What you need to know about custom ecommerce development
Learn about custom ecommerce website development and design to see if it's right for your business.
FAQs
Overview
What is custom ecommerce development?
Custom ecommerce website design and development is the process of building an online store to look and feel how you want using unique code. It also requires making the store perform how you want it to.
Custom development is used as a solution by businesses for different purposes. For example, you can create an entire website from scratch to deliver bespoke ecommerce experiences to your customers.
Alternatively, store owners can hire developers to add needed design or functionality to pre-engineered platforms like WordPress and Shopify.
At Foster Commerce, we take a blended hybrid approach when building ecommerce websites: we offer custom software in the form of a B2B custom ecommerce website solution, and custom ecommerce website development.
This unbeatable combination: a ready-to-use boilerplate website paired with our development services enables you to build your store quickly and affordably, with options to scale easily.
What is the benefit of custom ecommerce development?
Ideally, your online store should be a flexible tool that works for you and your business. Your store should also be built so it can easily “grow” with your business, and easy to use for your team. In many cases, custom development can help you achieve all of three.
For example, you can add new features and functionality which can increase sales or improve brand value.
Custom ecommerce design and development can be beneficial for several other reasons, too. Depending on who builds your website and how they charge for their services, it may be easier to control costs.
Even more important, when your site is fully custom (from scratch) or built using self-hosted platforms you own all the code.
Owning your online store's code is different from extending and customizing an off-the-shelf ecommerce platform. Owning means you can never be "locked out" of your store, or otherwise lose access.
However, in the case of an off-the-shelf platform, you are essentially "renting" parts of your site from a vendor who ultimately has control.
How does custom software benefit B2B businesses?
While there are several popular pre-engineered ecommerce platforms available, many were created to support B2C retail businesses, not B2B.
As the demand for B2B ecommerce is escalating, B2B brands require affordable solutions, products, and platforms that can facilitate a modern B2B buyer experience.
A modern B2B experience includes buyers' being able to do extensive research on products and pricing or gather product and purchase quotes before they ever talk to a sales representative.
B2B businesses benefit from custom software because it allows them to develop precisely the online experience their customers need and expect. Custom ecommerce development allows a B2B business to create a website that accommodates must-haves, such as products with multiple variants and more complex checkout flows.
Custom software development also allows B2B businesses to avoid costly workarounds on pre-engineered solutions.