a combined marketplace where people can buy products and work with the platform as e-commerce, as well as use it to search for various services that they need for everyday life (such as renting a taxi and apartment booking).     

Why should you choose us for custom eCommerce Website Development?

Agile methodology. For our customers to receive the product on time and be of the highest quality, the RewiSoft team uses the Agile methodology. Thanks to this methodology, our clients receive a result that meets their requirements and needs.

Prompt maintenance. If our clients have problems with the product, our team quickly and efficiently fixes any issues. We cooperate with our clients throughout the life of the product.

State-of-the-art tech stacks. Our developers leverage advanced tech stacks to create high-performing web applications. Our solutions promote reliability, cutting down on bugs and optimizing the user experience for maximum efficiency.

Full-cycle development. At RewiSoft, we strive to provide a unique and comprehensive web product development experience. Our team specializes in the full cycle of creating custom products that meet each customer’s specific needs and requirements for success. From initial business analysis through deployment, you can trust us to handle every detail!

Value for money. Our team is located in Eastern Europe, and we offer excellent value for money. RewiSoft employs experts and skilled IT people who know how to turn any idea into reality quickly, efficiently, and, most importantly, at a reasonable price.

Great expertise. Our group of IT professionals boasts a range of technical prowess from middle to senior levels. Continual development and diligent study enable us to offer you the best in design and implementation – promising an outstanding outcome every time!

If you have an idea for your future eCommerce website and are looking for a reliable design and development team, get in touch with us today! Our team will help you turn your idea into reality.   

Top 5 Trends in Custom eCommerce Website Development

Creating the perfect and unique design for a web store is quite a difficult task. Proper planning, following the latest trends is what will help you create a powerful online store. And it is precisely considering trends that play an important role in developing a custom online store.

Trends are what the perfect product might look like. This section will look at the various web development trends for online stores and the latest technologies in 2024 to create a modern and efficient web store.

Marketing automation

Marketing automation is critical for online businesses to meet their revenue growth and goals. It enables them to manage their marketing processes and automate campaigns that run across many channels. For example, it could be email automation, CRM systems, social media automation, etc.

When eCommerce and marketing automation are combined, you have a winning mix for online business. You can make purchases as comfortable as possible for your customers, and at the same time, take steps to reach your target audience.

RewiSoft has wide experience in marketing automation products. We not only make the UI/UX design for different projects, but we also improve existing products. If you need help with your project, we can discuss it.   

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is one of the innovative technologies that has arisen in recent years. Artificial intelligence has emerged as a popular technology for web stores and is also a hot trend in custom website development.

Artificial intelligence in e-commerce has many uses, such as product recommendation and predictive analytics. AI and machine learning are increasingly being utilized to improve customer service and personalization.

Look at some examples of AI applications for eCommerce businesses:

• It assists businesses in learning more about their clients.
• Businesses may use AI to provide a customized customer experience based on their needs.
• Connecting customer data with real-time insights can improve the purchasing experience.
• Customer service duties can be automated with the help of AI-powered chatbots.
• Pricing and discounting practices can be optimized.

On-site personalization

Customer focus, and therefore personalization, is now a trend that is aimed at meeting the needs of the client as much as possible. This approach is implemented by collecting customer data and then shaping the user experience for other customers. The importance of this approach to the company is great, as it makes it possible to focus on the interests and preferences of the client for the best user experience.

Progressive Web App (PWA)

Businesses have long been aiming to provide a more efficient and quick way for customers to shop. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) fulfill the goal, offering many advantages over traditional websites – such as providing an app-like user experience on all devices with desktop or mobile capabilities.

This has become one of the defining trends in eCommerce development that helps businesses deliver superior customer experiences through faster speeds and better performance overall.

Chatbots

Chatbots are revolutionizing how customers interact with eCommerce businesses. By automating human-to-human interactions, they are helping companies respond to customer demands quickly and conveniently while optimizing overall customer service performance.

Moreover, AI chatbot technology is eliminating traditional weaknesses in online business support capabilities thanks to advanced artificial intelligence tools now available on the market.

