There’s never been a more exciting time to own an online store. In 2021, eCommerce sales accounted for 18.1% of retail sales worldwide. And within two years, it’s expected to rise to 22% of overall retail sales. Hence, most eCommerce businesses plan on accelerating their digital transition sooner than originally planned.
If you want to start your business online, take the first step to create a web presence. Start with your eCommerce store.
There are two ways to build eCommerce store: create it from scratch or use ready platforms with integrated features to save your time and resources.
Off-the-shelf services would seem like the obvious choice for most of us. Creating a store at 29 bucks a month without any upfront costs for dedicated programmers, plugins, hosting, maintenance, etc., is much easier and a lot less stressful. Plus, it allows you to launch your products a lot faster.
Yet, there’s a catch. It isn’t as easy and flawless as it looks. This post explains why.
Get ready for a stream of revelations.
Why Shouldn’t You Go For Traditional eCommerce Solutions?
Only 1.94% of eCommerce website visits convert into sales. This means only one in 51 website visitors goes on to hit that “Buy” button.
The key takeaway is your customers are smart. A unique online window shopping experience matters the most for most of them. But traditional eCommerce solutions follow a one-size-fits-all model. And this model doesn’t pay off in this ever-evolving market.
These days, it takes more than loudspeakers and flashy ads to get customers to purchase your products. If you want to grab a slice of this ecosystem, you need to determine user intent, provide meaningful solutions, and learn to communicate clearly. Your web presence should align with your product and messaging to establish a unique brand identity.
So, is there a way to create a unique brand identity among your target audience? Yes. Build a website from scratch. In short, build custom eCommerce store. Although custom websites may seem impractical at first, you’ll learn why they are so valuable by the end of this post.
Let’s get into a brief explanation of what a custom eCommerce site is before we explore the reasons for creating one.
What Is A Custom eCommerce Web Development?
An eCommerce store builder designed to meet the needs of your target audience as per your business requirements is called a custom eCommerce web development. Custom solutions give you the edge you need to build a transactional business for the long haul.
If you need custom search rankings for specific products, traditional platforms like WordPress might take forever, but a custom website could do it almost instantly. In essence, it’s a full-featured package that requires no subscription. It’s in your hands, enabled and controlled by You – The boss. But this is just one reason.
There are plenty more reasons to choose a custom solution over the traditional ones. So let’s jump straight in!
1. Your Products Are Customizable Or Modular
Modular products allow customers to use design tools to create unique product versions.
For example, out of a survey, you found users need smartphones with high battery life. So, you could easily include a high-power battery compartment (built by a third-party manufacturer) into your product. Customers can now customize their batteries based on their needs.
Imagine a swarm of customers flocking to your website just to buy customized smartphones. When you offer such liberty, the traffic is simply going to explode.
Highly customizable ready-made eCommerce systems like WorksLeader can handle complex demands like these. It can help you to create a custom eCommerce website without any difficulty.
2. You Can Include Custom Shipping Options
The greater the variety of your store, the more diverse your customer’s concerns will be.
Let’s say a woman living in Jamaica can only use FedEx’s courier services. Traditional platforms don’t allow custom shipping options. But with custom websites, you can include a destination-based shipping facility tailored to meet that specific customer’s demands.
Further, you can also include weight-based shipping, volumetric-based shipping charges, or temperature-based shipping charges based on the customer’s requirements. If you’re shipping internationally, you may also have to consider customs.
Thanks to the advent of integrated APIs, you can piggyback on data and analysis and create customized shipping solutions for your customers.
3. You Offer a Memorable Mobile Shopping Experience
Here’s one eCommerce statistic hitting home –
Users who have a negative experience on a mobile website are 62 percent less likely to purchase from that store ever again. So, if you’re a sitting duck on optimizing mobile responsiveness, it’s time to act now.
Mobile-responsive websites fetch you repeat customers. Because they don’t have unnecessary distractions like text, pop-ups, images, or floating links. This makes the interface look clean across different devices.
Essentially, you can do anything to provide a fantastic user experience. For instance, you know navigation drop-downs don’t work well on mobiles. Instead, you could use a top navigation menu to improve your UX and make it straightforward for customers to find what they’re looking for.
4. You Can Start Dropshipping/Allow Multiple Vendors To Sell On Your Website
With dropshipping, you escape the hassle of catalog maintenance, warehousing, human resource, pricing updates, etc. In contrast to wholesalers, who must carry everything from stocking to distribution themselves, this low-risk business model does not require high investment.
