Launching an e-commerce platform: a custom solution vs a opensource CMS

Now we are witnessing the complete and final victory of the digital world over the analog one. There will be no going back. That's for sure. There is no time to wait, because the development of technologies is accelerating significantly, and those who do not engage in digitalization now will lag behind in both the short and long term.

E-commerce in Ukraine is gaining momentum, it is simply impossible not to feel it. According to Hootsuite data for July, we are in 14th place in terms of e-commerce growth rates (+26%), with an average global growth of +18%. At the same time, the percentage of consumption through e-commerce platforms in Ukraine is still small — 4% (16% of the global average).

The need to go online for business is obvious, but how to do it right and choose the best option for creating an e-commerce platform for business? There are several options for different types of tasks. Let's take a look at examples.

CMS with ready-made templates

If you need to quickly launch a project to test an idea and create a basic MVP, you don't need to develop a project from scratch. You can take any ready-made product (for example, Wordpress, Bitrix, Prestashop or Opencart) or any other popular CMS with ready-made templates and quickly launch. Let's consider the most popular ones that we work with at the SEVENTEAM agency.

Wordpress and Woocommerce plugin

One of our projects on Wordpress is an online store of products from the Ukrainian brand "LoveGav" for cleaning up after pets. This was the case when you just needed to check how popular the product was with the consumer, launch the site as soon as possible and start selling. We put together a website and quickly added a plugin for collecting and processing orders (Wwoocommerce, a specialized E-commerce plugin for Wordpress, was too large and cumbersome for this project).

The goods turned out to be in demand, and as a result, the client received a working platform in a short time. Today, our client has gained experience, accumulated a knowledge base, and we have already received a brief for the development of a custom CMS for the development of the E-commerce platform of this popular brand among dog breeders. The cost of such development on the market is up to $ 5,000.

E-commerce CMS PrestaShop and OpenCart

Solutions such as Prestashop and OpenCart are good because a lot of modules and plugins have already been created for such systems, these systems have a large community and almost all e-commerce tasks are solved "out of the box".

Online store for the international youth clothing brand Camp David & Soccx, the market leader in Switzerland — an example of our successful e-commerce project implemented using PrestaShop. To protect themselves from future risks and quickly launch the project, our Swiss system client asked to implement an e-commerce platform on some ready-made popular solution.

In case the cooperation does not work out and the project goes into production to any other team that is familiar with this CMS. In addition, the client was already familiar with PrestaShop and understood that the functionality built into the system would be enough for him at this stage.

The cost of such development on the market is from $15,000 and depends on how non-standard the solution is needed in frontend development and integration of CRM, delivery services, payment services.

E-commerce platform of our own development

Own technology is actually creating a site from scratch. You can use almost any programming language and framework here. At SEVENTEAM, we mainly work with Ruby (Ruby on Rails framework), PHP (Yii, Symfony) and sometimes Python. Own development is often the most expensive in terms of both time and resources, but it has a lot of advantages over ready-made solutions. It is worth programming an e-commerce platform yourself if you want to create a product with unique functions or complex integration with other systems and services.

For example, when we were creating the charity online platform "Ants", even before the design stage it became clear that a ready-made solution would not suit us. And all because there are simply no similar platforms in the world today. It was necessary to create a convenient marketplace for interaction between sellers and buyers with our own system of notifications and confirmations of the purchase or sale of goods. Develop a convenient shopping cart where the buyer can easily buy goods from several different sellers at once, but pay with one check.

Create a platform for large companies — where the seller has not only the task of selling his goods, but also the opportunity to post news on the site and hold his own promotions and sales. We developed a system of cooperation with charitable foundations: foundations could launch fundraising projects, and sellers could add goods to benefit a particular project of the foundation. And many other interesting functions.

It was difficult to find a ready-made solution for such tasks, such simply did not exist, and taking some of the e-commerce platforms tform and finalize it — would be much more expensive in terms of time and finances of the customer. Also, the advantage of such development is very often the flexibility of the system, when at the first stages of cooperation with the client you can learn about his plans for project development and first lay the foundation for both the scalability of the project and the implementation of new functionality for future possible business needs. But when choosing this option, you should be prepared for both temporary and financial costs. The cost of such development on the market starts from $ 35,000.

To sum up, it is worth saying that each method of creating an e-commerce platform solves certain business tasks. Before choosing a particular solution, you should clearly define the main goals of your platform, think not only about what goals you have now, but also where you want to develop, see what your competitors have, perhaps come up with something that your competitors do not have and that will be your chip.

And, of course, carefully assess the risks, deadlines and budget of the project. And most importantly: you need to understand that any development is an iterative product. Therefore, investments in its production and development should never stop.