In the next few years, eCommerce is predicted to surge past $112 billion in total transactions. Chatbots offer a unique opportunity for brands to proactively engage with customers and provide an instant resolution – no more waiting around!

Main Benefits of Custom eCommerce Website Development

Custom development of e-commerce solutions is an approach that helps a company create a platform on which a potential customer can purchase products from that company directly.

And this approach to business finds an increasing response among business people. They have an extraordinary idea, and it will be faster and easier to implement it using the advantages of online trading than the traditional approach.

The main benefits of custom eCommerce site development are:

• controllability;
• uniqueness;
• great perfomance;
• scalability;
• many possibilities for customization;
• adaptability;
• flexibility.

Best Feature-Sets for Custom eCommerce Website 

When we are talking about unique eCommerce sites, it is all about design, functionality and features. What characteristics of eCommerce are critical to your success?

Generally, you may construct these features as you like by customizing it. It is necessary to study the target group, product and rivals to know exactly what features you want to add to the eCommerce website. We have compiled a list of the most trending features that will make your web product valuable and attractive to users.

User-related features

• User profile. You may achieve three goals by implementing the user profile functionality: build user loyalty, improve customer retention, and gain useful data and analytics on customer activity.

• Registration. The user can register using a variety of methods, including social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and so on), email, or phone number. For added security, consider using two-factor authentication.

• Shopping history. Customers who have access to their shopping history have a pleasant sense of control over their data, which allows them to offer customers an updated version of a product or direct their interest to related things.

• Wishlist. This function will assist you in cutting your drop-off rate. Wish list data can be used for analytics or as part of an email marketing campaign. This is also an excellent approach to obtain email addresses from unregistered people.

• Coupons and discounts. According to Statista, the most influential components in the buying decisions of the consumer in the United States are coupons and discounts.  

• Checkout system. This feature should be at the top of your list when considering how to design a web store from the ground up. According to some research, easy checkout is the most preferred website feature among online customers in the United States.

Product functionality

• Product categories. Advanced categorization systems with unique categories and subcategories are found on the top industry-leading websites. Check companies’ websites like Puma, Tommy Hilfiger, Mango, etc., and you will be convinced of this.
• Product page. All essential product information should be included on the product pages. It can be pictures, short and long descriptions, and any other information that customers could find valuable, such as size, special characteristics, etc.
• Product reviews and ratings. Customer reviews help build trust in your business, which can lead to more sales and revenue.

Search functionality

• Filtering feature. The greater the number of filtering choices available on the website, the better. Filtering options may include price, size, color, and customer reviews.
• Prompts and suggestions. Plan and code your search engine so that it can suggest search results and detect incorrect inputs.
• Voice search. The powerful feature of voice search will increase the popularity of your website among millennials and GenZers.

Admin panel

• Reporting and analytics. An interactive dashboard with reports, charts and statistics lets you monitor how products sell, the store’s general success, and compare data from different time periods to discover any client behavior patterns.
• User management. This feature refers to the ability to create, update, and delete user profiles from the admin panel. It’s also used to offer customized discounts and to enroll customers and user groups in various promotional campaigns.
• Order management. You should make, amend and cancel orders and check order statistics using your eCommerce website.
• Integration with other services. To increase the strength and completeness of your eCommerce website, use a variety of integrations. This can be delivery, email marketing tools for promotions and others.

Payment methods

You should also look at the increasing trends in the FinTech industry when considering how you construct an eCommerce website from the bottom up to satisfy all potential consumer demands. In custom website design, other means of payment are not needed. Nevertheless, they might give a number of benefits.

For example, alternative payment options provide flexibility, which is beneficial to user retention. Second, alternative payment methods are increasingly popular in areas where mobile internet use is the norm, and they are gaining traction in more conservative parts of Europe and the United States.

Consider building a website to suit all prospective customers’ demands from the bottom up. You should also analyze the growing trends in the FinTech market. In addition to the increasing popularity of traditional cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether and others, many countries around the world are establishing digital central bank currencies or DCBCs.

Custom eCommerce Website Vs. Content Management System

A content management system (CMS) is pre-configured software that provides all the features needed to build and maintain a website. With these platforms, you can use preloaded different themes and plugins to adapt the tool to your needs. This automation is designed to simplify setup and reduce time. A huge plus is that people who do not have a serious technical background can easily operate the CMS.

