Custom eCommerce Development

Stages in eCommerce Development

The eCommerce development project generally includes: concept creation, layout design, development of the project architecture, development of the structure and definition of the functionality needs for your website, the actual online store development and implementation, creation of the initial content, integration of the third-party solutions on your website, and comprehensive website QA testing.

A dedicated team led by an executive manager will do the work on your project. Once the objectives and expectations for the future online store are defined, we send the project technical assignment to our web design team to create page layouts. As soon as the page layouts are approved, we will transfer them to our layout designers and programmers. After the programming and layout are completed, we will test the finished product according to an efficiency checklist of 60+ parameters. If you validate the finished product, we will migrate your online store to web hosting.

If working with SEOTM, you will receive an effective commerce channel of seamless functionality and attractive design, followed by a dedicated technical support service.

Your company's management usually determines the size of the investment that should be made on the custom eCommerce development based on the complexity of the project and desired functionality.

Why is it Difficult to Estimate the Cost of Developing an eCommerce Project?

Assume you are building a house and are wondering how much construction costs. The cost of the house depends on many aspects like its location (premier or not so), the building company, the quality of materials, house size, its type (single-family, condo, or duplex), interior design, and so much more. This is a list that has seen no end.

The same goes for developing an online store. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to building an eCommerce website. It is impossible to give precise time and estimate without knowing the goals and objectives of your business, and the requirements for the design and functionality. An average eCommerce website has a complex structure and consists of many elements: the size of your business, your e-store functionalities, design complexity, and vendor type, among others.

For large-scale non-standard projects, we implement Time & Material plans that define the project scope but are open-ended. T&M plans set out hourly rates for labor and prices for materials, and the client is billed at those rates for hours required to complete the project.

SEO for eCommerce Website

ECommerce SEO is the art of getting your website prepared to rank high in a search via search engines. We conduct powerful competitive analyses. We create your landing pages to showcase your store beautifully. We find traffic-driving keywords for you. This is the foundation we lay to move your eCommerce business forward. If you do not have an effective SEO plan before starting an online store, your website will rank poorly.

There are opinions that first launch your an online store, and then solidify it for better SEO. This kind of mindset leads to a website not getting properly indexed: junk pages get into the index, but the good content does not. As a result, the search engines might be getting stuck while crawling your eCommerce website. Pre-launch SEO will help you put your best foot forward if you want to create and launch a profitable eCommerce website. Start your online store SEO sooner than later.

Discover with us how to set up an outstanding store using the best SEO tips and start selling services or products:

ECommerce SEO usually involves:

• Configuration of the SEO parameters
• Improvement of the page loading speed (PageSpeed​​)
• Page layout following the best SEO practices
• SEO section templates
• SEO product templates
• Sitemap generator module
• Robots.txt file generator
• HTTPS module
• Configuration of the redirect module
• Micro-markup Schema.org
• Micro-markup Open Graph
• Setting up Google Analytics
• Adding site to Google Search Console
• Setting up the internal link structure
• Setting up goal sets in analytics.

Custom eCommerce Website Design

Before you get too far down the development road, it would be good to first validate the idea of your future store, get its physical representation, uncover any potential problems and find solutions. We will create an online store prototype for you, aligned with your brand. A prototype comes as simple sketches or as a functionally working website. The larger the project, the more attention will be given to the prototype. Designing a prototype helps to plan everything down to the smallest detail, pivot, and readjust the store functionality and design before writing a code.

The prototype is visualized and adjusted to the brand book at the design stage. We develop layouts using both responsive and adaptive designs to make your website optimized multiple devices.

A web designer creates 2 or 3 versions of the main page. The client picks one and makes adjustments if any. Next, the web designer proceeds to creating additional web pages. The project manager ensures that the design layout follows the technical assignment and the prototype.

Technology Stack for the eCommerce Project Development

We start with a detailed design of your online store, then proceed to the layout and programming, following closely the technical assignment.

WordPress and OpenCart are the best solutions to build basic stores with up to 100 items. For online stores with more than 1,000 items, we recommend custom eCommerce development with the use of the Laravel framework. We use Shopify as one of the best eCommerce cloud software.

The main technologies we use for the eCommerce project development are: