Businesses looking to set up an online shopping portal are often put off by the intimidation of escalating costs at the development stage. While e-commerce portal brings in remarkable results thanks to shifting customer preference and the deep penetration of mobile, the prospect of high development costs is a key reason why most e-commerce sites do not get past the ideating stage.
If you want to know which are the pain points as regards costs during e-commerce development and ways to circumvent them, then read on…
As a good developer you would start off with a brief questionnaire to know more about the client and its target audience. Some of the key questions to be answered at the planning stage would include –
1. Knowing about the customer (e.g.- whether B2B or B2C)?
2. Knowing about the best way to attract them to the portal
3. Pointers on heightened customer experience during online shopping
4. Key add-ons/third party/individual integration to the site
5. Handling scalability and growth in future
6. Handling scope creeps or revisions to schedules and estimates
Answers to these will help to decide on an appropriate choice of platform and back-end before you commence with the actual coding. If this starting point seems overwhelming to you, it will be good to hire the e-services of a good consulting firm. The investment and time will definitely help in a streamlined e-commerce portal development process.
While Shopify may take a bit more time to customize the storefront, OpenCart provides a lot of flexibility in modifying the look and feel of your digital store. Also when we consider the compatibility and pricing of plug-ins, the open source OpenCart platform offers plug-ins that is around 30-40% cheaper than official Woocommerce plugins. On the flip side however, people have had problems with OpenCart tech support.
Considering above factors will certainly help you keep both costs and time of development in check.