The development of the e-commerce site from scratch is long and difficult. However, it allows for a more distinctive, safe and trustworthy method in the great majority of instances. In addition, customized online store creation may be the only method to reflect your system’s complexity, depending on your demands.

Custom eCommerce solutions will outperform CMS-based alternatives. On small projects with little user traffic and functionality, CMS platforms provide similar results. However, as your company grows, you may find that improved performance, design, and efficiency are required to improve user experience.

Custom development gives great attention to security in each scenario, ensuring that your website is always protected to the highest standard. CMS relies on a variety of third-party plugins, each of which has its own set of security concerns.

What Team Do You Need to Develop Custom eCommerce Website

The eCommerce-experienced staff is highly crucial when starting a website construction. Here is a short list of team members you should consider to have:

• Design & Development team. At RewiSoft, we have skilled and experienced web designers and developers, so whether you are looking for a reliable service, we can provide you with it. 
• Managers. They will manage the main areas such as sales, procurement, accounting and audit.
• Marketing team. They will be responsible for your business promotion across different channels.

Typical Mistakes in Custom eCommerce Website Development

Mistakes are opportunities to learn. That is, without a doubt, the case. However, we believe we can all agree that it would be preferable to avoid making mistakes in the first place.

Here are some mistakes that new eCommerce sites should avoid:

• No professional development team. Much of the success of your custom store depends on the team that builds it. Take your development and design teams very seriously. In the future this will help you save money and time.
• No target audience. Customers need a reason to shop with you rather than Amazon, and one of the most important factors is culture. If you want to win the eСommerce giant, you must target a specific audience and earn their trust.
• No responsive design. Your custom web store should work properly on whatever device is used to access it. According to Pew Research, at least 51% of people currently use their smartphones to make purchases, and the percentage is growing.
• No or empty ‘About’ Page. Take the time to flesh out your About page so that you can convey your unique selling offers.

How to Hire the Best Team for Custom eCommerce Website Development

With so many eCommerce web development service providers to choose from, it can be tough to choose one that matches your needs. As a result, in order to assist you in choosing the best eCommerce web development agency, we have compiled a list of important aspects to consider:

• Company’s portfolio and experience;
• Market trustworthiness;
• Customer feedback and testimonials, as well as service quality;
• Project delivery timeliness and convenience;
• Expertise and a one-of-a-kind skill set in accordance with your company’s needs;
• Ability to meet deadlines and time to market;
• Professionalism and expertise of the development and delivery teams;
• Additional assistance and services.

In case you are interested in how to hire true specialists in web design and development, check our recent articles: 

• UX Expert: Where and How to Hire Right? (Tips for Startups) 
• Hire UX Designers: Ten Easy Steps (For Business Owners)
• How to Hire Remote Developers in 2023? [Prices, Terms, Tips and Problems]
• Hire Dedicated Front-End Developers: The Best Option    

How Much Does Custom eCommerce Website Development Cost

How much does it cost to build an eCommerce website? Of course, you are interested in this question. Depending on the store needs, the final e-commerce site cost will start from $30,000. The process might take 3-6 months for a basic version, 6-9 months for a medium-sized website, and 9+ months for a big, complex custom eCommerce site.

In general, the cost and timeline of a web store design are determined by the following factors:

• software development company (local or outsourced, hourly rates, etc.);
• the level of customization and the complexity of the design;
• the functionality’s scope and depth, as well as its complexity;
• third-party service integration;
• hosting, domain, marketing, SEO, and other expenses.

We have created a table for you where you can find approximate prices for each eCommerce website development process in different regions of the world:

A Few Last Words About Custom eCommerce Website Development

We hope that we could provide you with a better understanding of how to develop an online store step by step. This guide may be difficult to follow at times, but that is because the world of eCommerce is so full of nuances and details. If you miss anything minor, it could have long-term effects.

If you need professional guidance and implementation of something special, get in touch with us. We have extensive experience in custom web store development and can help you build an exceptional online store from scratch.