When you create eCommerce store that’s highly customized, you can invite various vendors to sell their products. In short, you can create a large inventory with individual vendors taking care of their stock. Custom features like these attract huge traffic and help you earn good profit margins.
5. Personalized Reports to Further Refine Your Strategies
It may have taken months of PPC advertising and retargeting to entice people to your website. You got your products lined up, optimized descriptions, and now you’re ready to win customers. They even added your products to their shopping carts. But they never completed the purchase.
Why? You ran a custom check to find out the reason.
During checkout, they were faced with multiple signup requests and unexpected fees. This irritated them, and they abandoned their carts.
Can you blame them?
Cart abandonment is a serious issue. Almost 70% of customers abandon their shopping carts due to complex checkout processes.
Custom eCommerce platforms like WorksLeader can help you with unique custom reports on customer behavior, traffic, revenue, engagement, etc. This way, you can monitor your KPIs and quantify your performance in the future.
6. You Get an Integrated Payment Gateway
As you read above, complex checkout processes force customers to abandon carts. Sure it might be tactical to lower the prices to lure in the customers and then makeup for the increased shipping charges. But you already know how it turns out afterward.
If you don’t optimize your payment options – make it smooth, secure, and transparent, users are always going to feel skeptical and click away.
Unlike traditional solutions, custom solutions allow you to streamline transactions through an integrated payment gateway. These gateways simplify user experience when it comes to data security, fraud prevention, and multiple payment options.
7. Reduce Workload With Third-Party API Integration
Almost any eCommerce platform requires top-notch functionality around inventory management, web development, hosting, search engine ranking, etc.
Earlier, you had to create all of these from scratch. Think of the time, money, and labor involved. However, now developers can take advantage of third-party APIs to access functionalities that would have otherwise taken loads of effort.
With APIs, online retailers can better serve their customers and tailor their websites to their needs. Thankfully with custom eCommerce platforms, you can now integrate third-party APIs and leverage a range of shopping options for customers.
8. Data Security Features That Protect Private Information
Any laxity in collecting sensitive personal information could not only destroy your company’s reputation but can lead to loss of revenue and litigation. You need a strong authentication process to protect your customer’s private information like passwords, card details, social media, legal document numbers, etc.
Off-the-shelf solutions have no third-party support or custom-built programs to guarantee complete data privacy. But with custom websites, you have custom reports on how you can safeguard private information. Using analytics and custom tool support, you can create a secure environment where customers feel comfortable sharing confidential information.
9. Promo Code and Coupon Customization
One of the common problems brands face during promotional campaigns is coupon code misuse. It’s well known that promotional campaigns drain a great deal of time, tools, and energy. Errors like these put a huge dent in the campaigns. Hence, it’s important to generate personalized, one-time codes to prevent misuse.
In an age when consumer trust is the foundation of eCommerce, personalizing coupon codes and offers should be a top priority.
Off-the-shelf solutions don’t provide a responsive code management system. However, if you go for a custom website, you’ll have access to robust analytics tools and third-party support to personalize your campaigns. It will also allow you to run A/B tests on as many code combinations as you want. Solutions like these help your website to be more functional and user-friendly.
10. High Page Load Speed
We’ve already talked about the importance of personalization on e-commerce websites. Several features help create a personalized user experience. However, there is one feature that always stands out as critical to eCommerce businesses – Page Load Speed
Because speed matters. People won’t wait around for your page to load. The probability of bounce rates increases by 32% if the page takes more than one second to load. Or in short, the longer the load time, the higher the bounce rate.
Ready-made websites facilitate load speed optimization but only to a certain limit. Once they hit the “wall,” there’s no way for further updates. That’s why custom solutions are the best bet. Using custom eCommerce websites, you will be in charge of all backend updates. You’d also have no limit to how much you could customize the front end to get rid of distractions and inconsistencies.
Over To You
So there you have it — 10 reasons to go for a custom eCommerce website.
Please note that you’re not at gunpoint to take the custom route only. The debate about traditional vs. custom is not new. It’s okay to be a little confused. However, one little question may help you make sense of things in the end:
Is your new eCommerce store a long-term investment?
If you said no, you’re probably short of a complex marketing model and some cash to start with. In this case, you’re better off with off-the-shelf solutions with apps, templates, and scripts.
But if you said yes, you are ready to scale up along with the growing eCommerce market. In which case, your solution is to go for a custom eCommerce website. The benefits are already up there.
Hope I made it clear. Now, the choice is yours!
